The Best of Bugs

There’s the sound of glass shattering and the shriek of metal tearing before the hero finally arrives. His sandy-blonde hair is littered with concrete dust and is marked by a spattering of blood. A red-gloved hand clutches at his left ear, only partially obscuring the charcoal-like singe that took off part of it. One of her mechanisms must have clipped it. Bug smirks.

The hero - Triumph, they call him - searches the rooftop with wild eyes. He jerks, nearly falling over the ledge upon seeing her. A hiss escapes through his teeth. He pretends not to clutch at his ribs, but Bug has already noticed the darker splotch spreading amongst the red and gray fabric covering his abdomen. Her smirk grows, taking on a haunting quality, but she doesn’t say a word. She lets Triumph succumb to the tension.

He fumbles to speak. “You..I..you…why did you…” He looks at her, his chest still heaving. She gives him nothing.

The woman herself had not moved. She stands as still as a sordid statue, engulfed in an inky-black contraption. The very armor that gave her a sense of lifelessness seemed to move and flow like a living, breathing beast of its own.

“Why?” He whispers, legs quaking from exhaustion, even as his heart hammers, painfully in his chest. “W-why me?” His head dips as he hears another one of his comrades’ screaming get cut short by a mechanical thud.

Triumph looks up, startled by the mechanical click. A soft whirring sound follows. Six shiny, black appendages unfurl, extending from her back.

Triumph scuttles back, his feet falling dangerously close to the edge. She takes another step, her movement too stilted to be natural, but too fluid to be another mechanism. This one is real.

She leans forward, some featureless monster looming over him, despite his greater height.

“Why, Braylen, hasn’t it always been about you?”

****

I’m sorry, Mrs. Paige, but your daughter lacks any markers for powers. She is powerless.”

Mrs. Paige scrunches up her nose, her glasses tipping. “No, no, no,” she taps at the attendant's desks. “You’ve made a mistake. My daughter must have powers. Her father was a super and her brother is already showing. I demand that you retest her this instant.”

“I’m sorry,” the attendant repeats, “But we have already done the test twice. We have a 99.86% accuracy. The chance that we managed to miss any sign of a power your daughter may have is less than two-thousandths of a percent.”

“That only proves your incompetence. You should all be fired, every last one of you who was involved in my daughter's test. Do you see what you are doing to her?”

The attendant looks over the raging woman’s shoulder. The mousy-haired girl sits quietly, the sleeves of her black hoodie pulled up, showing off the multi-colored band-aids that dot her arms. Her feet dangle over the chair, swinging back and forth like pendulums, while her winter-gray eyes lock with the attendants.

For a moment, unease grips her, and a shudder crawls its way down her spine, but she pushes it aside. The attendant had been administering tests for several years now and had seen many disappointed children. Some had gotten angry and started tipping over chairs. Others have wept, crying as they left her office. Other times, like she presumes of this girl, they will simply be done with all the needles, and tests, and their parents’ whining, and will just want to go home. She resolves to make it quick.

“Mrs. Paige, less than two percent of the population has powers and even fewer have substantial abilities. Even in families with powers, they are not always a dominant trait. There are many super families where children are born without powers, especially when one parent isn’t a super-”

“So you're saying this is my fault!”

“I’m saying that your son got lucky. He has powers, but Eliot has not and will not express any sort of super ability. That does not make her any less valid as a-”

“ENOUGH! We’re leaving and we're going to find a better lab with people who actually know what they're doing. Come on Eliot,” she says before storming out the door.

The girl slides off the seat, slowly following after her mother. She spares a jaded glance at the attendant, before slipping out the door. It clicks shut behind her.

***

Triumph flinches back, tears pricking at his eyes. Blood trickles out from the gaps between his fingers, further feeding the growing dark splotch. He wheezes.

“How do, how do you know m-my…?”

“How do I know your name?” she finishes, watching the color slowly seep away from his face, leaving him pallid and sickly looking. He shivers. Her voice is just as unnatural as her gait. It has a hollow, mechanical quality - surely filtered through her armor - yet keeps the malignant undertones, rage bubbling just beneath her shell.

Triumph yelps as he’s jerked forward and flung to the ground. The world spins, his vision blurring, yet he still sees the scrap of tattered fabric curled in one of Bug’s mechanical fists.

She flings it over the edge.

With trembling fingers, he gingerly prods at his chest, tracing the area where his insignia had once been. Nothing but bare, bruised skin remains.

“How does it feel?”

Triumph startles, blurry eyes finding the faceless villain looming over him. Her expressionless, black visor tears into his soul.

“How does it feel: losing everything, becoming nothing.”

Tears trickle down his face, leaving behind trails in the grime coating it. He chokes back a sob. He feels the smug satisfaction radiating off of her, as she drinks in his failings like a spider would with the guts of its prey.

He curls both of his fists and presses off the concrete attempting to regain his footing. Blood-slicked boots beneath him, he stands at his full height with his shoulders drawn back. He might have been imposing if not for the trembling in his legs and the faintness in his face. He would fall.

Regardless, he stares her down, eyes to visor.

“Why did you choose me?”

Her suit lets off a crackling sound. He’s caught off guard when he realizes that she’s laughing. Bug is laughing, mechanical shoulders shaking with morbid glee.

“It wasn’t a choice, Braylen. It was always you.”