Jingle Bells, Psychic Spells: A DCU-inspired Holiday Edition

As the first bits of snow barely hovered over Metropolis, Dr. Evelyn Blackwood rubbed her hands together and crossed the intersection with everyone else on morning peak hour. Evelyn had forgotten her gloves at home. She soon arrived at the building and passed through the lobby with her key card, nodded hello, and moved towards the elevator, where a cheesy Christmas tune was playing on repeat. She reached the office on the 10th floor, removed her coat and layers, and looked out the window. The first snow was falling, creating a feeling of stillness in this hectic city.

It was time to see her first patient, a young and stressed woman. The patient had reoccurring dreams about a symbol in the city, and Evelyn listened closely to the worries and whatnot of this woman, maintaining professional composure. Evelyn stayed in character, as the round clock on the wall kept ticking behind her patient. More and more of her patients were mentioning this symbol in their dreams, and Evelyn thought it was caused by a mix of holiday blues with pop-culture references. It was odd, anyway.

Another funny thing, this feeling like “staying in character” had become a regular thing, for almost anything she was doing lately. It started at the same time as Evelyn’s double life: a normal life one could say by day, and by night a vigilante. It was hard to come up with that name too, everything cool was already taken; The Shadow, Shadowcaster, Shadow Weaver, Nightshade, Shadowblade, to name a few. “Shadow Whisper” seemed cool at first but eventually was not the one. Well, the name was a big deal, as it had to do with her grey moral area, as well as with her powers, so it took some months to come up with something that sticks. So, it ended up in Night Whisper, or Night for short.

Night Whisper’s powers initially seemed like a mentalist’s, doing party mind tricks, but it was a bigger deal. When she touched someone, she could feel the neurons and nerves firing up, the person’s thoughts, fears, and feelings, and she could manipulate these to an extent, to create illusions or visions of an alternate reality that could last for many hours at a time. She could give a command through the neurons, for example, “Sleep”, “Walk” or “Freeze”. If the person was asleep, she could see and influence their dreams in the same way. In proximity, she could see through her opponents, predict some moves, and trick them, which gave her a tactical advantage in the case of a battle. For defense, she could command herself to be resistant to psychic attacks from others. To avoid engaging with an opponent altogether, she could use her powers of stealth, and hide in the shadows or plain sight, by simply redirecting the other’s gaze like someone performing a magic trick.

The last few months passed, and many nights she spent many fighting small fries, like muggers and the rest on the streets of Metropolis, to test her abilities and more importantly, practice. Superman was taking care of the big fish anyway, so it was perfect for a while. Superman’s enemies weren’t exactly united, but they had to be when they felt too much threatened. However, after Superman disappeared, Metropolis was split up into several villain territories.

Night Whisper remembered that earlier this week, Livewire wandered to the streets checking out the territory, finding out potential recruits, and frying a few people for fun. Livewire was working for a villain organization at the time, she was used to switching sides back and forth. So, Night didn’t exactly trust her. The fact that Livewire was wandering so far from her usual streets, and everyone was ‘cool’ about it meant two things, based on her history: First, there was a truce in place, which in turn brought the second conclusion: a bigger fish was in town, and the local villains were threatened once again.

Who could it be? Night didn’t think it would matter much, but she felt more comfortable knowing her potential enemy, so she thought it would be a good idea to stick around the next time Livewire made an appearance. Evelyn knew the place, and she would be there tonight, as her masked alter ego. Capes were so outdated, cloaks were impractical, and the one-piece suit was not practical if you had to change or go to the toilet for that matter. “What can a Supe wear anyways these days?”

She didn’t want her opponents to think she was going to a Pilates class either. Yet, she settled for some activewear in black and dark grey shades that would cover her full body, with matching boots, gloves, and a mask. Agility required a four-way stretch and breathable moisture-wicking fabrics. With this weather, they also provided her with warmth. Served with a side of fashion ridiculousness, all ready to go. The latter probably had to serve a purpose too, to make a Supe terrified to reveal their true identity, eh? Well, that’s tradition as it seemed, so can’t do anything about it.

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Waiting was not Night’s thing, seemed boring and passing the power to the other, because the waiting stops when the other person arrives. However, waiting is essential in hunting and strategy-making, because when you set a trap, you must wait for it to work. Night found the biggest baddest muscle out there wandering off and showing off on the streets, and saw an easy target, his ego. She created a distraction by creating a commotion in a small group of low-level criminals that she was close in proximity to increase their physiological tension and uneasiness that would start up a fight between them. The big muscle dude went to see what was going on and to set them straight. That’s when Night, in plain sight walked past him and touched him on the shoulder to enchant him, making him numb. All around was suddenly blurry to the poor guy. Then she whispered a command that made his face into a terrifying expression, and he bended his knees and started to cry on the spot, which escalated to sobbing with his shoulders moving up and down and mumbled speech. It was quite unsettling, but she knew that Livewire was somewhere near watching, Night knew her target’s style and that something like this would at least get her attention and curiosity. Night walked away to the next block, waiting for her target to reveal itself when she reached a dark alley.

As Livewire emerged from behind a building, Night saw the sparks light up around her opponent's body, with her altered skin and hair standing out. Night Whisper thought to herself to not underestimate her target and she needed to be patient to get the intended information.

“Hey, you, how come I haven’t seen you before around here?”, she said while forming a ball of electricity playfully on her fingertips. “I’m Livewire, we haven’t been formally introduced, so I’m taking the initiative”.

She threw the ball of lighting on the ground and raised dust mixed with smoke. Night started coughing and moved back.

“I’m Night Whisper, pleasure to make your acquaintance”, said with some sarcasm and she moved with agility and comfort to a proximity. She made her move, making her target still, it was so uncomfortable way to make conversation otherwise.

“Who are you with?”, Livewire groaned behind her teeth, annoyed by the unexpected stiffness she was feeling.

“I work alone; ich, I hate that line. Well so far, I have worked alone. But I hear you are recruiting, and I thought that was interesting”.

“Oh”, Livewire exclaimed. “I thought you were with him, and still I’m not so convinced”, and she used the moment of Night’s surprise to escape the stillness spell.

“With whom?” Night shouted in frustration, she shouldn’t have lost concentration, now her target was moving again.

“Oh, don’t play around, you know the guy. He’s nuts, escaped Arkham Asylum, and has been leaving a trail all over the city”.

Night stayed silent. So many people had been in Arkham Asylum, and a few had escaped overtime, but there was no news recently on that. Besides, who would want to come to Metropolis right after that? Arkham is in Gotham, Batman’s territory anyway. Who could escape Batman? Well, Bruce seemed to be getting old. How did Night find out about Bruce is another story altogether. To sum it up, yeah, he had always been a sad, sad boy.

“Oh, you want me to spell it out for you?”, Livewire, irritated, started to charge for an attack. Night should move quickly, or she would get fried for good.

Night concentrated her focus to become razor sharp, she used it as a slashing sword, lashing an all-out psych attack.

“Fucking stay still, will ya?

Livewire responded, “I’m not falling for the stillness attack again” and tried to dodge that. Before she could throw her charged electricity to her opponent, she was hit by the wide range of the attack. This one seemed different.

This was not a stillness attack. It was a command attack, passing through Livewire’s altered neurons and her being. “Nighty night” whispered the vigilante, as Livewire fell to the ground releasing her charged electricity.

Night touched her forehead and was surprised to see who she was talking about. Oh, it was bad, worse than the guy’s face.

“Are you kidding me? Skeletor?”, she exclaimed with a raised eyebrow behind her mask. Then, she remembered one of Superman’s enemies and her funny expression changed to a serious one.

“Doctor Destiny, oh man, are we in trouble”. He had escaped and come to Metropolis once he knew Superman was not around anymore and planned on taking over the city for good this time. For his plan to work, he needed to recover the Materioptikon, but nobody knew its latest whereabouts.

It seemed like Night Whisper had to make alliances with the villain organization of Metropolis to beat this guy before he recovered the Dreamstone.

Normally she would joke around it, like would she get a membership card? Would they claim equal criminal rights as a union of villains? She didn’t like any of them, and right at that moment, none of this seemed funny. The symbols her patients were describing were callings from him. Who knew how deep his plan was running and if they could still stop it and claim the city once again for themselves, to go back to their boring routines?

Snow kept falling around Night in that dark alley, and her thoughts kept swirling, and then she heard a deep telepathic voice.

“Will you join me?”