There must be some kind of way out of here, said the joker to the thief...
No, Vic could not find any relief in the confusion around her. The swarm stunk of sweat and energy and she could pick up just the faintest scent of urine on the wind. Fear. That was the scent that was boxing her in. Some people were posturing with their chests puffed out impractically. Others were taking out their fear with the nearest nemesis. Then there were people like Vic. Heads down, wondering why they came. Most of them without the unnervingly relaxed, hands-in-pockets stance she'd adopted. Some asshole shoved past her and she let out a grunt, turning her gaze skyward. Even up there, it was crowded.
Ba-thump.
... The crowds were walls. A shifting mosaic of frightened individuals, yes, but walls. Cramped, encroaching walls.
Vic wasn't entirely distracted from the claustrophobia tapping away at the back of her skull as the drones deployed. Her fists clenched in her pockets and arms stiffened as one came close.
"Yo, dude, I think this thing just - just muted my powers or some shit."
Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck that.
Giving the drone one last distrustful glare as it tried to attach to her wrist, Vic's arms vanished. With an exasperated sigh, her feet lifted from the ground. She dispersed into glimmering white particles, floating upwards and melting into air. As nothing but a cool and calming breeze, she flew past all of the heroes, vigilantes and villains until she was well above all the chaos. Man, from up here, in this form, she could just watch everything like some detached, unfeeling god.
... Perhaps it was the nerves, but 'detached' and 'unfeeling' were exactly the words that came to mind for Vic's mood up here. Out of all the impulsive fights she'd run to, this had to take the idiot cake. Why did she bother coming.
Helpless people on subway trains scream, bug-eyed, as he looks in on them...
Vic turned, picking up the faintest clamor of guitar and vocals. She caught sight of a small figure with their legs dangling over the edge of a skyscraper below her. Curiosity and familiarity tugging at her, she spiraled down.
Oh, no, they say he's got to go! Go, go, Godzilla! Oh, no, there goes Tokyo! Go, go, Godzilla!
"Godzilla? Seriously?" Vic critiqued, stepping out of her untouchable form onto the skyscraper as if appearing from an invisible portal. Her hands slipped into her pockets as she regarded the stranger. "Pretty on the nose, you think?"
It was a man with a stream of smoke coming from beneath a lifted bone mask. He had the wiry arms of a man who had injected some serious shit back in the day and the sagging skin and faded tattoos of an old rocker. From what Vic could see of his face, she wouldn't have thought him anywhere under sixty. Or at least, fifty something and itching for rehab. With a long exhale of smoke, he reached for his phone by a six-pack of beers to change the song. Don't Fear the Reaper blasted from the Bluetooth speaker as Vic settled down near him and let one leg hang off the skyscraper's ledge.
"You got anything for this?" she asked flatly, looking to him and raising an involuntarily shaking hand. Click. She turned her head with a blank expression and stared at the metal bracelet around her wrist. Before she could groan, an open cigarette packet was flung her way and she wasted no time in pushing up her mask and lighting one up. The moment she took a whiff, she knew that these weren't really cigarettes. And she didn't really care. "Thanks, man." She gazed over the skyscraper's edge at all the parahumans below. She could barely, just barely hear Legend's booming voice over the cowbells. There was a sudden kssssk beside her and she found herself being handed a beer, wisps rising from the bottle's mouth. She motioned a small 'cheers' and set it down beside her, about to return her attention to the crowds when it occurred to her that the old man beside her intrigued her far more.
"So, this is the battle plan, then? Get high and stick to the skies?" she remarked sarcastically, a smirk curling at her lips. That smirk fell as she took note of the choice of soundtrack and glanced to the beers and the lines in the old man's weathered skin. Her brow furrowed. "Yeah. Nice knowing you," she murmured, turning away and assuming indifference.
"What are you doing here, kid?"
Vic was taken aback by the first words she'd heard the old man utter since sitting with him. She raised a brow and opened her mouth, but didn't say a word.
"Phwoooo," she finally released. She hadn't expected to be hit so hard by a geezer. "Shit, I don't..." A long pause and drag later, and she choked out with a cough, "It's not my - it's not my responsibility to be their hero, you know. This wasn't something I could've avoided by putting on some fucking... fucking condom or something, you know?" She looked to the bone masked man for affirmation. "Let me tell you, Kate? Now Kate's a hero. She has a damn doctorate in saving people's asses. I just..." She laughed bitterly, shaking her head and returning to her blunt. "I just wanted to be a rock star, man."
But she was here. Vic groaned and dumped her head in her hands. At the end of the day, was she just another Spiderman? Another bug with a guilt complex?
"I know why you're here," the man said. Vic shot him an incredulous glance. He was staring out at the horizon, smoke pluming from the holes in his bone mask. Vic wondered for a moment if this surreal feeling scenario was even real. "You don't think it'll be worse."
Vic stared, the blunt a hair's breadth from her lips.
"We've all been through hell to get here," he sighed, and Vic caught the hand holding his cigarette fluttering with scales for a second, "We don't think it'll be worse." Vic was still frozen when the man looked to her, and she locked with his pale eyes through his mask holes. "You've been in a fight recently."
Vic momentarily forgot the fact that her costume was scorched. Instead, for a moment, she genuinely believed the man was a shaman.
"Y... Yeah."
"What happened?"
"It was, um... this... creature," she began, her gaze growing more distant at every word, "Nightmare incarnate. It... contorted and... it never had skin. Just... flesh. And tar. And it shrieked. Like it hated itself for existing. It burned me. Badly."
The old man's stare pierced her through. "But did it frighten you?"
"No... no," Vic echoed herself. "Not even a little." She jolted out of her trance and flashed the man a quick smile while averting her eyes. "It's a weird world."
"It didn't compare, did it?" Vic was seriously getting uncomfortable now. "That's what they want. That's the reason why they activate you the way they do. They want you to think..." She ignored his accusatory finger. "Nothing can be worse. All these people are down there because deep inside they think what happened to them is nothing compared to what is coming. I thought that, once. Now I've seen it. It's worse. It's far, far worse."
Vic's shaking fingers flicked the blunt from the skyscraper.
The song had ended. She only heard the wind rustling her clothes, before the bombastic intro to Jimi Hendrix's rendition of All Along the Watchtower boomed from the speaker behind her. She just sighed and shut her eyes.
BOOM.
When Vic's eyes reopened, she was staring down at a monstrous mass of writhing tentacles, cleaving its way through the gathering she'd been watching just before. It was hard to get a real perspective on the chaos from all the way up here. They looked likes bees and ants, but without the coordination and organization of a hive. Just hundreds of individuals, stumbling over one another. Trying to make a difference. But mostly, trying not to die.
"It's he-"
"Incredible," Vic interrupted breathlessly, then picked up her bottle of beer as she stood to chug it. When she was done, she ditched it into the ground with finality. "Alright, man -burp- I'd love to stay up here, smoke weed and watch the world burn to All Along the Watchtower with you. There's a song in that, but -" She gestured lazily at the chaos before them. "I think, down there, there's a better one for me."
"Go down there and you're not going to live to sing it," the man muttered, "What're you doing, kid. You don't have to be what they want of you. Heroes don't get high."
"Shut up." Vic growled, jabbing her finger at him, "You. Shut. Up. I still don't owe the world a damn thing, except this." She stood with her back to the ledge, fixed her mask into place, and raised her middle fingers high. "I'm not going to let it scare me."
And she fell.