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Gestalt
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You stare at Glory Girl, and Glory Girl stares back. The moment stretches a little more. The world narrows to just her, you, and a tiny circle of cracked concrete that has the two of you at the center.
Glory Girl's fans always push the rumour that she's invulnerable whenever the argument of 'Who is the best cape?' rears its head, hydra-like, on the PHO forums. As someone who's gone through quite a few problems through the application of sufficient amount of firepower, you...
... well, you
could take her. If you transformed. And if the limit of her invulnerability could be reached in the time it took for you to transform, summon a weapon, and empty a belt of ammunition at her.
If.
That train of thought cools off your temper very quickly.
Fighting Glory Girl gets pushed off the figurative planning table and into the trash. Mostly. You still want
something out of this.
"Let. Go." She tells you again.
Slowly. There's an 'Or Else' implied at the end.
You don't budge.
Go on, your eyes say,
make me.
Could she, though? the traitorous thought speaks. Sure, you're not really
touching Glory Girl, and the layer of
nothing around her doesn't give you much grip, but if you wrap your fingers around her wrist tight enough-
...Oh.
You've been careful to stay just this side of 'normal' whenever you did anything physical. Using your strength indirectly, by speeding your movements up
just enough to slip out of tight spots and fighting like how people would expect a (physically) small girl such as yourself to fight. But
holding on to Glory Girl would take raw strength, with no hope of disguising it. And she's a
Cape; she must have at
least a good idea of how strong she is, and how strong Jane Average ought to be in comparison. The moment you start pushing hard enough, she'll
know something's up.
Speaking of which;
Shadow Stalker. Remember how you got in
her sights?
[X] You've got enough on your plate with Shadow Stalker. Deep breaths. Calm down.
-[X] Just let go, for Christ's sake.
You take a deep,
deep breath, and expertly suppress the desire to go up to the nearest wall and
punch it.
"
Fine," you say putting an ocean's worth of
grudging reluctance into that word, and let go of Glory Girl's wrist. The two of you pull your hands away in sync.
There's a flash of victory in her face. "Thank you," she taunts, and you briefly imagine grabbing that Glory Girl action figure you have back home and taking it someplace where you can practice your aim.
Deep, deep breaths.
You
glare at Glory Girl for a few moments more. It's right then that you realize something:
You could just
leave.
"We're done here," you announce, before you turn away from the Cape, and start walking.
"... Wait, what do you-. Where do you think you're going, shorty!?"
You feel that surge of
something wash past you.
Is she...?
You turn your head just
so and... yes. Glory Girl's following you.
"I'm going to
Mind Your Own Business," you tell her, not even bothering to turn your head, "It's on
Fuck You Street, right in front of
Go Away Plaza. It's great. You should go there sometime."
"We're
not done," the Cape insists, after a pause. "You can't just-!"
"
Watch me. Bye."
You pretend Glory Girl's power is being invisible and inaudible, and walk to where you left your backpack propped up against the wall. You pick it up, and-
"
Hey!"
Glory Girl takes hold of your shoulder, her fingers digging in hard enough that it's just this side of painful, and spins you around to face her. Frustration twists her features, and you can't help but feel a little
giddy at having gotten under her skin like that.
"You're up to something," she tells you. "I know you and your mom-"
"You
think. And she's my
Aunt," you snap, "not my mom."
The pressure from her is beating against you like waves against a breakwater. "
Whatever. I
know you and that smug bitch are Empire 88, because there's no way in
hell you can convince anyone those two goons with you are anything
but skinheads. And I
know that old fucker-!"
She stops. She'd glanced towards the entrance to the alley while she was talking. You take a quick glance yourself... and discover that the crowd of wanna-be gangsters which had accompanied 'Uncle' was gone, leaving only the man himself, watching everything with a face like stone.
"... And I
know that old fucker is ABB," Glory Girl resumes, "Because I know ABB uses green and red to tell their members apart, and what are the chances that
everyone he had with him decided they were gonna wear that this morning?" She pauses. "We
both know, so why don't you cut the
bullshit?"
You say
nothing.
Victoria's eyes drift to the very heavy backpack you're holding. They narrow.
"What's in there?" She asks, her gaze boring into yours.
Drugs, an autographed copy of Mein Kampf
, my spare Schutzstaffel
uniform and a nuke- OH PISS OFF, INSPECTOR BARBIE! WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO PROVE? HERE, WHY DON'T YOU LOOK?! HERE'S MY MATH HOMEWORK! HOW HORRIFYING! LOOK, THERE'S EVEN A... a... A report.
A report. The one Blackwell told me to write.
Oh. Ohoho. Ohohohohoho~!
There are moments in life where you
know God exists. This is one of them, because within your backpack there is a
Report. The product of of passion and spite, bringing together on
years of accumulated knowledge, written over the course of a single night in a frenzied flurry that only a Magical Girl could achieve, printed onto thirty five letter-size sheets of paper,
both sides, in neat, size 11 font, and bound together by string as a final touch to this
masterpiece.
You
smile. Through wish-wrought
miracle, you hold back from cackling with spiteful
glee as you
slooooooooooowly drag the zipper open. You reach in, between two heavy textbooks and-
There.
You have it. Take a moment to feel it between your fingers.
Savour what is to come. With a flourish, you pull The Report out and, in the same motion, bring it up to Victoria's head height. She recoils back, two or three centimeters, and she briefly goes cross-eyed before the cover comes into focus.
You see her read the title you'd given to
The Report. Then read it again. And
again. Watch as her expression goes from annoyance, to confusion, to to that
perfect combination of disbelief and helpless, speechless fury that lets you know that you just
won. You're
untouchable to her.
You move
From the NSDAP to the Empire 88: A Brief History of National Socialism, Neo-Nazism, and associated evils, by Rachel Zoranski out of the way so you can grin at Victoria the grin of someone who has their enemy by the
tits.
"Wanna give it a read?" You ask.
Glory Girl
stares at you. She snatches the report from your hand and opens it. She doesn't actually
read it; just flips through the thing, taking just enough time on each page to make sure you hadn't just filled the whole thing with
lorem ipsum. Since you
hadn't, all this did was add to her frustration. Reaching the end, she stays holding
The Report in her hands, and you can
tell that she's weighing the idea of just ripping it apart in her mind.
With an explosive exhale, she gives it back, almost throwing it into your hands. "
Fine," she says, in the tone of someone who thinks it's the opposite. She floats away from you, arms crossed over her chest. A glance towards the entrance (which you follow) reveals that 'Uncle' is nowhere to be seen.
"Just...
go."
Victory.
You quickly stuff
The Report back into your bag, zip it closed, and walk towards Evangeline. She doesn't say anything, and her expression doesn't change from a carefully schooled, polite smile as you approach, but you know your aunt; she
approves.
There's a terrific
crash behind you that makes you jump. Turn around, and see the cause; Glory Girl's punched a wall.
Although it looks more like she's punched
through the wall. Evangeline, the guards, and you, wisely, decide to pick up the pace after that.
It's not until you're sat on the back of Eva's car, half-way through buckling yourself up, that you manage to leave the deep groove of habit and familiarity and
realize what just happened.
Glory Girl dropped into an alley that had Empire on one side and ABB on the other. You were looking at an actual
Hero, who is fighting to make your hometown a better place. And instead of
helping her, you
helped everyone get away. And then you followed up by
humiliating her!
What the fuck is wrong with you!? Why did you do that?
[X] It was reflex. You've been taught your whole life not to snitch; it's gonna take time for you to unlearn that impulse.
[X] It was family. If you'd helped Glory Girl, it wouldn't have ended with just your aunt behind bars; your brother would've been next, then your mother, if she didn't slit her wrists before that happened. You would've had no one.
[X] It was pride. This is something you have to figure out for yourself, without someone with a cape and a tiara swooping in to save the day for you.
[X] It was spite. The moment she saw you, she'd immediately assumed you were a Nazi. She tried to make you walk into her fist because it would've been funny. Fuck her.
[X] It was self-preservation. Or do you really believe you wouldn't be painted by the same brush when it all came crashing down?
[X] You... you don't know.
[X] You do. It's because, deep down, you haven't changed at all.
.
