It's a bird, it's a plane, it's a cynical antihero! (Pt. 1 of Sentinel)

The bank robbers never stood a chance. I mean, they don't know it yet, but they will.

They race towards the car, money trailing after them and guns clenched in their fists. I wait until the last robber leaps in and shoot lasers out of my eyes.

The plan involved melting the car doors and popping the tires, but I didn't aim right. 

Whoops. The car explodes. There is a wave of screams, car alarms go off, and a plume of smoke and heat rises up, but nobody else is seriously injured. Besides, police are on their way, so I fly off, seeking out the next calamity.

You'd think petty criminals would just stop already. Sentinel City is chock-full of superheroes, A-listers, B-listers, basically the whole alphabet.

I prevented a mugging by scooping up the masked man and dumping him on a garbage truck. Zipped all the measly bystanders out of a burning building. Crushed the bones in a low-level supervillain's neck to paralyze her. 

Spotting an impending collision, I swoop down between two cars, letting the impact course through me instead of them. The drivers are shaken, but alive and I speed away again. 

All in a day's work for the strongest hero in North America. At least, that's what the billboards read when I fly past them. They're nice pictures, me holding up the new 2022 model of a car with one arm. The weirdest thing is me, smiling.

It's weird to see me smile. I don't think I've done it for at least a couple months. Whatever. I patrol a little more, ending a few more low-level issues. God, I miss the good supervillains right now. Hopefully, they have some devious schemes baking.

It takes a few seconds, but I frown, hearing someone shouting. My real name, which I haven't heard in months. Normally, I wouldn't care, but I know that voice. 

I zoom towards the half-destroyed Bayley building, the former pride, and joy of Sentinel. Before some supervillains blew it up for evil reasons.

Bria or Frost grins at me, taking a swig of her beloved grape soda. She looks good, her hair is long again, and has electric blue mixed in with her dark curls.

"Miss me?" She asks, looking very comfortable seated on the remains of some destroyed facet on the top of the building. Ice spreads on the tin of the soda.

"Always." My mouth twitches, trying to arrange itself into something reminiscent of a smile. "What took so long?"

"Ouch. It was a world-level threat, and since some of us-" She makes sure I know which of us she's referring to. "-refuse to be a part of a goddamn team, it took longer than it should have."

I nodded. "Well, I'll try and read about it on the news."

Bria raises a thin eyebrow and giggles. "Or, idiot, you could read the emergency briefing Conjurer sent out?" When I say nothing, Bria frowns. "You did read it, right? Before not helping with a catastrophic event?"

I shrug, still hovering slightly in the air. "If it was important enough, I'm sure I would've eventually been forced to join in."

"Wow. Half of Vancouver got torched, you ass. How long has this been going on?" Bria stares at me until I look away.

"What this?" I asked, pretending to be busy with my gloves.

"The whole I-don't-care thing you've got going on." Bria gestures at all of me and I can't even muster a frown.

"I do care. I've been-"

"I know you've been busy, there's a 24/7 news broadcast on what you've been up to. And I can see why there are no close-ups, you look like shit." Bria sighs and takes another sip. "But you don't care anymore. You just do it because...you know." She rakes a hand through her gravity-defying curls.

I don't know what to say to that. Part of me, inexplicably, wants to piss her off. Get some savage pleasure out of cutting off this relationship too.

"It doesn't work like that, and one day you're gonna cross a line while not caring and it'll actually crush you," Bria says, her voice getting uncharacteristically soft.

For a second, I think I'm going to say nothing. I literally haven't said anything for a while, after firing my publisher and ignoring requests for interviews.

"I know." Is all I say in response and Bria laughs her awful, shrieking laugh.

"I never thought I'd miss that chatterbox that I met that first day, adorably confused about her superhero name and what costume to wear." Bria never looks sad, not even when I can hear it in her voice. "What happened?"

"All of it. Losing Mel, the everyday violence, and actual shit. They don't deserve saving after the fucking-" I stop myself, hearing something despicably ragged in my voice and Bria quietly watches me.

"Come here." She orders kindly, holding out her arms.

"No. I don't like hugging." I cross my arms.

"Come on now, don't make me hurt you." Bria chuckles at her own joke. Almost nothing can hurt me, that's why the military tolerates my bullshit.

Before I know it, my next protest is muffled by Bria's shoulder, and I'm being hugged.

"I could literally burn your face off," I mumble into her cold skin and Bria laughs.

"Not if I freeze your face first."

God, I've missed her. I've missed her paradoxical warmth, her humour, her everything. The way I'm not a freak around her. 

"Did you change your perfume?" I ask and Bria laughs into my hair.

"Can you stop? Next, you'll tell me what shampoo I'm using."

"How do you it?" I ask miserably after a moment's silence. "I'm...I feel like a mess."

Bria pulls away and rolls her eyes. "You're so dramatic. Therapy, hanging out with friends-" She gives me a meaningful look. "Getting fat on grape soda. Movies that make me cry. Not being a stupid superhero overachiever."

Again, I say nothing. 

Bria's phone goes off. "You need something to-oh, hold on." She pulls away fully, and I barely manage to bite back a protest, watching her face light up as she scrolls.

"What the actual hell?" She mutters and then looks up at me, expression controlled. "Did you blow up a car, killing a bank robber and injuring two others? And also blowing up over 150,000 American dollars?"

Looking into her eyes feels awfully close to looking into the sun right now, so I study the crack in the concrete. "Maybe."

"Oh." Bria holds up her phone. "Additionally, were you aware that two U.S. senators, the Speaker of the House, and half the cops in the city want you arrested?" 

I narrow my eyes at the phone, blinking exhaustedly into its light. "No? I've been pulling shit like this for a while and they've done nothing." Honest surprise makes its way to my voice, hell, forty minutes with Bria and I'm feeling emotions again. 

"Uh, they've wanted you in jail for a couple of months now," Bria informs me, icicles growing on her forearms. "How do you not know this? And what the hell happened to your phone? I've been calling nonstop since the mission ended."

I pull the shattered remains of it out of my pocket. "I've just been carrying it around..." My voice trails off and Bria stares at me with a mixture of pity and exasperation. 

Hey, I burnt every bridge I came across recently. I'm pretty much despised in the superhero world, and apparently, it has trickled into the public too.

"Wow. This is..wow." Bria laughs in amazement, shaking her head at me. "You know what, we'll deal with this tomorrow. Right now, we gotta get you some hobbies, something to do with your life when you take a break from superheroing."

"I usually just sleep." When I can, for like an hour a day after cramming my face with the required calories.

"Uh-uh, no, that's not enough. Hmm. I know what to do, come with me."

And that's how we find ourselves strolling into a Walmart, attracting more than a couple of stares as Frost and Sentinel City's biggest superhero, Nightquake (I didn't choose it), just show up amongst mortal shoppers.

"Oh my God, can I get an autograph?"

And I may be a wanted criminal now, or a fugitive or whatever, but the novelty of our public appearance has people approaching us anyways. 

Though her superhero name may be frosty, Bria could teach a course on charisma, smiling for selfies and cheekily signing receipts and other scraps of paper handed to her. 

I, on the other hand, like the plank of wood I've slowly evolved into, mechanically grin and stiffly stand for photos. I hate photos because people always realize I'm a lot shorter than I should be.

But soon enough Bria manages to shoo them away and loops her arm through mine, dragging me through various aisles.

I reject the art supplies and knitting. For someone who can throw a dart hard enough, and precisely enough to bring down a commercial plane, I have no sense of artistic style or ability.

Bria supplies actual fruit and vegetables into my trolley, despite my protests that I cannot cook.

"You'll learn, that's half the fun." She tells me, ruffling the hair of a cute kid who proudly shows off her Frost-themed doll.

"Do you want me to starve? I need over 3000 calories a day." I complain but relax into it all. It's fun and sweet and I've ached to hear Bria's delightfully atrocious, hate crime of a laugh.

We're both in costume, and part of me finds it hilarious that store cameras are about to record us clowning around domestically in our bright coloured spandex.

Bria suddenly brightens up and her excitement causes the drink aisle to freeze.

"Sorry!" She pouts and grins at a storeworker who practically melts, while I roll my eyes.

Bria's secondary superpower is her ability to charm her way out of literal murder, I realize, jogging along with her as she pulls me to the greenhouse.

"Bri, no, I can barely keep a goldfish alive!" I hiss, throwing grins at the curious bystanders peeking in at us.

"Trust me, your inner plant mom will wake up once you have these babies." Bria's kneeling on the floor, examining plant varieties with the same intensity as she does studying building blueprints.

"You're being so ridiculous right now." I declare, but she drops two potted, green things into the cart, beaming at me.

"It's okay, you'll grow to love them. Get it, grow?" Bria laughs at my annoyed face, fiddling with the domino mask plastered to it. "I forget sometimes how goofy you look with this thing on."

"I forget why I bother being friends with you." I shoot back but soften it with a smile.

"Because you love me, and I'm awesome, and the only person who will never, ever judge you for being the loser you are," Bria replies, pushing the trolley, and flashing her bright smile.

"When I get arrested, what's gonna happen to my plants?" I ask as we're queued up, ready to pay.

"Don't ruin this. We'll figure it out, get you into some therapy-"

"Great, I get to waste time with some quack." I frown when Bria elbows me sharply.

"You know you need it. I'm just glad that the creepy, empty look in your eye is going away. Come on, we're up."

The teen at the till has a look of total disinterest as he scans through our items, chewing with an impressive determination on mint gum as he slides things over. "You need any bags?" 

Bria smirks as camera flashes go off around us, while I try not to melt into the floor with embarrassment.

"Your total is 121.89 dollars. How would you like to pay?" The teen drawls, jabbing at the till with one finger.

"Um, credit." I clear my throat, trying to inject some kind of heroic authority into it. I haven't checked my balance from the government, and I hope the whole fugitive thing hasn't frozen my account.

Bria snickers and the teen looks unimpressed as I insert my card. Mercifully, it goes through, because I don't want to spend another second here.

We grab the bags and speed out of there, narrowly avoiding a police car that shows up. The cop slams the door as he strides into the now infamous Walmart.

"Just one car?" Bria hisses into my ear, as I fly us away. "That's insulting."

"Maybe he wants an autograph too," I tell her, and she giggles, her freezing cold hands somehow hurting my impenetrable, bulletproof skin.

We get to my shitty excuse for a flat, chosen specifically for how out of the way, destroyed, and awful it is. It's populated by neighbours running their own, illicit side hustles, far too busy to poke their noses into anyone else's weird shit.

"Well, this is disturbing." Bria surveys the place. It is, I realize uncomfortably. It looks like the lovechild of a hurricane made of garbage and a bombed laundromat. "You should come and stay with the rest of us."

"It would defeat the mysterious, depressed vibe I'm going for," I tell her, my voice flat as I try to find a place for the plants. Nothing could make me stay with the others after they let Mel die. 

Bria sweeps a pile of garbage off a table onto the floor and arranges the plant there.

We both stare at it, as though its existence will magically make me a functioning, well-adjusted superhero again.

"So water it whenever the soil gets dry. And watch out for the little flies."

"What the hell? Did you bring some fly-infested weed into my house?" I demand, turning to glare at Bria.

"Like it's not a fly-infested garbage dump already?" Bria raises an eyebrow, and I roll my eyes, defeated. Both of us turn to the plant again.

"It's not doing anything," I whine, gesturing at its...plant-ness.

"Remind you of a certain antisocial hero? Who sat out of a world-destroying event due to angst?" Bria asks icily, and I shut up.

"I've missed you," Bria says in the same tone she'd use to inform someone of the weather. Very matter of fact. "Even if you have been a complete ass."

"I've missed you as well." I declare in the same stoic, straightforward tone. "Even if you have been an obnoxiously nice person, terribly busy with saving the world." We're both still staring at the stupid plant.

After a moment of silence, Bria speaks up again. "I want another hug,"

I sigh deeply. "Of course you do."