Super Screwed

“Another job well done,” Luxia said sarcastically as she strode into her headquarters. 

Scribe just nodded, while their eyes flickered across the eight computer screens in front of them, all of which displayed the fight between Luxia and Nox from various angles, some obvious security cam footage. Luxia walked to her large desk and collapsed into the chair behind it in a puff of dust. She looked down at herself in disgust. The fight had left her coated in fallen debris powder, bystander blood, and unlucky cars’ oil drippings. She peeled off her gloves and, after a moment’s hesitation, dropped them into the waste bin next to her. 

“The final damage report, Ma’am,” Scribe said as they dropped a sheaf of papers onto her desk. 

Luxia picked it up and flipped through the pages. Reports of how many buildings had toppled, how many cars were crushed, and the number of people who were unfortunate to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, insurance estimates tallied up neat and tidy, by the day, week, month, year, and overall. All this and more was written in stark black and white. 

She read it word for word. Memorizing every name of the fallen. She tried to remember all of them, she really did, but there have just been so many. There was that little girl she had saved from a train wreck only for her to be hit by a car with a rubbernecking driver. Those dozens in the hospital that she had pushed the death ray’s path into. Even that duckling she had saved from the sewer drain only for the hawk to kill it mere moments later. Sighing, she dropped the papers and rubbed her temples. 

She tried to be a good superhero. She tried to live up to the hype and prestige that came with powers. Ever since she was a little girl she would tie a bedsheet around her neck and whoosh off using her dog as her arch nemesis. She would imagine her alternate name scribbling them into the margins of her school notebooks and drawing her super suit. That day that she came into her powers was one of the most exciting. She was destined to attend the best super schools and be trained by the titans of the industry. She worked hard to get the best grades, to train the hardest, and to be the best she could be earning the praises of her teachers and the adoration of her classmates. 

She swiveled her chair to look through her massive window to the city below, Harmony’s Landing. A nice city with a bustling metropolis, plenty of industry, and thousands of citizens. All looking to her for protection from the evilness of the world. 

When she had graduated from University she was assigned to a city with a villain problem. The last superhero who had this city had retired, a luxury in this profession, and left Harmony’s Landing in need of a new protector. A new shining beacon, a light in the darkness, a champion of good versus evil. They needed her. She was now to go do battle against Nox, a villain of epic proportions. One whose sole desire was world domination and hero eradication. Day in and day out he would devise plans to accomplish those goals and she was always there to thwart them whether it was rescuing the mayor, again, or destroying a death ray, which would of course then explode. And, unfortunately, for everyone involved, she was there. Every. Single. Time. 

She spun her chair to look at the television set against the wall where it was displaying the aftermath of her and Nox’s fight. Steaming rubble showed behind the reporter who was talking about the mass casualties and toppled buildings. A child was crying somewhere off-screen but could still be heard just under the reporter’s reassuringly professional voice. Nox’s face caught in a scowl and her own was caught in a grimace of pain. 

“Nox strikes again” scrolled across the bottom of the screen. 

How had it gone so wrong? She pondered.

It had started as a routine hostage situation. Nox had kidnapped the mayor’s daughter, threatening to kill her if Luxia didn’t turn herself in. Luxia had complied and, one thing had led to another, buildings and cars were destroyed, and innocent bystanders were killed. Why did it feel like everything she did just went terribly? Did she break a mirror or walk under a ladder in a prior life? She was a walking force of destruction. 

Sometimes, she wondered if she even needed Nox to cause chaos and mayhem. She was perfectly capable of doing that on her own just walking down the street. Her thoughts stopped as a vague terrible idea popped into her head. l

“Scribe? I have a project for you. Can you run some numbers for me? What would the damage have been if I had not beaten Nox?” she asked as she thumbed through the paperwork displaying terribly grisly numbers of her destructive ill-fated fight. 

Scribe clickety-clacked on the keyboard before relaying the expected 90% less collateral damage answer. 

“Can you do that analysis on every fight I’ve ‘won’, please?”

Scribe returned to the keyboard and a short time later set a sizable tower of paper on the desk. Luxia retrieved a cup of coffee and sat in her chair, again, emitting a small puff of building dust. She poured over the report until the numbers began to blur together but their message was always the same. Her intervention in Nox’s plans led to more casualties. 

She stood from her chair and looked out over the city, sipping her third coffee. She watched the lights down below as the citizens drove home from work, went grocery shopping, or whatever else people did when they weren’t superheroes trying to protect a city. 

If she was truthful with herself, she wondered why she got into this business in the first place. Was it truly to protect and be the shining light of justice or was it society’s pressure to use her powers for good? Did she want to be a superhero for the sake of being good or did she want the publicity and reverence that came with it? She turned to the news reports streaming across the various screens in her office. On almost every one she saw Nox’s face and name emblazoned. She had been raised glorifying those powerful superheroes and reviling the villains, but she had learned about just as many evil people as good. If she always created chaos and destruction even when trying to be protective and pure, maybe she could harness this power. Could she use it to rise above the greatest villains in her history books? If this is the destruction that could be caused when she worked against Nox then what could they achieve if she worked with Nox?

She watched the sun begin to peak out from behind the buildings as the world woke up. It glimmered off the windows and cast the city into a new light. Turning sharply on her heel she strode to her desk and sent a communication over her large display screen, waiting impatiently before it was finally answered. She found herself in a dining room with a quaint table set with breakfast. At its head sat her nemesis. Her arch enemy. Her eventual demise. He looked surprisingly human this close especially now that he wasn’t cackling or scowling. 

“Luxia, I regret you cannot join me for breakfast,” he gestured to the table’s other unoccupied seat. 

She could only stare at him unsure where to start. 

“I’m just going to blurt this out, how do I become a villain?” 

Nox’s toast stopped partway to his mouth before he slowly put it back on his plate and folded his hands. A slow ominous smile spread across his lips as he looked her in the eyes. 

“I’ll show you.”

Luxia could feel a matching grin slide across her lips.