Wonder City Stories

Storm Warning

"No, no, no, no, no, no, no," Sophie said, clutching her head. "They didn't wait for me?"

"No," Nereid said, watching her girlfriend worriedly. "It was a big thing. Lots of people involved. All the police who'd gone in went silent, and no one knew exactly what was happening."

"But you could plainly see it was Phil the Pheromoaner," Sophie said, gesturing angrily to the big screen that showed an aerial still photo of a dirty-blond man in his thirties, sitting partly unclothed on the front steps of the Wonder City University library, surrounded by mostly-unclothed college women. She scowled. "And it looks like he found a power booster somewhere."

Nereid blinked. "I don't know this guy."

Sophie sighed and rubbed her face. "That's because he's been in jail. He's a serial rapist. The worst sort of rapist: the sort where circumstances convince juries that his victims are consenting. His para power is producing roofie-like pheromones. His victims lose most of their inhibitions and willpower."

Nereid's eyes got big. She clenched her jaw and firmly put aside a sick memory of her very bad relationship of two years before, focusing on the screen. "So how many people can he usually do that to?"

Sophie grimaced. "That's the thing: he's a Class 2 or 3 at best, only able to really affect a single person at any given time. He's got something bigger going on here. I wish there weren't so damn many trees in the quad so we could see just how many people there are. Who did you say went in?"

"Mercury, Wire, Vector, and Mercury's new boyfriend, that guy Gemini? The one who can multiply his extremities or something?"

Nereid glanced at Sophie's face, and the half-appalled, half-intrigued look she saw there brought images to mind that made her blush furiously.

Sophie coughed, then said, "You mean they didn't even call in Citizen Pain? The one person who is likely to be immune to this?"

"They signaled him, just like they signaled you," Nereid said.

Just then, as if summoned, Citizen Pain burst into the room, his long white hair romantically windblown, beautifully sculpted face distressed. Nereid regretted, for just a second, that he "wasn't attracted to biological lifeforms." "Indeed, I have only just received the signal!" he exclaimed. "What is the matter, Brainchild?"

Sophie heaved a massive sigh. "Oh, the team just went in without either of their two heavy hitters OR their brain."

"I'm not allowed out, you told them," Nereid said in a small voice. "And they didn't think it would be that difficult."

"I know, I know," Sophie said, rubbing the bridge of her prominent nose. "But that's because Mercury really takes this whole 'hotheaded impulsive leader' schtick too seriously."

"I do indeed agree with you there, Brainchild," Citizen Pain said, resettling his white-and-black uniform tunic on his shoulders. "I wish that he would step down from his position and allow someone else to try leading for a change. Indeed I do."

"Like you, Pay?" Sophie said with a grin. "I can't help but think you'd be better at it than he is."

"I was thinking of you, in fact, Brainchild," he said seriously.

"Thanks, that's very flattering, Pay," Sophie said, and Nereid could see that had flustered her a bit. "Let's talk about it later. While we talk, our teammates are most likely getting naked."

"Oh! You don't really think so, do you?" Nereid said, chewing her lower lip. "Mercury thought he could run fast enough to get to him and stop him."

"Mercury still has to breathe while he runs," Sophie said, turning to the screen and trying to request another aerial shot from the police flyer. "What Mercury actually thinks is that Phil's roofies only work on women. And he would be wrong." An error message rolled across the screen, asserting that the flyer was busy at this time. She cursed.

Nereid said, "Should we go then?"

"Yes," Sophie said, turning to her two eager minions and stalking past them into the elevator. They followed her. "Nereid, you'll need to stay in water form until I tell you it's safe to turn back. Pay, I'll need you to patch into Cosmic Flyer 2 and give me flyover visuals."

"I will indeed be pleased to do so," Pay said, and when the elevator disgorged them onto the flight deck, he immediately went to the flyer's external computer port and pushed his fingers into the custom dock Sophie had built for him. The secondary flyer's engines came online immediately and Nereid could see the systems inside beginning their diagnostics, screens flickering information faster than anyone but Pay or Brainchild could process.

"Wait here while I get my containment suit," Sophie said, and she trotted into her armory.

Nereid said to Pay, "Where were you when they signaled? They got a message that your receiver was out of range."

"I was not out of range," Pay said, removing his hand from the port and sliding the port cover into place. He turned tragic blue eyes toward her. "Indeed, I was only in a place that does not get good reception. I was seeking to speak to my boyfriend."

"Oh, Pay," Nereid said, putting a hand on his shoulder. "But he broke up with you months ago!"

"I know," Pay said, and his lower lip quivered. "But I found that I desired nothing more than to hear him call me a 'toy boy' again." He rubbed at his eyes, which were, human-like, producing some tears. "I found, indeed, that Mr. Hammer seems to have forgotten who I am."

Nereid thought about that, and then thought about the fact that when she called Megan and asked to talk to Simon a month ago, Megan had chided her, reminding her that Simon "didn't do that any more," and yesterday had spoken as though Simon were no more than her pet dog. Sophie was right that something really bizarre was going on out there. "Oh, Pay," she said again, hugging him. "I'm sure he hasn't forgotten you."

Sophie emerged from the armory at that point, dressed in her sleek humanoid-mecha-armor, which was stylishly painted in dark blue and gold. Her apparently-blank faceplate was still open, revealing her face. "Come on, you two, let's move along. Nereid, what did I tell you?"

"Oh, right," Nereid said, and shifted into her water form. It was still a weird experience, this new trick of hers, but she tried very hard not to wonder how she continued to think if her brain had turned to water.

The roof opened and Pay rose up into the sky. Sophie took the pilot's seat while Nereid carefully squished into a passenger seat.

"Cosmic 2, you have clearance for your flight plan," a bored woman's voice said from the speaker. "Please to not deviate more than 10% from your plot except for evasive maneuvers without clearance."

"Affirmative, Flight Control," Sophie said into the microphone. She switched to internal mic and said, "Thanks for filing the plan, Pay."

Since he was wirelessly patched into the flyer's systems, he responded, via speaker, "I am glad indeed to be of service."

The flyer, under Sophie's expert guidance, rose up smoothly, pivoted to face the Wonder City University campus, and, clearing the top of the nearest skyscraper, moved forward.

"What is the plan, Brainchild?" Pay said, easily keeping pace with the flyer.

Sophie pursed her lips in thought for a moment, then said, "You're gonna fly over and give us aerial visuals. Then Nereid is going to bring in a full-on monsoon for the quad and anywhere else we see activity."

"That's going to mess up weather patterns for weeks," Nereid said, trying to facepalm and forgetting that she was in water form. There was a splash as her "hand" passed through her "forehead" and out the back of her "head". GOD that was WEIRD.

"Tough shit," Sophie said. "That's what paras do: mess stuff up." There was a strange, strained, bitter tone to her voice, but Nereid only noted it and didn't pursue it. "While she's washing people down and knocking as much pheromone out of the air as possible, Pay, you're going to go in and deck the sucker. Try not to hurt anyone else in doing it; I'm hoping the rain will break up some of the scrum so he won't have anyone to hide behind. I'll come in with a containment unit for him."

"Visuals commencing," Pay said, and Sophie put the screen up.

The entire quad was full of naked or mostly-naked humans engaging in acts not normally seen in public. Nereid immediately looked away, feeling sick, and was sure she'd be blushing if she currently had blood or skin. Sophie's face turned red with something other than embarrassment as she stared at the screen.

"A lot of people worked hard for almost four years to put that waste of flesh behind bars," Sophie said in a low voice. "It took a shitload of work to get a jury that would agree to put him away. And now someone has let him out and taken off his power repressor. In fact, someone may have given him a power enhancer of some sort." She stared a moment longer, then said, "I may need to invent something that will cut his dick off from the inside out."

"You shouldn't joke about that," Nereid said.

"Who's joking?" Sophie said, cocking her head to the side as she watched the visuals updating. "Besides, I have to either laugh or explode from homicidal rage at this point. Castration jokes are the least of it." She snorted. "Though I guess guys wouldn't agree with me."

"I find castration jokes somewhat uncomfortable," Pay said over the loudspeaker, "even though my apparatus is technically detachable."

"Pay!" Nereid said, clapping her hands over her ears with a useless sploosh. "I didn't want to know that!"

"Why not?" Pay said, and Nereid suspected that he was only playing innocent this time. It had taken her a while to discover that her android friend actually could have a wicked sense of humor. "Indeed, I think it is a distinct perk of my design. I have, in fact, had my apparatus remodeled several times for the pleasure of my partners..." And he was obviously going along with Sophie's laugh-or-cry idea.

"PLEASE tell me that you weren't involved in the design," Nereid exclaimed, letting her hands dissolve and turning to Sophie.

"Of course I was," said Sophie, adjusting the visual display. "Do you think Pay would trust anyone else with his apparatus?"

Nereid said plaintively, "I don't know whether to count that as you cheating on me or not."

Sophie snorted. "Honey, there are people who do that for a living."

"There are?" Nereid said, trying to imagine a market for redesigning... apparatus.

"They're either called 'surgeons'," Sophie said, giving her a sly glance, "or 'toy designers'."

"Indeed," Pay said, "I count myself extremely fortunate that I can modify my apparatus in ways not normally available to biological lifeforms."

"Nooooooo lalalalalalala!" Nereid bellowed.

"All right, y'all," Sophie said, absently patting at Nereid's watery knee, "I think I've got a grasp on the scope of this thing." She picked up an electronic stylus and drew several quick lines on the screen map of the university and environs. "Nereid, start bringing in the water over this space."

"I need radar," Nereid said.

"Right," Sophie said, flipping the appropriate switch. "Pay, are you experiencing any abnormalities in your biomechanical systems that could be Phil's roofies?"

"Negative, Brainchild," Pay said. "Indeed, I am fully functional."

"Yes, you are, indeed," Sophie muttered under her breath.

Nereid concentrated on the radar screen, the map, and the environment beyond. She could certainly feel everything that was going on in the atmosphere -- she could sense where their own flight disturbed water vapor, and she could even sense approximately where Pay was, but she had only a vague connection between what she could feel and actual geography if she wasn't in the middle of things.

And she really didn't want to be in the middle of those things.

"Oh, there's Vector," Sophie said.

Nereid glanced at the screen without thinking, and her attention was arrested. "Wait, is that a girl she's with?" she said.

"Oh, yeah," Sophie said dismissively. "I know she says she's our 'token straight' but she so isn't. We don't have a token straight."

Nereid blinked at the screen and said, "Huh," deciding to think about it later. She went back to cloudgathering.

"I don't see Mercury," Sophie said. "I can only hope he's found someone invulnerable."

Nereid tried to do a mental "lalalala" to stop thinking, but she gave in and said, "Do you think Gemini can really multiply his... his..."

"Apparatus?" Sophie said with a wicked grin. "I don't know, why don't you ask him?"

Nereid would have blushed again, she was sure, and turned back to the radar. The water vapor began to show as blue on the radar, then green, and Nereid knew that it would begin raining soon on most of the university campus. Now she redoubled her efforts to pull together water vapor, trying not to carelessly evaporate reservoirs and ponds as she had sometimes done when pressed for time.

The radar slowly, slowly turned yellow and orange, and finally Sophie said from behind her faceplate, "That's enough, Pacifica."

Nereid looked out the windscreen at the dense downpour that had engulfed the campus. Apparently, the flyer had landed while she was working. She couldn't actually see through the rain (though then she was left wondering how she was "seeing" at all since everything was water, etc).

Pay's voice came over the loudspeaker. "I have obtained my target, Brainchild." He paused. "I am afraid I may have damaged him a little."

"I'll be there in a moment with the containment unit," Sophie said. "Do I need a backboard?"

Pay made a thoughtful noise. "Perhaps. I believe his jaw is broken, so that may be a wise precaution, indeed."

"On my way," Sophie said. "Nereid, stay in here, no matter what. And is there anything you can do about the temperature? It only just occurred to me that having a lot of wet, naked people in the springtime is kind of a prescription for hypothermia."

Nereid gave Sophie's faceplate a pained look. "I'll... try. But heating is mostly transfer from the sun or an air mass."

"Try, that's all I ask. And stay here," Sophie said, before departing with the required emergency equipment.

Nereid stared at the rain, feeling the water bouncing off Sophie's suit, sensing all the people in the quad near them starting to stand and move around. She didn't want to see them, the people who had been violated during this... thing that had happened to them. She didn't want to think about them too much, but couldn't help it. Could the university's counseling program cope with this? Did they even have a plan for dealing with a supervillain attack like this one? How many of them had considered themselves virgins? Would any of them have to deal with family repercussions because of it? How many of them had been raped before and would have nightmares for weeks or months? What about pregnancy?

She shook her head in a vain attempt to clear it, as the last thoughts were too close to home, and turned her powers toward trying to warm the area.

Sophie and Pay came in, dripping water, and carrying a transparent capsule between them. The semiconscious man inside was strapped to a backboard with his neck efficiently immobilized. The left side of his face was starting to swell and a bruise over one eye was darkening rapidly. He was one of those men who ooze unattractiveness, skinny and pallid and mean-looking.

"Keep up the rain for a bit longer," Sophie said, lifting her faceplate. "There's still going to be some around where he was holding court."

"Brainchild, you said to look for anything odd. In addition to that," Pay said, nodding to a black collar with a canister attached to it that Sophie was idly bouncing in her hand, "he was wearing this ring." Pay said, holding up something that looked very much like the ring Nereid had been given the week before. "Indeed, this looks familiar."

"Crap," Sophie said, taking it from him and shoving it into one of her many armor compartments.

"Sophie, was that...?" Nereid began, but Sophie cut her off with a gesture.

"We'll talk about it later," Sophie said.

Phil the Pheromoaner made a face at them and paid for it in pain, his yelp resounding out of the containment unit. Sophie raised an eyebrow and said, "Pay, please take him to Fort Wilson. They have holding cells for his type there."

"Indeed, Brainchild," Pay said, taking a firmer grip on the man's container. "What will you do?"

"I'm going to go back out and find our teammates," Sophie said with a sigh, flipping her faceplate back down and tucking the collar into another armor compartment. "And their costumes."

---

Author's Note:

In case you're wondering, yes, I do have issues with characters who use pheromones to convince people to have sex, a la Marvel's Starfox, the Purple Man, and the Mandrill, as well as other characters. And while the whole sexual assault thing is sometimes explored (as with Starfox), mostly it's passed off as being just another power effect. What if one has to actually deal with the aftermath?

Don't forget to vote for Wonder City Stories at Top Webfiction!

Boardinghouse Reach

"Oh, hey," Megan said, peering closer at the newspaper. "They identified that body they found down at the docks. It was a two-bit villain called the Merlin. He tried to mug me on my first night in the city!"

Simon stared despairingly at the shirts he had spread over his bed, then paced around in a circle, clutching his head. "Uh-huh," he said distractedly. He was wearing only a towel at his waist, and his muscled shoulders and back were damp.

Megan looked over at him and folded the newpaper. "What is up with you? Are you usually this squirrelly before a date?"

Simon said, "Uh-huh," again and held a green checked oxford shirt under his chin and stared into the mirror.

"Shall I go away while you stress?" Megan said.

"Um, what?" Simon looked at her, wild-eyed with alarm. "No! Don't go! Keep me company!"

Megan sighed and glanced at the clock. "If you don't decide what shirt to wear in the next five minutes, you'll be late meeting Suzanne."

"Auuuugh!" Simon said, throwing his hands in the air and running around the room. "Which one should I wear?" he said when he paused to grab his towel, which had come untucked.

"I think that you could wear nothing but your work apron and she'd be delighted," Megan said, smirking. "Look, she asked you on this date, so she MUST like you already. Wear what you feel most comfortable in."

"I caaaaaaaan't!" Simon said. "I feel most comfortable in flannel and jeans!"

Megan got up and inspected his closet. "Look, this is a brand new flannel. And your black jeans. There. Et voilà. You are dressed."

"Which underwear should I wear?" Simon asked meekly.

Megan gave him a sarcastic glower. "The gold lame briefs."

Simon covered his face. "How did you know about those?"

"Zoltan told me he'd given them to you for Christmas last year." Megan grinned and clapped him on the back. "You'll be fine. Just wear your usual tighty-whities, and get into your shirt and jeans and get out of here."

"Right." Simon looked despondently at his closet, then yanked the new flannel out and pulled his black jeans off their hanger.

"I'm gonna go out and see if Mr. Hammer is around," Megan said, turning to the door. "I'll see you as you're leaving, right?"

"Right."

Megan closed the door softly. She paused a moment outside the door that led to G's apartment, listening to the silence within, then sighed and trotted downstairs. She opened the heavy wooden front door with its leaded glass and ornate Victorian trim, passed through the vestibule and outer door, and stepped out onto the porch. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a plain, 30-something, brown-haired, bespectacled white woman sitting on a bench in the gardens beside the house, tipping her cigarette ash into a concrete urn full of flowers. She nodded to Megan, who returned it. Megan then turned right, toward the carriage house.

She knocked on the yellow front door of the carriage house and, as she waited, studied the small, squared-off boxwoods planted on either side of the walkway. There were heavy, thudding footsteps inside, and the door was opened by Jack Hammer, dressed only in jeans. His surprisingly mobile eyebrows registered surprise.

"I'm sorry, are you busy?" Megan asked.

"Nope, not yet," Hammer said, managing to inflect his electronic voice with something like impatience. "What's up?"

"Zoltan told me you're a foreman with a para construction company," Megan said, opting to go straight to the point. "I really need a new job."

"Whatcha doin' now?"

"Deliveries," Megan said, "hauling thereof."

"You're the one working with Captain Zip, right?" he said.

Megan nodded.

"The grapevine grows like kudzu here on Marigold Lane," Hammer said with a tinny chuckle. "You want to move into construction?"

"I want to move into a job where the mob isn't hip-deep into my boss."

Hammer nodded slowly, then glanced over Megan's shoulder. "Whyn't you come over tomorrow, around 6 or 7, and we'll talk more, huh?"

Megan blinked, caught the sound of approaching footsteps, then nodded vigorously. "Sure! Thanks!" she said, then turned and hurried back toward the front of the house.

She passed a pretty young white man in jeans and t-shirt who looked like he came straight from the sculptor's workroom, all muscles and cheekbones and brilliant blue eyes. He gave her a bright smile.

Behind her, she heard Hammer growl, "Yer late."

The young man said, "Indeed, Mister Hammer, I do apologize. I am indeed very sorry for my delay. I was quite eager to be here with you, but my team..."

Hammer interrupted. "Get in here."

Megan heard a brief scuffling sound, then the door shut heavily. Blushing, she sped her steps around the turn of the house.

G was lounging on the grass at the feet of the woman on the bench, and both were smoking. G spotted her and waved, so Megan strolled over, glancing around for Simon.

"Hey," G said lazily. "Pull up some turf."

Megan folded down to the ground, still a little tender around the ribcage. She smiled up at the woman on the bench. "Hey."

G gestured with her cigarette. "This is Megan Amazon, who has taken up with us by moving into the parlor rooms. Megan, this is Watson Holmes, one of our third-floor residents."

Megan's eyebrows went up, and Watson leaned forward to shake her hand. "My father was a mad fan," she said with a grin. "Everyone asks. I do have a first name, but I hate it more than the other two." Watson had a firm handshake, but no evidence of superstrength. Megan guessed she was on the other side of 40, given the tiny lines around her hazel eyes and the touches of grey sprinkled through her mouse-colored hair. She was wearing gold-rimmed glasses, a t-shirt and jeans, tattered red sneakers, and a cell phone in a belt clip.

There was the usual exchange of pleasantries, then G said, "Visiting Jack?" to Megan.

"Yeah," she said.

"Can I be nosy?"

Megan shrugged. "I need a new job. My boss is mixed up with the mob, plus I think he's going to be a bastard to me when I get back. I stuck my nose in where it wasn't wanted."

"So you're looking at construction?" G said, sounding vaguely surprised.

Megan shrugged again. "I'm hauling deliveries now. Just about anything's a step up."

G said, "Well, the company Jack works for is a pretty decent place. Union, though."

"That's what Zoltan said," Megan said.

Simon emerged from the front of the house and looked around. Megan waved and he hurried over. "Do I look all right?" he said breathlessly.

Megan eyed him. He was wearing the black jeans that fit him like a glove and had put on a black t-shirt under the flannel. "You look good," she said.

"Hot date?" G asked.

Simon nodded.

Watson said, "Is she or he cute?"

G snorted. "Come on, does he date anyone who isn't?"

Simon said, "You know I don't date boys."

Megan said, "You don't?"

"No." Simon looked sheepish. "I flirt with 'em, but don't date 'em."

"Tease," Watson said, grinning.

"Hey!" Simon said, then caught sight of his wristwatch. "Augh! I'm going to be late!" He turned, sprang over a shrubbery, and sprinted for the bicycle rack.

"Good luck!" Megan said.

"We want full details!" Watson called.

Simon waved as he tore off into the street on his bike.

"She is cute," G said, inhaling from her cigarette. "She was the older woman at the party last night, I think."

Megan nodded. "Suzanne."

"Hah," Watson said. "How'd you know, G?"

"Elementary," G said, and laughed when Watson punched her in the shoulder. "He was drooling over her like a poleaxed puppy."

"Well," Watson said, stubbing out her cigarette butt, "it's nice that someone has something to do on a Saturday night."

"How 'bout you, Megan?" G said. "Hot date?"

Megan grimaced. "I've been in town 3 weeks. I don't really have a wide acquaintance. Though," she said thoughtfully, "I guess I have gone on a date. With Simon."

"Jesus," G said, "and then you moved into the same house with him? You got the lesbian indoctrination from your mom, eh?"

Watson choked as she lit a new cigarette and Megan felt her own smile go a little snarly.

G smiled grimly. "Sorry, I have a lousy sense of humor."

Megan let the snarl settle and shrugged. "No problem. A little touchy about the lesbian stereotypes."

"Even from a lesbian?" G said.

"Yep." Megan plucked a blade of grass and folded and refolded it.

There was a slightly awkward silence.

Watson nudged G with a foot.

G cleared her throat. "Well, as an apology, the least I can do is take the new woman out and show her the town. You free tomorrow?"

Megan looked up. "Well... yeah, I am. That'd be nice. All I've seen is the Trylon and Perisphere."

"Can't have that," G said, extinguishing her stub and tossing it into the urn. "Well, I'm gonna go do some work so I'll be free. I'll come by around 10 tomorrow morning, is that all right?"

"Sure," Megan said, blinking.

G got up, dusted off her jeans, smiled, and headed inside. Watson and Megan watched her go.

"She's a strange cookie," Watson said, exhaling smoke. "Want to grab some dinner up the street? Merciful Minerva isn't too much further beyond the pizza joint, and they've got an author reading tonight. Bechdel is touring for her new book."

Accessibility

Nereid knocked hesitantly on Citizen Pain's door. It was a little late, but she hoped he'd still be awake. That is, if he even slept.

The door was opened by Brainchild, who was wearing a stained lab coat over a t-shirt that read "I LOVE THE WORLD MACHINE" and jeans worn thin and pale at the knees. She had several lenses dialed down in front of her left eye, which didn't improve the scowl she aimed at Nereid. "What do you want?"

Nereid took a step backward. "I... just wanted to talk to Pay."

The scowl lightened infinitesimally. "He's not really in any shape to talk right now." She jerked her head to the left and back, and Nereid, standing on tiptoe, could see Pay lying on the bed behind her. He was wearing a tank top and a pair of shorts and was lying very still. The left half of his head was open, with various small wires and thin, straight pieces of metal protruding from the opening. A thick ochre substance oozed from several sites along the edge of the artificial flesh of his face onto stained rolls of gauze.

"Oh," Nereid said in a very small voice. She felt a little queasy.

Brainchild looked at her for a moment, then sighed. "I'm about to finish up for the night," she said. "If you want to come in and wait for him to come back online, you can. Sit in that chair and be quiet." She pointed to a chair on the far side of the room.

Nereid said, "I won't distract you?"

"Not if you shut up," Brainchild said, turning back to her work.

Nereid tiptoed into the room, shutting the door very softly, and crept to the indicated chair.

Brainchild spun lenses in front of her right eye and bent over Pay. She worked with quick, precise movements of the miniscule tools she held, and frequently consulted a palmtop that appeared to be wired into Pay's head.

Nereid watched her work, then realized that her gaze had drifted to the cleavage visible down Brainchild's shirt. She yanked her gaze away to the bare, blue-gray walls of Pay's room.

"Done," Brainchild said after a while. Nereid looked at her just in time for the heaving of Brainchild's bosom as she stretched backward, her back making tiny popping noises. Alarmed, Nereid looked at Pay. The bandages were restored to the left side of his face. "It'll take him some time to wake up," Brainchild said. "Startup is always slow, but he likes to have someone with him while he does it. Since you're here, I can go get some sleep."

"Oh," Nereid said, caught off-balance. "Um, thanks," she added, feeling obscurely like she needed to say something else.

Brainchild snorted and rolled up her very shiny metal tools in a strip of leather with pockets in it. She tucked the roll in the pocket of her lab coat. "Did you try to kill yourself today?" she said. "I haven't heard an explosion from either of our fearless leaders today."

"I'm not..." Nereid began heatedly, but stopped. "No," she said.

"Three whole days without a fine," Brainchild said, turning to the door. "Keep this up and, who knows? In a year or so, you might even get an official invite." She went out before Nereid could say anything.

Nereid bit her lip and looked at the floor.

"Buh-buh-buray," Pay said several minutes later. "Buh-ray-en-child?"

Nereid hopped to her feet and stood awkwardly at Pay's bedside. "She's, um, she's gone to bed. I'm here, though."

His visible eye flicked open and scanned as if reading something written on the ceiling. He inhaled deeply and carefully, then exhaled. Then his eye moved to look at Nereid. "I am guh-glad t-t-to s-see you."

"She said that your startup takes a while, but you like to have someone here, and I came to... to talk to you, so she left me here." Nereid tried to shove her hands into her pockets, forgetting that her new costume lacked pockets. She needed to fix that.

"Wuh-was she n-n-nice t-to you?" he said, scowling a bit over the stuttering.

Nereid shrugged. "As nice as Brainchild ever is. She let me in. I didn't expect that."

"I d-d-don't un-der-stand why they c-cannot b-be nice to you," he said. He was getting more motion in his lower face, and he managed to tilt his head slightly to look at her squarely.

She shrugged again. "I'm new, and my parents aren't as rich as theirs. And, I guess, I'm kind of stupid."

"N-no!" Pay's shoulders shifted as if he were trying to push himself up. "Not stu-stupid. J-just..." He paused, his eye visibly scanning his memory for a word. "Mis-un-der-stood." He smiled with the half of his mouth she could see.

"Hah!" she said, smiling back.

"Y-you are no more stupid than I am," he said, carefully enunciating. "Ind-deed, I worked for a villain. I did things they c-could call stupid."

"But he was like your father or something," she said. "He made you, then told you to do things, and you did them."

"I n-n-nearly killed the Midnight Mask," he said, "b-because I wanted t-to impress my creator. Not because he t-told me to."

"Weren't you controlled or something?" she said.

"No," he said emphatically. "I w-was an experiment in free will."

"And brainwashing?" she said.

"I suppose," he said, twitching his right arm. "But I am a member of the team, and they h-have never said things to me like they have to you."

"You didn't get public disturbance fines for the team," she said, looking away.

"Better," he said, "I destroyed part of the Government District."

She looked back at him. "Really?"

"Yes," he said, finally managing to haul himself up onto his elbows. "Indeed, I caused months of construction traffic jams."

She smiled ruefully at him. "Thanks, Pay."

"I do not like how the others treat you," he said, frowning. "Indeed, I do not like it. I will speak to them about it."

"You don't have to do that," she said. "Every team needs a... a scapegoat. Someone no one really likes. That's what my dad says, anyway. And he'd know."

"I do not admire that sentiment," Pay said. "Your parents were members of the Liberators for less than a year. They did not stay to be abused. If no one speaks for you here, you will leave. And I would not like that." His left leg thumped the bed.

"Thank you, Pay," she said. "I... thanks."

Pay smiled and turned the conversation to her schoolwork. Nereid chattered about her classes and professors, and he seemed honestly interested, even when she became self-conscious of how much she was complaining about her "Great American Literature" class. Their conversation was punctuated for the next hour by his muscle twitches as the various nerve fibers came back online.

"I am nearly fully functional again," he said at last. "If you want to go now, you can. I am grateful that you stayed with me."

"I... I... sure," Nereid said. "Let me know next time she works on you, I can come then too," she added diffidently.

"Indeed, I will," he said. He walked her to the door and squeezed her shoulder as she went out.

Once safely back in her room, she flung herself onto the bed and went over the entire conversation again. She smiled herself to sleep.