You are a reformed villain who was given a new identity to start over. The years have been hard, but you've managed to finally turn your life around. One day, a bunch of masked people break into your house and demand everything you have.
Foreword: I still browse r/WritingPrompts, because there are some talented writers in there. I don't usually participate, because my brain doesn't always catapult an idea into the creative center quickly enough. But it did this time for the prompt above, because I had some ready-made stuff in mind already, with the worldbuilding I did for a superhero setting, complete with the character Wildcard. This may not necessarily go anywhere after this, but I felt I had to use it.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Dipping back into The Life is a challenge that one must fight every day. Because if you'll dip into it for a good reason, you'll soon find yourself doing it for a bad one.
It's easier for some people to leave The Life behind. Sometimes they have a solid support structure to help keep them level. Sometimes their powers might be easier to keep manageable. Sometimes they just might have the mental fortitude to keep themselves in check.
In my case, medication helped a great deal. Hell, getting help for my condition had been the main reason I'd been such a wild maniac to begin with. When you're dealing with a chronic condition, one that makes it difficult to lead an ordinary life, it wears on the mind. And I spent a long time broken, deep down. Not getting the help you needed breeds resentment, and that gets twisted up by a broken mind. And bad things happened.
But I've been getting better. It's a struggle, but it's manageable now. And I take it day by day.
And then this happened.
I had been asleep when they broke in. Two random thugs wearing balaclavas, packing heat. I noted that my place had been turned out, furniture strewn about, and quite a lot of damage to walls and floorboards. I was impressed that they hadn't woken me sooner, but I've always been a sound sleeper.
The nearest thug pressed the barrel of his gun to my temple. I pushed away the fog of slumber to focus. "Where's the stuff, old man?!"
"What stuff?" I asked, feigning sleepiness. But I could guess.
"The blockers! Where d'you keep the pills?"
I was right. It was a recent medical breakthrough, the only thing that really helped with my condition. I could never keep the names of all that stuff straight. Meta blockers was the more common name for it. It had been a boon to people like me, whose meta-gene caused problematic conditions.
And, of course, it could also be used for recreational purposes. Caught a high value on the street, if you asked the right people.
I feigned confusion as I tried to sit up. "Pills? What pills're you--"
The thug shoved me back into the bed. "Don't play dumb, old man!" He glanced toward his partner, jerking his head toward me in some kind of signal.
The other thug raised a phone and started reading off information. "Greg Williams. Ex-MP, Army. Discharged after injury. Recently started getting compensation for the injury, plus a prescription for meta blockers." He lowered the phone and pointed his own gun. "Tell us where you keep 'em!"
I sighed. I didn't question how they'd got their info. Anyone with the know-how could hack systems to find that sort of thing out. But they didn't actually know who I was.
I sat up again, this time brushing off the thug's attempts at making me lay back down. He just glared, but I ignored him, looking at the one with the phone. "You did some research. But not really enough." When they looked puzzled, I gestured to the phone. "Do me a favor, and look up the name 'Gabriel Winters.'"
Even through the balaclavas, I could see them mouthing the name, recognizing that it was familiar, but not knowing why. The one with the phone pointed meaningfully, and the nearer of the two pressed the gun to my temple again, but I was looking at the other one as they typed in the name and searched.
The look in his eyes as he read the top search, the trembling in his body as he dropped the phone and took a two-handed stance with his gun, the smell of sudden fear that he started exuding... these called to the wilder side of me, and it called back, as if to welcome me back into The Life.
But I held it down, still looking at the now-clued-in thug as I said, "Tell your boy who I am."
"W-Wildcard," he stammered. "W-we broke into Wildcard's house!"
Now the thug with the gun to my head reacted, and I could hear the tension in the spring in the gun as he started to squeeze the trigger. But in that same instant, I'd already grabbed his wrist and squeezed, pushing the gun away from my head. The boom of the gunshot went past me, just like the bullet did, and in the next instant, I was already out of bed, driving the thug into the wall, then up into the ceiling, where he went spread-eagle.
He remained there as I turned to the one who'd dropped the phone. "Speed, strength, telekinesis," I recited. "A lucky draw." I frowned. "Water-breathing, less useful. Super smell, too, but that's not exactly as good a power as you'd think."
He squeezed the trigger, but my telekinesis had locked up the gun, so the trigger wouldn't move. He flinched back as I closed the distance, grabbed the gun away, then hurled him back out of the bedroom. "Do you know, I never wanted to be branded a terrorist." He scrambled to his feet and tried to run, but a lamp flung itself into the side of his head, knocking him ass of teakettle. I folded my arms as I stood in the doorway. "But I was the unlucky one to come out of the Bright Spark Flash. Waking up every day with a new set of troubles, no one knew what was wrong with me."
The first thug tried to tackle me from behind, to use his greater size to his advantage, but I stepped back and ducked my head, flipping him over my shoulder and across the room. "Even after they worked out what the meta-gene was, and realized that my troubles were the result of it, they couldn't work out how to fix it. And by then, everyone was buzzing about the Allied Heroes Commission." I couldn't keep the old bitterness out of my voice. "All of their funding and attention went to these champions of virtue and paragons of power, they didn't care about some poor sick bastard like me."
The bigger thug got back up from where he'd hit the wall, and raised his gun, but then it came out of his hands and turned to point at him. The second gun came out of the bedroom and over to the second thug, and both kept their hands raised as I rambled on, "I won't deny, I took it poorly. I ruined my relationship with my family because of my hatred. And-- well, you both clearly know what happened from there."
They nodded. They knew. I'd learned how my meta-gene worked, through trial and error. Every time I woke up, I got a new set of powers. I learned how to tell what I got with each 'draw.' Learned how to use what I got. And just worked myself up into a wild frenzy. Then came the Proud Valley Incident, when I went on a rampage through the titular military base. Getting stopped by Commission hero Sergeant Stone. With my unhinged psyche and random power enhancements, they started calling me 'Wildcard.'
The public never knew what had happened to Wildcard after my last rampage. It had been almost fifteen years. The assumption had been that I'd been killed when Pinnacle had brought an old satellite down on my head. I'd just been thrown back in Howard Phillips Maximum Security, in the deepest hole they could find. And there I'd stayed, stewing in my own misery and hatred, until Neura had come to speak with me, to untangle my derangements and help me see reason.
Meta blockers had helped. Kept things level. Kept my head on straight. I don't know how the Commission swung it, to get me paroled, to get me the proper compensation I never received after the Bright Spark Flash, to set up the new identity and all that, so I could get back to something like a normal life. I had no illusions about how lucky I'd gotten.
Whereas these two idiots had been supremely unlucky that I'd forgotten to take my blockers yesterday.
"Here's what's going to happen." I kept the guns pointed at them. "I'm going to tie you both up, you're going to sit on the couch, and you're not going to move while I call the authorities. You're thinking it'll be the cops, but you're not that lucky. Because as soon as my address comes up in the system, they'll be sending along someone from the Commission."
I paused for effect. I couldn't really help it. I was tapping into the old sense of showmanship I'd developed over the years when I'd been Wildcard. When you dip back into The Life, it's hard to keep from falling into old habits. I gave them both a fierce glare. "But you idiots broke into my house. You wrecked the place, looking for my meds. Meds which keep me level. I do bad things when I don't take my meds. I could deal with you myself. Not bother with the Commission, maybe keep playing the hand I got dealt, remind people who the fuck I am."
I gave the both of them a smile. Or at least showed my teeth. "So. Which hand have I been dealt today, boys? Am I going to be merciful? Or am I gonna be the Wildcard?"
No comments:
Post a Comment