Chapter 01

I calmly slipped inbetween the two attacks and held out a hand. A wave of force erupted out of it and enveloped the creature, causing it to howl in extreme pain as I began to systematically rip apart its muscle connections. A psychometric reading earlier had told me where the important points were; those went first, followed by lesser connections. When I finished, the beast dropped to the ground, unable to hold its bones in place enough to stand.

"What did you do?" the Doctor asked, looking at the fallen monster hybrid. Some form of half-poodle/half-alligator monster. I decided that it had been made by a mad scientist; you had to be mad to come up with a way to create something like that. Or to want to make it in the first place. "Michael!"

"Yeah, yeah." I sighed out. "I pulled off its tendons, then dislocated its joints. It won't be getting up again."

"Michael, what have I told you about Over-kill?"

"The order given was to incapacitate it. It can't get up. What's the problem?" I inquired. The Doctor just sighed and pulled out his cellphone to call in the recovery squad. What a moron. I had done exactly as the order said; they hadn't specified the method, so that meant it was my right to choose. They wanted to recover it alive and without it being able to escape, and there was no way it was going to escape. If they didn't want it to be unable to get up again, they should've specified that in their instructions. "I'm going to head back."

"Michael, what does insubordination mean?" Doctor N'stein asked.

"Insubordination. Noun. Disobedience to authority."

"You're being insubordinate."

"I followed my instructions to the letter." I noted calmly. The Doctor merely glared at me. "Do you have a problem with me fulfilling the task I was assigned by your superiors?"

"Why do you constantly act this way? You know that there are proper methods of dealing with situations like this. Yet time and again, you refuse to follow them. And you constantly talk back to me. On top of that, I have to deal with Sylphilia..."

"Not my decision. Whine to those who made it." I told him. The Doctor merely turned around and began to walk off. I sidestepped an arc of wind that would have cut me in half. "Hello, Ria."

"Hello!" the girl said, tackling me from behind in a hug. "Hey, hey! This is what you got to fight today? Looks kind of ugly. Can I kill it?"

"No." I answered sternly. "They'll get mad at us if that happens; it's more trouble than it's worth." the girl looked disappointed. A moment later, I teleported a civilian several blocks away as Ria pulled up the ground beneath them. "Stop it. You know we're not allowed to attack civilians."

"But he was annoying me!" the girl complained. She dropped down and stepped in front of me, clasping her hands behind her back. A vision of beauty with all the morals of... well... okay, you know what? I don't have a good comparison for her. She just has no normal morals, okay? My mind is abnormal, which is not a derogatory term. It's an adjective that means 'deviating from the normal or average'. Ria's mind is unique. I only understand some of it because my Psychometry is inherently helpful for making sense of something I use it on. It's just that there's very little that makes any sense at all. Ria sighed as she looked at the creature. "I'm bored. Can you believe those stupid workers? They wanted me to actually step into a machine so they could scan me."

"They do that to all of us." I pointed out.

"It's rude to ask a lady to go anywhere!" the girl answered. "Not without the right to! And they actually said that I couldn't see you until I was done!"

"...Ria, how many of them did you kill?"

"Only five..." she muttered, scuffing a foot on the ground. "They were being mean to me. They have no understanding of just how much I love you! To try and hold me back for even a second is unforgivable!" she pivoted and sent an arc of wind at me. I blocked it with telekinesis. "Oh, come on! Lemme slice you up. Please, please, please!" she hopped forward and bent forward to give me a better view of her chest, which, theoretically, would lead to me being distracted enough to agree to her unreasonable demands. Instead, I simply made a karate chop-type of hit to her head. "Owie!"

"Hurting me is not allowed."

"But how else should I show you how much I care?" she whined.

I should note this about Ria; she believes that inflicting pain on people is a way of showing affection or displeasure. So she hurts her enemies because they piss her off, and tries to hurt me because she thinks it's romantic. Even to me, that doesn't make any sense, and I'm gifted with a power that lets me understand things. On the other hand, she also thinks that her being hurt by me is me showing my affection for her, so beating her up a little is generally sufficient to make her happy. Creepy? Yes. Sexist? Probably. Do I care about your opinion on it? No. I'm not going to let her hurt or kill me simply because you, some person I'll probably never meet, thinks it's not acceptable for me to use the most efficient method of ensuring my own safety. You don't matter enough for something like that, no matter how important you are otherwise. Get over yourself.

"Why don't you try being normal?" I suggested. "And stop trying to hurt me already!"

"You'll be fine!" the girl said, patting my shoulders eagerly. "We're destined to be together, after all!" I slapped her. "Aww... that's so sweet of you."

See? Creepy.

"And you need to stop killing the assistants at the Institute. They're here to help us. They are not toys to be disposed of when they displease you. Now go fix things or I won't speak to you for a week." the girl paled and rushed off. Heh. That was clearly sufficient to keep her in line. Well, that was one more problem out of the way. I ran a hand through my hair and teleported myself back to my room. This was the Institute, as I tended to call it. A major government training facility beneath one of the more secure military bases, currently being used for a small group of superpowered individuals. Including myself, of course.

We had our own hierarchy, regardless of what the Normals told us. Power did tend to talk, after all. Of course, the analytical part of my mind, which tended to view the entire world as nothing more than a puzzle to be figured out, noted that there was also another reason. Most Normals did not like to be around us. Part of this was that Ria tended to kill them on a whim (and never seemed to be punished for it), and part of it was just that they found our abilities unnerving. Thus, we had to be with ourselves if we wanted to have anything resembling contact with other people. I had just closed my eyes for a nap when a red light changed the color of my room and a siren began to sound. Cursing slightly, I took the short-short way to the command center.

"Michael." the Institute's commanding officer said as I appeared in front of him, unruffled as always. "We have a major disturbance at Fourteenth and Main Street; a criminal wanted dead or alive. Go pacify things."

"Yessir."

"I didn't hear that."

"Yes, sir!" I shouted. He was big on things like that. I warped myself to the indicated location and found a guy in a neon-orange suit using flamethrowers on pretty much everything in sight. I blinked, and sent a wave of telekinetic force through the air to knock him off his feet. To my surprise, he rose into the air and turned around to face me. "What?"

"Heh. Took you long enough to get here." he said. "Call me the Human Tor-"

"Isn't that one taken?"

"...Good point. Fine, fine, have it your way. Call me the Igniter, then."

"I'll call you dead." the fires in the area went out as I pulled the oxygen from the air. The Igniter just laughed and sent a stream of flames towards me from one of his weapons. I collected the flames into a ball and casually tossed it up and down. "Please don't tell me that's all you've got. You have five seconds to surrender yourself, or I kill you." the smirk on his face grew wider as two feet connected with the back of my head. He had an accomplice!? More importantly, why hadn't I felt that coming!? Even if someone was invisible to my power, you'd think I could still feel the air molecules being displaced or something. I rolled along the ground and came up again, eyes narrowed. A girl morphed up out of the shadows by the Igniter and wrapped her arms around him. Dark hair, and might have been cute, but... she was covered in bandages, so it was hard to tell.

"That won't work twice." the girl said softly. "This one is a little too powerful for cheap tricks like that." Dang straight; I'd already figured out what she'd done. She'd somehow turned insubstantial and passed through the air, only changing back right before she hit me. I knew what to be looking for now.

"I have no orders regarding you." I said, scratching the back of my head. "So I'll assume the same orders apply. Surrender or die."

"To Hero scum? Only talk like that when you've got the power to beat me." the girl answered. She raised a hand and shadows billowed out of it and shot towards me. I cut through them with Telekinesis and started walking forward. Sidestepping her attempt at sending an attack through my own shadow was child's play as I warped randomly around the area. The entire area turned dark a moment later; I just heightened my psychometric power to read the surroundings better and continued as before. Who needed eyes to fight when you could keep tabs on the whole area at once? Still, I teleported high into the air a moment before the girl struck the entire darkened space with one nasty attack. That would have hurt, had she been able to hit me again. She really should have saved that trick for an opportune moment. The field of darkness vanished and I lowered myself back to the ground, hands in my pockets. "Jumpy little rat, aren't you?" the girl asked. "What, are you too afraid of me to fight? Or perhaps you're the sort who doesn't think he should hurt women?" she hugged the Igniter a little tighter.

"Neither." I said calmly. "Nor am I the sort of person who's willing to listen to my opponents as they try to goad me into making a stupid mistake. You've only lived this long because I'm being nice." the Igniter fell over. Cheap Tactic Number One with Telekinesis; pinch a little something in the brain, and you can kill people rather fast. It was even easier than Cheap Tactic Number One with Teleportation, which was removing somebody's brain from their head. "I'd really hate to get in trouble for killing you if I shouldn't." I sighed out.

"You're... taking pity... on me?" the girl asked, eyes flashing dangerously. "Don't even think about-" I pinched the same spot in her head. She stumbled, but straightened and continued glaring. Oh, crap. She could regenerate. That meant the Cheap Tactics didn't work, and she'd be a lot more difficult to subdue. Blades of wind flew past me a moment later, only to end up swallowed by the darkness.

"You!" Ria roared, eyes more full of hatred than I'd ever seen them. "So you've finally shown your face, huh? If you want it, you're going to have to earn it!" the villainess just looked puzzled as Ria sent a full barrage of wind towards the girl while simultaneously raising the earth up around her. The villainess exploded a moment later. Ria blew away the smoke, and we found the villainness standing there unharmed, though her clothes were in tatters. The crater she was standing above, my Psychometry told me, was forty feet across. The girl floated on a shadow over to the edge of the crater and strode forward. I realized that she had been using the bandages to cover burns across her body. I blinked. How did somebody who could regenerate from injuries stay burned?

"So now there's two of you little rats, huh?" the villainess inquired. Ria lunged forward at the villainess, seeming quite angry. The villainess just... kissed her. I blinked at the sight, and again as Ria tumbled to the ground, twitching.

"Some sort of Paralyzing Kiss?" I asked, looking at my clinically insane teammate.

"Correct. She'll be fine... or she would, if either of you were going to live." the girl answered. When she was close, she punched towards me. I stopped it with Telekinesis, surprised at the effort it took. She was stronger than before... at least ten times stronger... geez, how many powers did this girl have!? I began teleporting mostly in place to dodge as the girl unleashed a sequence of punches and kicks that would have definitely ended my life if I hadn't been able to dodge them. "Stop dodging!"

"Habit." I answered dryly. "Living with a teammate who wants to kill you some of the time helps develop it." the villainess looked puzzled, then grunted in pain as I slammed a field of Telekinesis into her stomach. A blow to her head and the back of her knees followed, to force her down. I grabbed her neck a moment later. "So, your name's Sylvia, huh?" I asked as I began reading her. The girl gripped my arm, and I didn't have time to get away before every nerve in my body screamed in agony. I dropped down as the girl began to get up again. She kissed me a moment later. It was a nice kiss, except that with it went control of my normal motor functions. Sighing slightly, I stood up anyway as she let go and the pain faded.

"How-" Sylvia began.

"Telekinesis." I answered. "I can still use my mind, so moving my body's pretty simple. Same for the vocal cords." she looked faintly disgusted and held up her hands. A sphere of darkness appeared inside of it, and I strongly suspected that I did not want to get hit by that. I also hated to admit it, but this new enemy was winning. Ria was still twitching on the ground, probably enjoying it, and I was having to move my whole body with my mind. My best weapon right now was psychological. "Shall I tell you what I've learned about you?" I asked. Ria's eyes turned dark as she threw the orb at me. I yanked my body out of the way. A calm voice, that was key. It would unnerve her the most. "I've found that you're mostly an independent operative. You want to get revenge on Superheroes, so you've made the choice to hunt us down. To date, you've killed three minor empowered people. You want to get revenge on Superheroes because you feel betrayed, and-" I pulled myself into the air as lances of darkness struck where I'd been.

"Shut up!" the girl roared. "Who gave you permission to pry into my mind?"

"You did." I answered firmly. "When you decided to attack me. You forfeit any protections you might have reasonably had before then. You were trapped under a building, and you saw Superheroes rescuing everyone else. But they didn't notice you were there, and so you felt betrayed and abandoned."

"STOP IT!" the girl screamed, clamping her hands over her ears. I began a precise telekinetic manipulation to create the shockwaves that formed sound right inside her ear. Geez, that was hard to do...

"You sustained burns from some sort of explosion then, and your new healing power kept you alive until you couldn't get free. Your burns are still there and you wrap yourself in bandages to hide them. You're nothing but a silly little girl who felt betrayed and made a stupid choice!"

"I SAID TO STOP IT!" Sylvia cried. The flowers in the pots around the long-empty intersection of the road we were on grew to about thirty feet tall and rushed towards me. They were shredded by blades of wind a moment later. Ria had finally gotten over that kiss, then. I felt control returning to me a moment later.

"One more thing!" my companion called. "In the future, you'll submit to Michael!"

"Never!" Sylvia snarled. She held out her hands. One had a sphere of darkness form above it, the other a sphere of light. "I'd rather die here and now than submit to you!" she slammed her hands towards each other, but a wall of telekinesis prevented the two orbs from combining and doing who-knew-what. I wasn't touching her, so I couldn't figure that one out. I teleported forward and slammed my foot into her face. She tumbled backwards and glared viciously. A pitiful victim of circumstance, clothes nothing more than rags after that explosion, and like little more than a puppy. Something of my thoughts must have shown on my face, considering the hateful glare she directed my way. Ria hung onto my arm a moment later and stuck her tongue out at our opponent.

"Your power is like ours. Strong, but you can only use so much of it." I added softly. "You're pretty much out of energy now. What'll it be? Shall I break your body until you finally run out of power and die?"

"Go ahead." the girl spat out. "I don't want your pity!" Ria tugged on my arm.

"You can't kill her." my companion said. "She's not supposed to die here."

"Mercy, coming from you?"

"I saw it, okay!?" my companion said indignantly. She pointed at Sylvia. "This girl will join us and be happy about it! She'll even work hard to make you happy!" Ria walked over to Sylvia and put a foot on the girl's stomach. "You got that, stupid? You're Michael's. No matter what you do, no matter how far you run, in the very near future you'll come to us. I've seen it, and my visions are never, ever wrong." By now, tears were streaming down the villainess' cheeks. I sighed, strode forward, and pushed Ria off before bending down.

"Look, I don't care about your problems." I said. "Life sucks. Get over it. Ria's telling the truth in that she's always right about her visions, though. It's not good that you were abandoned by Superheroes, but I doubt it was intentional. If we're on a rescue mission, we don't leave people behind if we suspect that they're there. Not that my team does many rescue missions... but whatever. Make yourself useful, would you? You're going to serve me now." I put a hand on her forehead. "The Second Chance people like me are supposed to offer and all that. I'm only doing this because Ria says that you'll end up agreeing whatever happens." Sylvia struggled internally, then looked up at me.

"You're not very nice."

"No, I'm not."

"And you're crude. And uncivilized." she added. Darkness swallowed her a moment later, and she vanished. I sighed and scratched the back of my head. Well, that had gone well. I teleported both myself and Ria back to the Institute, straight to the debriefing room. A short explanation later, we began heading back to our rooms to rest for real. Geez, what a day...