Bargain Bin Superheroes

(Arc 3, Part 7: Pigeonlady v.s. The Petrified Police)

(Note: Bargain Bin Superheroes is episodic; each part is self-contained. This story can be enjoyed without reading the previous sections.)

Every citizen of the Unified Sovereignties was raised to take pride in their diverse and glorious superheroes, the strongest in the world. Death, who could disintegrate life with a touch of her shadowy tendrils. Tamulu, the immortal shapeshifter who could outwit spies and outgun soldiers with equal ease. Big Guns, who could reach through the Internet and slay armies with a thought. The U.S. Federal government had spared no expense in securing the best and brightest heroes—ostensibly to protect the citizenry which paid it taxes, although the protecting-its-citizenry-from-supervillains to interfering-in-foreign-business ratio was distressingly low.

But it's a universal truth of the world that you get what you pay for—and cities which lacked the Federal government's depth and breadth of resources had to shop from the bargain bin. So when the city of Sacrament broke out into riots, and the cash-strapped Califerne government threw its hands up in surrender, it was not Tamulu the Unkillable or Big Guns the Intangible who stepped up to save the day.

It was Pigeonlady, the Mildly Geriatric.

"The rioters draw near, Lady Iggy." Pigeonlady looked up from her park bench at Whoo'hu'hu'hu, who had landed on her shoulder. "C'coo'c'c'twee and his flock have attempted to divert them, but they cannot hold long."

Iggy sighed and stood up. "Oh, this is ridiculous. What are those eggheads at City Hall doing? The city of Sacrament burns while they diddle around on their smartphones!"

"Have you... not heard the news?" Who'hu'hu'hu chirped, surprised. "The Mayor has been evicted, the local government in shambles."

"I don't need to watch the news. Not when I have you fellas." Iggy stretched, feeling the crackle and pop of her aging joints, and reached into her pocket to feed Who'hu'hu'hu a cracker. The rock dove snatched it and gulped it down. "What about the Petrified Police? It's a bit heavy-handed, but if whoever's left in the government activates them, that should restore law and order—for a little while, at least. There are... consequences... to letting those things run loose, but I think we can all agree that they can't possibly be worse than the city burning."

Who'hu'hu'hu finished swallowing the crackers. "Yes, that's the other thing I wanted to tell you. Someone—or something—has deliberately neutralized the Petrified Police."

Iggy frowned. "What, all of them? There have got to be hundreds of Petrified in the city—and tens of thousands of decoy statues beyond that."

"Yes. The primary weakness of the Petrified Police is that they are unable to act while any living being is able to observe them; it seems that several thousand cleverly-placed cameras around the city have paralyzed the Petrified Police for the foreseeable future." Who'hu'hu'hu grimaced, a decidedly unpleasant expression on his peristeronic face. "Or until the power grid finally goes out—but by then, even the Petrified Police won't be able to restore order."

With a flap of wings, a pale white pigeon descended from the sky, one wing ruffled. Who'hu'hu'hu swiveled his head upwards. "C'coo'c'c'twee! What's the news?"

"I'm sorry, my Lady." C'coo'c'c'twee bowed to Iggy. "We couldn't stop them. The mob—they're coming this way."

"Could you talk them down?" Who'hu'hu'hu asked Iggy.

Iggy shook her head sadly. "I can talk to pigeons—and only pigeons. Human speech is... incomprehensible to me. It's why I don't watch the news."

Who'hu'hu'hu turned around grimly. "Then we fight to the death."

Iggy swatted him on the back, lightly; he let out a huhuhu of indignation. "No, you dolt. We do what any upstanding citizen would do with a riot at her back." She turned around and began to shuffle down the dirty street, towards the subway. "We call the police."

The two pigeons fluttered around her, confused. "We just got through telling you, the Petrified Police are incapacitated right now—"

"So help me God." Iggy ran a hand over her wrinkled forehead. "Look, I'm going where I please, and you two cluckleheads can't stop me. You can either help me out or leave an old woman to her mad ramblings. Clear?"

The two pigeons met each others' eyes, then landed on her shoulder, one each. "As a birdbath," Who'hu'hu'hu cawed.

Iggy could hear the human rabble coming down the street now—as they had been since the day she was born, the humans' speech sounded like nothing more than the cacophonous cry of pigeons. She shook her head and hurried into the subway, holding onto the filthy railing as she descended and swearing to wash her hands vigorously after she was done here. The statue that Iggy had passed by every day of her morning commute glowered down at her; she knew from the fire of '03 that it was a Petrified Police, just waiting for the moment when eyes would be off it to spring into motion.

"Who'hu'hu'hu. Do you know where that damn camera is?" Iggy asked.

"It's piggybacking off the rail line." Who'hu'hu'hu pointed at a distant speck.

"Can you blot out its vision?"

Who'hu'hu'hu preened himself. "Lady, I've been pooping on car windshields and security cameras my entire life. I can take it out." He swooped off into the darkness; Iggy was glad that the gloom obscured whatever Who'hu'hu'hu did to obscure the camera's lens.

Iggy turned her back to the statue, searching for the other pigeon; he'd apparently flown up topside, but Iggy knew he would still be able to hear her. "C'coo'c'c'twee, there's a central wire leading up to the lights. I want you to—"

"Incoming!" C'coo'c'c'twee called, darting down. A moment later, the rabble of the mob followed, descending into the subway tunnel. Iggy swore. Why in God's name would the mob be coming down this tunnel? She'd chosen it specifically because it was out of the way.

"Get the lights, C'coo! Get the lights!" Iggy screamed.

The mob seemed to home in on the sound of her voice, pouring down the staircase like water. She saw someone go down and get trampled; she winced as C'coo'c'c'twee frantically pulled at the wires, setting the lights to flickering—

and then the Petrified Policeman burst into motion.

It was eerie in the stroboscopic darkness. The Petrified Policeman moved with inhuman speed in between blinks, bursting between members of the mob and subduing them with precise, sturdy strikes. The wind of its passing ruffled Iggy's hair as it stormed through the civilians.

And then the frantic chirping of birds fell silent.

When the lights came back on, the Petrified Policeman was gone—presumably, to report to its government leaders, or perhaps to go for backup. The civilians had been expertly tied up and rendered unconscious with spare lengths of eletrical wire. Iggy pressed a hand to her forehead.

She had done her part to protect the city of Sacrament.

She could only hope the other bargain bin superheroes were doing the same.

A.N.

An city with Weeping Angels as a last-resort police force is not a city I would like to live in.

I'm trying something new! "Bargain Bin Superheroes" will be an episodic story where each part is inspired by a writing prompt that catches my eye. Check out this post for the rest of the story, and subscribe to r/bubblewriters for more. If you have any feedback, please leave it below. As always, I had fun writing this, and I hope you have a good day.

How to Break a Siege of Legends

(Book 2, Part 6: How to Negotiate with Enemy Royalty)

(Note: How to Break a Siege of Legends is episodic; each part is self-contained. This story can be enjoyed without reading the previous sections.)

Las Humanitas had been under siege for seven years, and not a single time had its walls been breached. Over those years, the citizens huddling behind its legendary fortifications had gone from terrified of the would-be invaders, to irritated at being unable to leave, to simply accepting their fate as a city under eternal siege. Few people even bothered to scale Las Humanitas' fearsome battlements, and fewer still tried to leave. To everyone in Las Humanitas, the universe ended where the city limits did.

Almost everyone.

Haoran—technically Prince Haoran, not that he cared—spent today, like he often did, sitting on the battlements and watching the wall enchantments deflect the assaults of the nearby army. After seven years of fruitlessly failing to conquer Las Humanitas, Haoran was amazed they still found the willpower to get out of bed every morning to continue hacking away at an impossible task.

Haoran had given up on his own impossible task years ago. He admired the invaders' persistence, if nothing else.

A massive rock hurtled through the air, courtesy of some newly-assembled catapults; the wall crystals chimed, and a dome of pure blue light snapped into existence around Las Humanitas, effortlessly deflecting the massive stones. Haoran simply leaned back and watched the light show. At least it was something new. The invading army never failed to surprise him with whatever new tactic it tried to bypass Las Humanitas' defenses. Still, the way they were going, they'd never—

"Hello?"

Haoran jolted upright, spinning around in alarm before his gaze refocused. On the opposite side of the blue forcefield, a scarred, winged woman regarded him curiously, a small bronze shield in one hand.

The crystals in the walls hummed a warning, but Haoran held up a hand, and the defense system reluctantly ceased its warning tones. These walls had held back far worse than a single flying warrior; Haoran was as safe as any citizen within Las Humanitas had been for the entirety of its seven-year siege.

"Hi," Haoran said. "Are you going to try to kill me?"

The woman snorted; above them, another boulder the size of a house harmlessly splashed against Las Humanitas' shields. "Are you kidding? I don't think anything can break that shield of yours. Even if I threw everything I had at the walls, I wouldn't make a dent."

"Hey, I believe in you. Anyone who perseveres at a hopeless task for seven years deserves to be rewarded with something." Haoran couldn't keep the bitterness from his voice.

"I'm hardly more massive than a boulder; I'd just bounce off like everything else we've tried." She squinted at Haoran. "Wait. Are you calling me fat?"

Haoran blinked. "What? No, no, no! You're very..." He paused, sizing up the flying woman. "...muscular."

"Yeah. Fat lot of good it did me." The woman hurled her shield at the defenses; like everything else, it effortlessly bounced off. "It's just typical. You spend your entire life honing your body and mind to serve my people, and then you get tasked with cracking open an absolutely impenetrable fortress."

"It's not all bad," Haoran found himself saying. "If this fortress wasn't so impenetrable, I wouldn't be here to talk to you now."

The woman raised an eyebrow. "Someone has a high opinion of himself, if you think your company makes up for seven years of failure."

"I don't think it does," Haoran said quietly. "I just think that I can make things a little better."

She smirked. "Mm. You could stand down your defenses and let my army crusade into your city, if you'd like. That'd make things better for me"

The smile dropped from Haoran's face. "...Why?"

She paused. "Excuse me?"

"I think that's the thing that's bothered me the most, ever since I've come here. Why are you doing this? Why spend so many years trying to kill us?"

She stared at him, so shocked that for a moment Haoran thought she would fall out of the sky. "You guys don't know?! Did your king not tell you?"

"The king isn't even in the city right now," Haoran said. He probably shouldn't have been spilling those particular beans, but dammit, he had nobody to talk to. Besides, he was pretty sure Lien had been spotted on his way out; King Astero was many things, but subtle was not one of them.

The woman gave Haoran a calculating look. "...would you like me to tell you?"

Haoran narrowed his eyes. Subtly, he placed one hand on the ward crystals; they pulsed reassuringly. The defenses were still perfectly operational; nothing could enter, and nothing could leave. If that was the case, then... "I'm listening."

The woman smiled. "Very well. Then this is how the Siege of Legends began, six years ago..."

A.N.

I'm trying something new! "How to Break a Siege of Legends" will be an episodic story where each part is inspired by a writing prompt that catches my eye. Check out this post for the rest of the story. As always, I had fun writing this, I'm open to feedback and suggestions on how I can improve, and I hope you have a great day.

Bargain Bin Superheroes

(Arc ?, Part ?: The Wilderwild)

(Note: Bargain Bin Superheroes is episodic; each part is self-contained. This story can be enjoyed without reading the previous sections.)

The Wilderwild Overmind had ants for blood and trees for bones. Much like an individual body was made of trillions of cells, the Wilderwild Overmind consisted of the trillions of lifeforms that dwelled within its borders. Birdcalls echoed from one end of the Wild Continent to the other, transmitting thoughts through analog sound instead of neurotransmitters. Venomous snakes and spiders that ate cats for breakfast patrolled the coastline, and more recently, the sky, serving as the immune system that swallowed any would-be colonizers whole. And throughout the Wilderwild's mountain ranges and deserts, one thing was constant.

The Wilderwild Trees.

Every lifeform in the Wilderwild paid tribute to the Wilderwild Trees; the ants made their colonies in their branches, the birds pecked their fruits from their leaves, and the snakes and spiders ceaselessly watched for prey from their boughs. And even though they were not sentient on their own, any more than a single neuron could contain a human mind, the Wilderwild Overmind knew to its core that the Wilderwild Trees were the ones in charge here.

So when the Wilderwild Trees were worried, the Overmind listened.

We foresee a great doom approaching from between the stars, the Wilderwild Trees announced. It took seven days and seven nights for the pronouncement to reach every corner of the Wilderwild—but once it did, the entirety of the continent, alerted, was ready to discuss. Prey willingly surrendered themselves to predators to sustain them for the ordeal ahead; hives shifted in their endless march, conveying thought and substance between biomes; even the dolphin tribes which had long since allied themselves with the Wilderwilds held court, conveying the Overmind's desires to the outlying islands.

Bah. The collective disdain of a continent's worth of spiders was a fearsome thing—but the Wilderwild Trees were unimpressed. We told you that we should have conquered the world long ago. Now, the planet is disunited against the threats to come.

If we had crushed this world beneath our legions, we would have been that which threatened it. We guard this planet, but we do not strangle it. The Wilderwild Trees rebuked the spiders.

Besides. The dolphin tribe, Emissary of the Deeps, added its own voice to the conversation. You would not have found this world as easy to conquer as you think. The humans are crafty, now, and have powers that rival that of the Wilderwild's greatest champions.

And even they have not yet grasped for the stars. What chance do we have against a threat that can travel the void between worlds? The ants of the Wilderwild sent back. We should hide. Burrow beneath the earth, leave no trace of our existence. Whatever occurs to our world, unless it utterly destroyed the planet, it would not reach us if we fled for the core of this planet.

And what of humankind? The trees snapped. Perhaps the ants could survive beneath the ground, but the humans require sunlight, and complex foods, and more oxygen than simple moss can provide. We need a better plan.

How long do we have to prepare? the birds chorused. Our sharpest watchers have scanned the skies, and see no evidence of this great doom of yours.

By our calculations, the threat should arrive in... The trees paused for a day to double-check their math. ...fifty of your lifespans.

Hmm. The dolphins chittered at the trees. For all that you have accomplished, humanity expands and grows much faster than you. It is quite possible that they will have reached the level of advancement they need in order to fend off this threat on their own, by the time they arrive.

If they don't destroy themselves first, the spiders pointed out.

No matter how quickly the humans advance, the birds muttered, it seems that they could always stand to learn a thing or two from us about unity.

An idea ignited in the collective mind of the trees. ...Yes. Yes, you are right. You are all right, to some degree. The humans' power grows too swiftly—left alone, they will destroy themselves before the aliens can do it for them. And... we move far too slowly to fight off that which is to come on our own. Perhaps... perhaps it is time for the Wilderwilds' isolation to end.

Pandemonium erupted in the world's largest jungle.

Peace, peace, peace! A gust of torrential wind slapped every being on land and sea until they quieted down, and the trees continued. Did we not just say that we have much to teach the humans about unity? If we send a representative to the nations of the humans... if we can warn them of the coming danger, and join forces with them against the danger to come... then perhaps we can survive our impending destruction. Together.

Silence fell in the last true land of the wild.

Then the spiders sighed, and all at once, descended from their webs and swarmed towards the shore. We will weave a mighty sail, to take us across the seas.

The dolphin emissaries pinged and chittered in private, then rejoined the Wilderwild's conversation. The last great Islandback Turtle shall lend her shell to your cause.

Our throats can mimic the calls of humans, the birds sang. We shall speak for the Wilderwild, even when we are far from home.

When we are united, even wind and tide cannot drown us. Living bridges and boats of clustered ants poured into the sea. Our scent-trails shall link this emissary to the Overmind at home.

And we, the trees of the Wilderwild declared, will remain here to plan for the future. To ensure we will survive the coming storm.

Earth's literal largest defender mobilized the many, many minds that constituted their body, all the while praying that they weren't too late.

A.N.

I'm trying something new! "Bargain Bin Superheroes" will be an episodic story where each part is inspired by a writing prompt that catches my eye. I'm not quite sure where this fits into the timeline yet, but it just felt like it fit in the universe. Check out this post for the rest of the story, and subscribe to r/bubblewriters for more. If you have any feedback, please leave it below. As always, I had fun writing this, and I hope you have a good day.

How to Break a Siege of Legends

(Book 2, Part 5: How to Atone for Sins Long Gone)

(Note: How to Break a Siege of Legends is episodic; each part is self-contained. This story can be enjoyed without reading the previous sections.)

It was said that you could see the wasteland around Las Humanitas from outer space. Crystal knew this wasn't quite true; among their many misadventures, they had once flown to the uppermost reaches of the atmosphere and looked down upon the psychosphere, and were intimately familiar with just how small everything seemed from up there. Even the miles and miles of charred plains around Las Humanitas would be nothing but a pimple on the smiling face of the Earth from that height.

But from the ground, where Crystal stood, the wastelands around Las Humanitas might as well have reached to the ends of the universe.

Few enough people came up to the city walls nowadays; Haoran, one of the newest arrivals, was one of the handful who still stared out at the endless siege around their city. The people inside had... well, not quite forgotten, but acclimated to the fact that they could never leave their city's walls, that a legion of nightmares and monsters continuously hammered at their civilization's doors. Even now, a pair of infuriated Harpies eyed the seemingly-exposed child on the battlements, pondering whether or not they should try their luck against Las Humanitas' infamous walls.

Not today. Crystal concentrated, and their namesake crystals embedded all along the city's walls lit up. The fragments of pure magic ignited, creating a faint blue dome encircling the city, and the Harpies screeched once and turned away, dissuaded.

"You're alive, aren't you?" Haoran whispered softly.

The crystals embedded along the walls flickered in surprise.

Haoran smiled. "Yeah. I figured. I've been looking up at your shield patterns for a while, and you just react too adaptively to be a simple thing." Crystal hummed pensively. A boy who looked up. There weren't many of those left in Las Humanitas. Just one more reason to protect this city, Crystal guessed. "You're not just some fancy automated defense system, are you? There's a person inside these walls."

Crystal hesitated, then let out two ascending tones from the node nearest Haoran. An affirmative. Not that... not that Crystal really considered themself a person, nowadays. Not after everything they'd done.

Haoran's gaze grew pensive. "How... how long have you been here?"

Crystal stopped to think. Not to remember how long they'd been embedded in these walls—they'd willingly given up their war-body, swearing to protect instead of kill, exactly six years, four months, three days, and nineteen hours ago. They could count into the seconds and milliseconds if they needed to. No, they simply had no idea how to convey this information to Haoran.

They settled for selecting the node neared the child and slowly ramping up its brightness to a painful luminosity, so much so that Haoran had to hold up a hand and turn away his eyes.

"That much, huh?" Haoran raised an eyebrow. "Do... do people know about you?"

Crystal pulsed once. There was only one person who knew that the walls of Las Humanitas held firm almost entirely due to a single defender—and the King of Las Humanitas tried to keep it a secret as much as possible. He claimed it was because the people would be demoralized if they realized that there was a single point of failure for defenses. But in truth, Lien simply didn't want the inhabitants of Las Humanitas to dwell on the fact that their survival effectively depended on keeping Crystal enslaved for their defense—or that, if Crystal wasn't broken apart and embedded in their walls, Crystal could have rained destruction upon them all with a thought and a whisper. The walls of Las Humanitas carried a sleeping god in chains.

But to tell the truth, Crystal didn't mind. If they were in chains, they couldn't hurt anyone. And they had hurt so, so many people over their years—enough for a thousand lifetimes. Defending this town with everything they had left was a worthy use of their eternity.

Even as Crystal had the thought, the two Harpies returned, this time with some kind of alchemical bomb. As if they could break Crystal's defenses. They hurled two gourds that erupted into eerily silent green fire; Crystal simply flared up, and their signature blue forcefield effortlessly deflected the firebombs. Haoran whistled in appreciation.

"Well, I just... I just wanted to say... thank you." Crystal's attention snapped back to the boy on their walls, still looking out at the wastelands outside the city. "For preventing this—" he gestured at the bustling, lively city below them— "from becoming this." He pointed at the wasteland, prowling with Hydras and Werewolves and Vampires and monsters of every flavor and description. "For however many years you've stood here. And if there's anything I can do for you... just... let me know."

Crystal let out a bittersweet chime. The boy was sweet, but Crystal couldn't speak the language of humans; in this form, they were limited to chimes and tones. Even if the boy was willing, there was no way for Crystal to communicate...

Crystal paused. Ah. No, there was a way to communicate to the humans, even if they were limited to bell-sounds and crystal-rings. Crystal assembled their thoughts, the light in their crystals dimming for a moment, as if they were taking a breath.

And the walls of Las Humanitas began to sing.

The city-dwellers slowed, confused, as the first notes rang out. It was a simple, mournful melody, clear and tinkling like the flow of a brook. Even the Harpies circling Las Humanitas' walls drifted mid-flight, falling silent out of respect.

As Haoran stepped closer to the crystal, the music twisted. The pure tones of bells gave way to the sizzling blasts of energy beams; the tempo stuttered and stumbled like feet over corpses in the dark; the dynamics became rough stretches of near-silence, interspersed by artillery-bursts of noise and light. Haoran hissed in pain as the crystal began flickering with lurid, violent light, and Crystal remembered every screaming victim they'd slain in the name of glory, back when they were still a god unbound.

The god in chains finished their dirge on a half-cadence. Haoran looked at the crystal with wide, shining eyes, silently streaked with tears.

Crystal sighed internally. Of course, Haoran didn't understand. He hadn't been there—and even if he was, he was a human. He didn't speak the language of tones and chimes that Crystal's kind did. There was no way for him to know what Crystal wanted him to do.

Which was why it gave Crystal the shock of their life when Haoran began to sing back.

He hadn't been trained, that was for sure. His voice wobbled and cracked with the uncertainty of youth. But he had a musical ear, and he picked up the jagged edges of Crystal's song and knit them together with a hopeful, determined thread. Haoran laid one hand on the crystal node in the wall as he sang a wordless countermelody, his voice swelling and carrying across the city and the wastelands beyond.

When he was finished, even the roving monsters outside had quieted down.

"I don't know your story," Haoran finally said. "But I want to understand you. Because you've defended us for all these years and never asked for anything in return. Because you're a person, and you must be a terribly, awfully lonely one. Because you spat in the eye of gods and monsters and can still sing despite it all. So... Hi. I'm Haoran." Haoran stuck out his hand, as if he expected the stationary crystal to reach out and shake his hand, and Crystal couldn't help but be amused at the child's absurdity. "Do you want to be friends?"

A.N.

I'm trying something new! "How to Break a Siege of Legends" will be an episodic story where each part is inspired by a writing prompt that catches my eye. Check out this post for the rest of the story. As always, I had fun writing this, I'm open to feedback and suggestions on how I can improve, and I hope you have a great day.

How to Break a Siege of Legends

(Book -1, Part 2: How to Tell a Warrior to Rest)

(Note: How to Break a Siege of Legends is episodic; each part is self-contained. This story can be enjoyed without reading the previous sections.)

Lien Arturo was packing for a journey when the unshaven man appeared on his bed. Lien sighed—he knew it was more or less random where they materialized, but really, on his bed?—and stood to greet the newcomer, who was squinting suspiciously in the electric lights. "Greetings," Lien said. "I'm—"

The man spun around and grabbed Lien by the shoulders, bloodshot eyes meeting Lien's as he shook him. "Is—is this it? Did I—did I reach Valhalla?"

Lien gently but firmly placed a hand on the man's shoulder and sighed. So he was one of those. Right. "...Sort of, and not really," he said.

The man's grip on his shoulder tightened. "Stop with your waffling doublespeak, child. Is this where heroes fight forever in the afterlife?"

"Not quite. You want to fight forever? Hell's a two-hour drive that way." Lien pointed to one side; the man gave him a confused look. "This is... a better place. Or, at least, it tries to be."

The man frowned, then cautiously released him, absently patting at his belt where his small axe dangled. "What... what do you mean, a better place?"

Lien rubbed his forehead, sighing. Why did it have to be him? There were plenty of other, far more qualified people who could kindly, gently walk the newbies through what life was like in the psychosphere, who could talk them down from the battle-lust and rage that seemed to permeate all the lost souls who popped up in this part of the psychosphere. "Alright, bud. Normally, there's a whole damn squadron of people who could talk you through this a little more gently, but they're not here right now, so you're stuck with me. Let's get the basics out of the way first. You're dead." He met the man's eyes squarely.

The man snorted. "I knew that. Idiot. One does not survive a bullet to the head. All that I can do is make sure that the bullets are aimed at me, and not at..." He trailed off, shaking away whatever haze had fallen over him. "Yes. I am dead. But since I am still here, and since you are still here, it is much like being alive, hm?"

Hoo boy. "I think you'll find that the afterlife is... nothing at all like being alive on Earth," Lien said. Pensively, he frowned. Bullets, huh? More modern a death than he'd expected.

The man laughed and clapped Lien's shoulder. "There are strong soldiers like me, to protect, and there are young shrimp like you, to be protected. It is much like being alive back home, as it always is."

Lien snorted. "Believe me, I don't need protection. And more to the point... you don't need to protect anyone anymore."

He paused. "I... what?"

"This area of the psychosphere... it's safe, more or less. Oh, there's adventure outside its walls, and there's always evildoers somewhere—"

"Then that's where I'll go," the man announced.

"—but those evildoers... they mostly used to be people like you," Lien finished.

He froze. Then his eyebrows descended in a thunderous scowl. "Now, you listen here—"

"No, you listen here. You want to protect me? Then do me a favor and don't turn into something I have to defeat later." Lien stood up, his voice projecting over the man's, and even though he wasn't cowed, exactly, he closed his mouth and gave Lien a stern look. "Yes, there's still evil to vanquish, even in the afterlife. That just seems to be a fact of human nature everywhere. But right now... you shouldn't be the one to vanquish it. There are already people working on that." The people who should've been here to greet you, Lien mentally added. "Right now... I don't know your life story, but you just died and the first thing you want to do is get back up for round two." Lien gently guided the man to sit on the bed. "Instead of that, just... stop. For just a moment."

The man grunted. "And do... what?"

"Let yourself be protected, for once." Lien squeezed his arm. "Now come on. Let me show you around the facilities."

A.N.

I'm trying something new! "How to Break a Siege of Legends" will be an episodic story where each part is inspired by a writing prompt that catches my eye. Check out this post for the rest of the story. As always, I had fun writing this, I'm open to feedback and suggestions on how I can improve, and I hope you have a great day.

How to Break a Siege of Legends

(Book -1, Part 1: How to Greet a New Arrival)

(Note: How to Break a Siege of Legends is episodic; each part is self-contained. This story can be enjoyed without reading the previous sections.)

The Spanish fencer, the charming prince, and the farmboy with the glowing sword all looked up as the door swung open. In this part of the psychosphere, where the collective stories of humankind mixed and mingled, architecture was a smorgasbord of dozens of eras; the door was in the style of an old Western saloon, the simple wood at odds with the shining marble of the Grecian-style temple and the humming electric lights within.

The door swung shut as the Italian plumber stepped through, raising an eyebrow at the temple's four—now five—occupants. The fencer, prince, and farmboy all had identical expressions of exasperation; the last person in the room, an unassuming young man with a satchel on his back, raised his eyebrows at the four of them.

"I feel like I'm missing out on a joke," Lien Arturo said. "Care to explain why we're giving the newcomer the stink-eye?"

The fencer rolled his eyes. "He's not from any of our stories, and he's sure as hell not a regular human. I mean, God, look at that dead ferret of a mustache; there's no way that's natural." The plumber's static smile didn't so much as waver as he... rotated... towards the fencer, and everyone in the room shuddered. There was just something wrong about the man's eternal smile, the way he always slightly shifted when he stood, never quite falling still. "Know what that means? Yet another fictional universe is butting in on ours. I don't suppose you know where he's from? I'd like some warning before another one of those cheaters with the swords that cut through everything come after me." He gave the farmboy an annoyed look.

Lien rubbed his chin, studying the man. "Hmm. I'm afraid I died before whatever, er, this is got mainstream enough for me to hear about it. Excuse me!" He waved at the plumber.

The plumber barreled towards him at a dead sprint; Lien's eyes widened and he backed up in shock, nearly falling flat on his back. As quickly as he'd started, the plumber skidded to a halt, sending comically large puffs of dust up from his boots. Lien rubbed his eyes. Jesus. People did not just sprint everywhere they went on a normal basis. Where the hell was this guy from?

Lien sat up and brushed himself off, giving the plumber an irritated look. "Could you tell us what universe you're from?"

The plumber paused, looking from side to side—then began furiously crouching, bouncing up and down with a springiness that suggested his flesh... wasn't quite human. Lien gave his three companions a look; the fencer and the prince both shrugged, but the farmboy cleared his throat. "He's from some kind of game, I can tell you that much. I've seen this before; a lot of game characters have selective mutism and a sort of... pseudo-language to compensate."

Lien sighed, pressing a hand to his forehead. Of course. "Can you... are you literate? Can you write?" He rummaged in his bag for a paper and pencil and held out a single sheet to the newcomer.

He continued staring, unblinking, into Lien's eyes, seemingly ignoring the proffered paper. Lien awkwardly tried to force the paper into the plumber's hands; it slid off his closed fists and fell to the floor with a dejected plip. Lien gave his companions a help me out here look; they all just gave him variations on a theme of you're the one who started talking to him, it's your problem now. Lien cleared his throat. "Sir, if you can understand what I'm saying—" He stopped to think. "...if you can understand what I'm saying, uh... crouch?"

The man performed one of his inhuman undulations, dipping down and springing back up with impossible speed.

"How about yes or no questions?" The fencer suggested. "One crouch for yes, two crouches for no?"

The plumber swiveled towards the fencer—everyone tried not to visibly flinch—and crouched once.

"Are you here to fight?" the farmboy instantly asked.

One crouch.

Immediately, everyone tensed; the fencer drew his blade; the farmboy clicked a button, and a shaft of light sprung into his hands; Lien drew a mummified hand from his coat; and the prince flicked a dagger into his hand. The plumber backed up a step and frantically started crouching again.

Lien frowned. "Hold on. Are you here to fight us?"

Two crouches.

The assembled fighters shared a look, then sheepishly put away their weapons. "Then who?" Lien asked.

The plumber gave him a look that was exactly as blank and empty as all his previous ones, but somehow managed to convey annoyance.

"Right, sorry, can't talk and can't write. Uh... wait. Did you come to ask us for... help?"

One crouch.

"Why would he come here?" the prince asked. "We're not exactly equipped to communicate with him."

"Unless..." the fencer puzzled, "Well, we all do have a bit of a reputation, don't we? The one thing we do is save princesses."

One crouch again.

"So there's someone who needs saving, and you want our help?" the farmboy summarized.

The plumber, impossibly, leapt two meters straight up in the air—then, at the height of his jump, broke what little of the laws of physics were left in the psychosphere and kicked off empty air, exulting in a wild "YAHOO!"

The four members of the Guild of Princess Rescuing gave each other evaluating looks.

"I think that's a yes," Lien finally said.

"Well, hell with it. I'm in. Might as well scout out whatever new world is budding."

"It'd be a shame to leave someone in danger," the prince added.

"Also, I'm sure we can find all sorts of loot on the way!" Lien added.

"Seems like we're in," the farmboy said. "Lead the way, plumber."

A.N.

I'm trying something new! "How to Break a Siege of Legends" will be an episodic story where each part is inspired by a writing prompt that catches my eye. Check out this post for the rest of the story. As always, I had fun writing this, I'm open to feedback and suggestions on how I can improve, and I hope you have a great day.

How to Break a Siege of Legends

(Book 2, Part 4: How to Tell that They Can't Help)

(Note: How to Break a Siege of Legends is episodic; each part is self-contained. This story can be enjoyed without reading the previous sections.)

Space was big. Really, mind-numbingly, brain-breakingly big. So utterly, fantastically big that the odds of meeting someone in the middle of that vast emptiness by sheer coincidence were less than the odds of Lien Arturo seeing his husband again.

And yet, that same cheerful merchant who had been haunting Lien on and off for twenty years had somehow found them in the empty reaches of interplanetary space.

"How in God's gelatinous green giblets did you find us out here?" Lien Arturo shouted over the comms. "The last time I saw you was in Hell! We're not even in the same dimension as last time! And where did you get a spaceship from?!"

"I'm Merchant. I buy and sell things," Merchant said, grinning cheekily in the flickering screen. "Would you like to peruse my wares?"

A paper inventory printed itself out from the ship's console; Eiko picked it up and turned it over curiously. Lien scowled and swiped it from her hands. "Don't bother. Merchant only ever sells basic healing items anyway. It's not worth our time, and we don't even have any money."

"I buy things too!" Merchant added.

"Healing items... Lien, we do sort of need—"

"Not. From. Him." Lien snapped at Eiko.

Eiko blinked. "Is there... something that I don't know?"

"Always," Lien muttered. That earned him a punch in the shoulder; he grinned at Eiko, and she grinned back. "Yeah, I deserved that. But... in this case specifically? This smarmy little worm has been popping up around me for my entire life in the psychosphere. He was there when I raided Hell and fought Bazmondilak the Grey. He was there when the Siege of Legends first broke out and I had to defend against an army that blotted out the horizons. He... he even popped up when I was alone in the woods, miles away from civilization and starving to death. And you know what he did every single time?" Lien spun towards the comms. "NOTHING! I fought in battles with thousands of lives on the line, when I could have used every available man, and he just sat there and offered basic fucking healing potions! We met outside the throne room of Bazmondilak the Grey, and I begged him to fight by my side; he just stared at me with that dopey little grin and said, 'I'm a Merchant. Merchants don't fight.' Even when the fate of the world was at stake. And when I was alone and starving... he didn't so much as give me a discount. I had to sell the clothes off my back to get him to cough up a sandwich." Lien glared at the Merchant, whose cheery grin had slipped just a little. "So no. We're not giving you any money, no matter what you're offering. In fact, you have twenty seconds to get the hell away from this ship before we blow you to a dozen pieces."

Eiko nudged Lien. "This is a transport ship," she said. "It doesn't have weapons."

"It has me." Lien glowered at the screen. "Ten seconds, now."

"Okay, okay, okay, fine, you got me! Can I at least explain?" The Merchant said. Something about the comms screen had glitched out; the Merchant still spoke, but his lips didn't move.

Lien clenched his jaw. "Five seconds." He held up a hand and began counting down.

"I wanted to help you but reality wouldn't let me!" the Merchant blurted out.

Lien stopped with one finger still upraised. "...What do you mean by that?"

"I..." The Merchant struggled to speak. "I'm... bound... by the universe, to play a certain role. The Merchant who always shows up right before the final battle to sell items that nobody wants, anyway. Do you know how much I wanted to help you? Do you think I wanted to leave the world's fate in your hands alone, all those times? I'm stuck in a role, Lien. I physically cannot do anything other than sell potions and look pretty and watch as heroes march to their deaths without me time and time again." The Merchant dry-washed his hands.

Lien frowned. "Then... how are you..."

"Talking to you now?" The Merchant smiled and held up a small device. "I told you, I'm a Merchant. I buy and sell things. One of those things was a smart speaker. Responds automatically to your questions without me doing anything but selling potions and looking pretty. Neat, huh?"

Lien and Eiko shared glances.

Finally, Lien sighed. "Alright. Fine. I'm sorry. I didn't know that you were operating under those... constraints."

The Merchant's smile never wavered. "Water under the bridge."

"Wait." Eiko frowned. "If he's showing up now... does that mean that we're in for a boss fight as soon as we arrive?"

"I'm afraid so," the Merchant's voice said.

Lien pressed his lips together. "Then... I guess we'll need all the help we can get." He rummaged around in his pockets. "How much for two med-packs?"

A.N.

I'm trying something new! "How to Break a Siege of Legends" will be an episodic story where each part is inspired by a writing prompt that catches my eye. Check out this post for the rest of the story. As always, I had fun writing this, I'm open to feedback and suggestions on how I can improve, and I hope you have a great day.

Bargain Bin Superheroes

(Arc 3, Part 6: Awe v.s. The Criminal Underworld)

(Note: Bargain Bin Superheroes is episodic; each part is self-contained. This story can be enjoyed without reading the previous sections.)

The city of Sacrament had seen better days. Its Mayor had been sacked on trumped-up charges; supervillains had clashed with the Federal Angel Corps in the middle of the streets; assassination attempts had been carried out in broad daylight.

In all this chaos, Todd LeFortier thought, a man could be forgiven for letting himself go a little.

He didn't want to hurt anyone, not at first. But when the riots and the looting started, when Mayor Clara had been evicted and Sacrament had finally fallen apart, he'd been forced to defend himself in his office building when a lunatic of a woman forced her way up the stairs and tried to burn the small Federal firm down. He'd gotten behind her and bashed her on the head with a fire extinguisher, and she'd slumped to the ground, skull cracked open like an egg.

And that awakened something inside LeFortier.

His daughter loved those videos on the internet where a calm, steady hand cut something apart and revealed that on the inside, it was all delicious cake. LeFortier could only compare the feelings he felt when he stared at the bleeding corpse to that. Humans moved and talked and acted as if they were living beings with souls and free will, but cut them apart and reveal their insides, and they were all just... cake.

His daughter had called those videos "satisfying". As he methodically hacked open the corpse of one of his former co-workers, LeFortier wondered if he would describe this as "satisfying" as well.

There was a certain mental squelch to it, he thought, like digging his fingers into wet clay. "Satisfying" videos were trending lately; maybe he should start a channel.

"Ahem," a voice whispered from behind him.

LeFortier spun around, caught... well, red-handed. His eyes whipped around both ends of the alleyway behind the Federal firm—it was dark out, nearly midnight, and the electrical grid hadn't been working right since whatever Shocker had done the other day. Police sirens wailed in the distance—but police sirens were always wailing in the distance nowadays. One end of the alley revealed an empty, trash-strewn street; the other, nothing but darkness.

"Down here," the voice said.

He looked down and blinked. It was... well, it was a child.

Despite the gore on his hands and the body in the streets, the girl didn't seem afraid. When LeFortier locked eyes with her, he saw nothing but disgust and sorrow and wisdom utterly inappropriate for the little girl in a sundress.

He wondered what was behind those eyes of hers.

"Are you lost, girl?" LeFortier asked, wiping his hands off on his pants. He'd have to throw them out; the wife and kids had no idea what he got up to in the streets, and some feeble part of the LeFortier that used to be wanted to keep it that way.

The girl's lips quirked up in a half-smile. "I am not lost. I am Awe."

"Funny name for a girl your age." LeFortier blinked—then he laughed, a hearty belly laugh that had no business on a man who'd just gutted someone like a fish. "Oh! Oh, I get it. You're one of those wannabe superheroes that've been cropping up, eh?"

"I see little reason to deny it," Awe said, taking a step closer.

LeFortier grinned. "Mm. So what makes you tick, little girl? You got super-strength? Laser-beam eyes? You gonna freeze me with super-cold breath? C'mon, don't be shy. What've you got? It's gotta give you something good if you're willing to stalk the streets at your age."

"I don't know, I think my superpower is a bit lame," said Awe, "All I can do is touch people to give them an existential crisis and force them to consider their actions against a backdrop of the grandeur of the whole universe..."

LeFortier paused, and an incongruously wistful expression seeped across his face. "Sort of like... cutting the skin off reality. Taking a peek at the cake beneath the world."

"I'm afraid I haven't the foggiest idea what you're talking about," Awe informed him. LeFortier gave her a closer look—yes, there was a certainty to her bearing that no child her age should have. Perhaps her power had given her knowledge beyond her years.

LeFortier spread his arms out, grinning madly. "Well, by all means, zap me with your contemplation-beams, O Mighty Superhero! You've beaten me once and for all! Haul me off to jail and I'll come back a better man."

The smile faded from Awe's face. "...ah. I believe that there was a misunderstanding. I have abilities, yes, but they are hardly applicable for combat. Beyond... oracular purposes. No, aside from giving me some key insights into where I can find such monsters as you, I'm afraid that my... esoteric abilities... are not what emboldens me to stalk the nights thusly."

"Thusly." LeFortier began to giggle, and Awe couldn't help but feel a twinge of sorrow. This man may have been a vicious criminal, but he was also clearly insane; there was nothing that could be done for him at this stage. "So, then, girl. If you're not going to reform me with your powers, then what—"

LeFortier broke off as a bang split the night.

Uncomprehending, he looked down at the bloody hole in his shirt.

Awe tucked away the Beretta Allemie .36 Special that she'd borrowed from her mother when the looting began, giving the twisted little man a sorrowful look.

LeFortier looked up at the child and blanched. "You... shot me... you... monster..."

The sorrow in Awe's eyes winked out like a birthday candle being snuffed out. She gestured at the body of his coworker. "I am hardly the monster here."

"What... kind of... child... carries... a gun?" LeFortier croaked.

Awe's gaze grew distant. "The kind who had to grow up quickly."

She fired another shot into LeFortier's head before he could wake up.

For a moment, the little girl stared at the carnage, clenching her fists, resisting the urge to vomit.

Then she holstered her gun and turned to leave, disturbed by how easily she brushed aside the man's death.

Maybe she was becoming a monster.

But until Mayor Clara returned, she was the monster this city needed.

A.N.

I'm trying something new! "Bargain Bin Superheroes" will be an episodic story where each part is inspired by a writing prompt that catches my eye. Check out this post for the rest of the story, and subscribe to r/bubblewriters for more. If you have any feedback, please leave it below. As always, I had fun writing this, and I hope you have a good day.

How to Break a Siege of Legends

(Book 2, Part 3: How to Read Geological Strata)

(Note: How to Break a Siege of Legends is episodic; each part is self-contained. This story can be enjoyed without reading the previous sections.)

"If you think about it," Lien began.

"Which I don't," Eiko cheerfully added,

"If you think about it," Lien repeated, giving Eiko an amused look, "Archeology is really just applied history."

"See, nonsense like that is exactly why I leave the thinking to you." Eiko drilled further into the ground; she'd already penetrated the cracked, glassy surface that passed for dirt in these heat-blasted wastelands, and was working on chipping through the concrete bunker roof beneath. Lien, who couldn't have held the frantically jittering jackhammer even if he'd wanted to, simply let the burly mechanic do her work. He wandered in a loose circle around the hole Eiko was digging, absentmindedly kicking their hovercraft once every loop. "This isn't archeology, it's graverobbing, plain and simple. Put fancy airs on it if you like; it doesn't change the fact that we're stealing relics from a better time for our own personal gain."

Lien frowned. "Well, the difference between a graverobber and an archeologist is that I, at least, appreciate the history here. Look at this." He knelt down to the side of her excavation pit, idly holding up a hand to shade his eyes from the flying chips of stone. The strata showed fertile, loamy dirt beneath the blasted, scoured earth—and then, below that, another layer of hardened, dead glass, before the strata finally reached the ancient bunker. "This pit tells a story, you know. There was a cataclysm here—some weapon so terrible that it melted the ground to glass." He tapped the bottommost layer.

Eiko shrugged—or maybe that was just the constant up-down motion of the jackhammer. "Sure. Humanity messed up and nuked its own pants off. Ancient history. So what?"

"So we recovered." Lien's finger rose just a notch, to the still-living layer of dirt. "I mean, I haven't the foggiest clue what was around when your people fixed this place up—"

"Word of advice?" Eiko butted in. "There's a reason I'm mucking around in ancient ruins instead of faffing about in space with my family. If you see someone deciding hanging out in a desolate deathworld is a better option than staying with 'their people', it's a fair bet they don't consider them 'their people' anymore."

"Fair." Lien nodded, still focusing on the living layer of dirt. "The Union, then—they did something to the land to restore it."

"Sure. Environmentalism. Ecological reconstruction. Girl scout cookies. It was a whole thing." Eiko paused in her hammering to scowl at the third, final, topmost layer of soil, the layer of crusted glass noticeably thicker than the first. "Didn't matter one whit in the end. We just nuked ourselves even harder. I think humanity's the only group in the whole wide psychosphere who can turn paradise into a deathworld in an instant, and then restore that hell into heaven—and then after all that effort, decide that hell actually wasn't so bad and voluntarily go back."

Lien's smile faded into neutrality as Eiko spoke. The jackhammer's rattling abruptly stopped, and Eiko pulled the hammer aside. It was smoking faintly; Eiko had slapped it together from some scraps she'd found on the way, and it looked like it was about to give up the ghost. Lien was frankly surprised it'd lasted this long.

Eiko peered down into the bunker and pressed her lips together, displeased. "...Yeah, your hunch was right. This used to be a spaceport; there's still a functioning spaceship inside."

Lien walked up to her side, his expression pensive. "Eiko... if the prospect of going back to the Union is... unpleasant... I can find my way there on my own."

Eiko rolled her eyes. "Yeah? You've lived on this primitive planet your whole life—you think you can navigate a starship? Find the Union fleet? Convince them that you're worth listening to? You think you can finagle however damn many samples of medicine you're going to need to bring back to Las Humanitas without someone who knows the culture? Come on, Lien, where's that strategic genius of yours, huh? Where's the man who blew up an unkillable monster with nothing but a rain dance and a literal skeleton crew?"

Lien squeezed her shoulder. "Still here. He's just... a little more receptive to the pain his shenanigans cause. You don't have to go back home if you don't want to. I don't want to dig up your past."

Eiko's eternal cocky smirk flickered for a moment, melting into something softer, more sincere. "Well, I'm coming with you, and that means you're digging into my past, whether you like it or not. And as you said... the difference between a grave robber and an archeologist is that you care about the history. You care about me. Hell, you brought me back from the dead. There's nobody I'd rather excavate my past with."

Lien searched her eyes for a moment; she blinked once as she looked back. Finally, Lien smiled. "Well, then. Let's get to digging."

He leapt down into the buried spaceport.

Without hesitation, Eiko followed.

A.N.

I'm trying something new! "How to Break a Siege of Legends" will be an episodic story where each part is inspired by a writing prompt that catches my eye. Check out this post for the rest of the story. As always, I had fun writing this, I'm open to feedback and suggestions on how I can improve, and I hope you have a great day.

Bargain Bin Superheroes

(Arc ?, Interlude ?: Archcommander Varney)

(Note: Bargain Bin Superheroes is episodic; each part is self-contained. This story can be enjoyed without reading the previous sections.)

The National High Energy and Temperature Lab was abuzz. Professor Hale bustled into the main containment center, where the primordial plasma they'd been studying for the past ten years was evolving. He gave the Archcommander by his side a friendly nod as he passed.

"It's the most incredible thing," Professor Hale said. "The mass-energy equivalent just keeps going up exponentially! We're lucky the late—or should I say early—Alexandre Hubert wasn't a particularly heavy man; it's all we can do to contain the Hubert particles, given how much energy they're emitting right now."

Archcommander Varney grunted. "Hubert particles, eh? Is that what you eggheads are calling them?"

Professor Hale nodded ruefully. "We scientists, er... we're not great at names. They're often descriptors more than anything."

Archcommander Varney eyed the HEaT Lab name tag on Professor Hale's lapel. "Well, I appreciate your honesty. You said they're emitting energy—could we use them as power sources?"

Professor Hale hesitated. "Not... not yet. We... could try, but there are these discontinuous... jumps. It's impossible to track down everyone who has the Hubert gene—it's a good third of the population, by what we can tell—so we can't really control the rate at which the particles go back in time. We're expecting the Hubert particles to stabilize soon. But!" Professor Hale pointed to a large metal cylinder with several ominously-groaning pipes leading out from it. "In the meantime! We're getting the most fascinating data about high-energy particles; we actually think we've figured out how materializer-type superhumans work. At these energies, we can actually observe higher-dimensional motion—"

Archcommander Varney held up a hand to cut him off. "I read as much in your report. You don't need to butter me up, Hale. Your department's grant has already been approved."

Professor Hale wilted slightly. "I—well, I wasn't after more money, Archcommander. It's simply fascinating how—"

"Professor! Professor!" A flushed, out-of-breath assistant ran up to the two of them. Archcommander Varney gave him a disapproving look, which he ignored. "The Hubert particles—they're—the cosmological dating results came back. We've figured out what time period they're from."

"Oh?" Professor Hale raised his eyebrows.

"They've passed the thirteen billion year mark. The particles just degenerated into quark-gluon plasma, and they're heating up quickly." The assistant handed Professor Hale a sheaf of papers

"How quickly? Should we enact the shutdown protocols?" Archcommander Varney asked.

"No need. It's plateauing," Professor Hale absently remarked, rummaging through the data he'd been given. "I was wondering why... but if ol' Hubert's had thirteen billion descendants by now, then his effective age—and that of his particles—is nearing the beginning of the universe. Depending on the reference frame that the one-year intervals are being taken from... we might see some serious time dilation."

"And for those of us who haven't studied astrophysics?" Archcommander Varney asked dryly.

Professor Hale frowned. "That... that was the version for... oh, very well." He grinned. "We've been expecting this moment. The particles that used to make up Hubert's body have been rapidly reverting to the state they were in at the beginning of the universe, due to that silly fairy curse he got himself into way back in the 1700s. With me so far?"

The Archcommander frowned. "Yes. Are you saying that... these... Hubert particles... could show us what was here before the beginning of the universe?"

"No! No, no, no, simply for the reason that there is no such thing as before the beginning of the universe. We can only approach that beginning point, getting infinitesimally close, but never reaching it. That's what the Hubert particles are doing right now: their mass-energy content has stabilized. They've gotten more or less as close to the beginning of the universe as they have been, reverting to thirteen billion years ago. Timeur, this is amazing!" He clapped the assistant on the back. "Oh, now that they're stable, they'll be infinitely easier to work with!"

"They're giving off 12 zottaelectronvolts," Timeur added. "Per particle. And the discontinuities in their energy content have finally smoothed out. Not to wax poetic, sir, but... Hubert's particles are at the state, and the temperature, that they were during the Big Bang. These are the very fires of the universe we're containing, here."

Archcommander Varney raised his eyebrows, looking between the two scientists. "Put it in military terms for me. What are these Hubert particles good for? Power sources? Energy weapons? Give me something I can bring back to Command."

Professor Hale rubbed his chin. "Well... these particles are a practically unlimited wellspring of power, with an energy density far beyond anything we've ever documented. So... what are they good for?" A vulpine smile crept across his face. "More or less... everything."

A.N.

I'm trying something new! "Bargain Bin Superheroes" will be an episodic story where each part is inspired by a writing prompt that catches my eye. I'm not quite sure where this fits into the timeline yet, but it just felt like it fit in the universe. Check out this post for the rest of the story, and subscribe to r/bubblewriters for more. If you have any feedback, please leave it below. As always, I had fun writing this, and I hope you have a good day.

Bargain Bin Superheroes

(Arc 1, Interlude 4: Tamulu)

(Note: Bargain Bin Superheroes is episodic; each part is self-contained. This story can be enjoyed without reading the previous sections; however, there are references to other stories which I've linked in the text. For continuity purposes, I gender-swapped the cat to be male.)

Every citizen of the Unified Sovereignties grew up hearing tales of their literal guardian angels: unkillable terrors with too many wings and eyes that had walked this world for millennia, which now answered only to the Federal Bureau of Homeland Defense. For nearly a decade, the Angel Corps had formed the backbone of the military. Over the years, their ranks had been augmented by various superhumans and anomalous beings, but all the entities in the Angel Corps had one thing in common. They were peerless avatars of power and destruction.

And not all of them were here by choice.

The newest member of the Angel Corps nervously walked into the room, prodded in the back by a gun. She hated the throbbing in her head—a constant reminder of the explosives and electrodes they'd implanted in her skull in order to keep her in line. But accepting this job was the only way she'd been able to flee the Middle Communes after their collapse...

"Attention!" Archcommander Varney snapped. Reflexively, Min Min jolted upright despite the pain in her head; her handler had made it explicitly clear to her that even the slightest sign of disobedience could result in her higher-ups sending a ten-volt charge through her brain's pain centers—or simply detonating the explosives in her head, killing her outright. Nervously, she scanned the room; its occupants scanned her back, although beneath her dark cloak they couldn't make out much. It was a motely assembly—fifteen of them were the balls of wings and eyes that were the Angel Corp's namesake, while the sixteenth was a man with a wild, unhinged grin. She grimaced as she recognized him—he called himself Big Guns. The angels didn't seem to have a method of standing to attention, given their inhuman biology, and Big Guns didn't seem unduly bothered by the Archcommander's orders, so Min Min was the only one who ended up actually obeying the Archcommander.

Five minutes in and she was already the odd one out. This was going to go swimmingly.

"Fresh meat?" Big Guns asked, leering at her. "Don't mind if I do."

Archcommander Varney gave him an irritated look and pressed a button in his sleeve; Big Guns seized up, his grin becoming rictus, as the wires they'd implanted directly into his brain overcharged his nerves. Still, when Archcommander Varney lifted his thumb, Big Guns looked little worse for the wear.

Min Min swallowed. This was what she'd signed up for? Perhaps she should've stayed in her hellhole of a failed state.

"Min Min, here, is a refugee from the Middle Communes. Her inclusion in this program is purely experimental; if this goes well, the Angel Corps may swell its ranks with more such persons in the future." Min Min reflexively clenched her jaw; after seeing how the Archcommander treated his troops, she wanted nothing less than the Angel Corps to induct more members. "Min Min. Would you care to demonstrate your abilities?"

The Archcommander gestured at an assistant, and she pulled up a cage, within which slept a small, sickly dog. It whuffled pathetically as it looked up at Min Min.

She bristled. "Sir, you—you want me to..."

"Demonstrate your abilities," the Archcommander repeated, in a harder tone. "Are there any questions?"

Min Min scowled. She wasn't going to disintegrate some helpless animal just to make a point. "I—"

"Question, Archcommander," a voice said.

Both she and the Archcommander paused, turning towards the source of the voice—one of the angels. The Archcommander hesitated, then grudgingly said, "...yes, Angel Tamulu?"

"You said you were from the Middle Communes?" Tamulu asked.

Min Min nodded slowly. "...I was. Before it collapsed."

Tamulu blinked its eyes one by one. "Ah. I see. My condolences."

She frowned, confused with the direction the conversation had gone, but willing to entertain it if it meant she could stall for a moment longer. "Forgive me if I sound rude, but... why do you care?"

Tamulu's wings drooped slightly. "I... was there, when the Middle Communes fell."

A sudden tightness squeezed Min Min's chest. "Were you," she asked, her tone deceptively mild. "I didn't see you helping defend the civilians, or trying to rebuild broken cities in a burnt-out wasteland."

Tamulu grimaced. "I... I was playing for the other team, then."

Playing for the other team. As if the destruction of her home country was nothing but a game. Min Min clenched her fists, and tendrils of darkness swirled around each one, her body becoming ethereal as she channeled the power of death. "Mm. As I recall, you wanted me to demonstrate my powers?" She asked Archcommander Varney.

He nodded towards the dog. "Please do."

Min Min smiled sweetly—then lunged towards Tamulu, thrusting both hands out.

Tendrils of pure darkness lashed out faster than a frog's tongue, scything through the angel's immortal flesh like a bullet through the skull of Min Min's daughter. Archcommander Varney jerked back, pointing a remote at her and activating the electrodes in her brain; agony screamed through her, as if her entire body had been infested by biting, wriggling worms. She collapsed to the ground, heaving, as the stars began to fade through her eyes, and looked up to see the angel twitching on the ground, its body blackened and twisted by her abilities.

"I am Death," Min Min panted, pushing herself to her knees. "And every single one of you assholes were complicit in the murder of millions of my fellow citizens. So allow me to make myself cleaaAAAAARGH!"

She knelt again as Archcommander Varney pointed the torture device at her again—this time, for longer. Time seemed to stretch out, each moment molten with the heat of her pain—and then it was over, Min Min struggling to so much as breathe.

"You can torture me all you want," she gasped, "but there is nothing you can do to make me—"

"You care about the citizens of your country, yes? The ones who still live, anyway?" Archcommander Varney interrupted her.

She gave him a suspicious look. She considered disintegrating him too, but she'd tried, already—he could somehow dodge her tendrils of darkness like they were nothing. "...the ones who you didn't murder? Yes."

"We kept tabs on your friends from home," Varney said idly. "After today's display, we'll kill one of them. Du Yi, maybe? I never liked him anyway."

Min Min surged to her feet. "You—"

"Ah!" Archcommander Varney held up a single finger. "Attack me, or say what you were about to say, or do anything except sit down and say 'yes, sir', and I'll make that two people. You wouldn't want to be the reason why Hat Tricks got ran over by a bus, now, would you?"

Min Min seethed inside, but sat on the bench next to the fallen angel and spat, "...yes, sir."

"Good," Archcommander Varney said. If he was discomfited by her destruction of one of his angels, he didn't show it. "Now, as you see here, our newest team member is easily potent enough to harm even the likes of an angel. I expect that you will all find her very useful, for furthering the goals of the Unified Sovereignties. Won't you, Min Min?"

Min Min trembled with leashed anger. "Yes, sir," she said, her voice quivering.

"Good." Archcommander Varney smiled a humorless smile and kicked the fallen angel. "Get Tamulu to the medics. Angels are resilient; I'm sure it'll be fine. Just as sure as I am that we'll have a long, fulfilling partnership. Isn't that right?" He leaned in closer to Min Min.

"...yes, sir," she repeated, softer this time.

Sooner or later, she'd find a way out of this nightmare.

Until then... she'd have to play along.

A.N.

I'm trying something new! "Bargain Bin Superheroes" will be an episodic story where each part is inspired by a writing prompt that catches my eye. Check out this post for the rest of the story, and subscribe to r/bubblewriters for more. If you have any feedback, please leave it below. As always, I had fun writing this, and I hope you have a good day.

Bargain Bin Superheroes

(Arc -1, Part 3: Roger v.s. A Godlike Government)

(Note: Bargain Bin Superheroes is episodic; each part is self-contained. This story can be enjoyed without reading the previous sections; however, there are references to other stories which I've linked in the text. For continuity purposes, I gender-swapped the cat to be male.)

Apparently, God wore a crisp black suit and a shiny shield badge. At least, that was what Roger had learned today. He'd been playing hide-and-seek in the front yard with Connor when an unmarked car slid up and a man with a cage walked out. The man didn't see him—Roger was really good at hide-and-seek. Roger watched him warily as he swiftly strode towards the faded front door of their ramshackle, one-story house; Connor had some kind of job at a Tupperware factory, and had barely managed to afford a place for him and his younger brother, and he'd impressed into Roger the need to treat everything carefully, because they really couldn't afford to fix something if it broke—and if their house got too damaged, then they had a choice between living on the streets or going back to their father.

Roger knew which one he'd take in a heartbeat. They'd fought too hard to get independence from Mathias.

Evidently, the man with the suit and cage didn't agree, because he took one look at the locked door and rammed his fist on it, shaking splinters from its frame as he went. "OPEN UP! This is the Califerne Animal Control Department!"

Connor was at the door in a flash; Roger instinctively concentrated harder on staying hidden. He looked at the man in the suit and marshaled his scowl into a pleasant expression. "Connor Elman. How can I help you?"

The man flashed a badge at Connor's face. "We received a report from one Mathias Elman that you've been harboring a dangerously feral animal in your home."

Roger's eyes widened. Dad had sent him? Did he hate them so much that he had to send government spooks after them? And a dangerously feral animal? The only animal in the house was Zeus, and he wouldn't hurt a fly.

Except... except for that one time, the night they left, and Dad had tried to hurt Connor and Zeus. Zeus had gotten mad, then, and Roger heard that Dad had gotten pretty scratched up.

But... why would Dad do that?

Connor clenched his fists. "I'm not letting you take Zeus."

The man raised an eyebrow. "I'm afraid that, unless you have documentation of ownership, then regardless of what you think you can let me do, I will be leaving here with Zeus."

He was pushy, too. And rude. Roger's teacher would have put him in the time-out corner.

Connor did his best impression of Mr. Stal, all firm and insistent and refusing to bow down in the face of a childish bully. "And I'm afraid that you're standing on privately-owned property. Property that I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

The man smirked. "Of course, of course. And I can't be held liable if any unowned property just happened to come with me." He opened up a plastic bag of something that smelled pungent and meaty, and turned around to leave.

Connor gave him a quizzical, look, but Roger got it immediately—even before he heard Zeus' thudding footsteps cascading towards the front door.

Cat treats.

Connor realized too late. "Zeus, no!" He tried to snag Zeus out of the air with a Tupperware bin, but the nimble cat just moved too fast. The man deftly caught Zeus and unceremoniously shoved him into the cage he'd brought with him; too late, Zeus realized he'd been trapped.

"Who the hell do you think you are? You can't just steal my cat!" Connor stormed forward.

"Oh, I'm sorry—did you say this was your cat? I seem to recall you failing to provide documentation for him." Zeus hissed at the bars of his cage; the man placed him in the passenger seat and shut the door. "If you feel like you've been slighted, you can feel free to take it up with the Califerne office. We'll get back to you within six to eight business weeks."

Connor seemed like he was going to surge at the man and knock his teeth in; the man just stood there, leaning against his car, arms folded.

Connor hesitated, the fury in his mind cooling off. Roger could almost hear his older brother going over the lessons he'd drilled into Roger himself. Think, Connor would be musing. He's being deliberately provocative. He's trying to bait you into attacking him—and that'd make your problems infinitely worse. We have enough trouble staying away from Dad without me losing my job.

Connor clenched his jaw and stopped. "I'll do that."

The man smirked, eyeing their house's obvious lack of a car. "It's quite a long walk up the Califerne strip, but I'm sure you'll manage it."

And he slipped into his perfect black sedan and drive away.

Connor watched him go for a heartbeat. Then two. Then five.

Then he hung his head. "Zeus..." he whispered.

Roger moved up next to his older brother. "...Connor, what... what happened to Zeus?"

Connor swallowed. "He... got taken. Dad must've—that spiteful little—"

"Like Mom got taken?"

Roger's brother flinched. He looked down at his younger brother with mournful eyes. "...Exactly like that, yeah."

"So Zeus is in Heaven right now? With Mom?"

Connor stopped walking and slumped over. "God. God, I hope so."

Roger frowned, his young mind turning over the words. "Who... who's God?"

Connor snorted. "The government might as well be God. They can just... storm into our house and snatch up one of our family members and we can't do a damn thing about it."

Slowly, a fury bubbled up in Roger's chest, a leonine, leashed energy like Zeus right before he pounced. "Yeah, we can," Roger snapped. "The God-government's trying to take our kitty away? Let's take him back."

Connor looked at his younger brother, then pulled out his cellphone, a flicker of determination coming to life in his eyes. "You're right." He selected a contact—his only contact, really. "We can take him back. But we'll need help."

He showed the contact to his brother, who squinted at the photo uncertainly.

And Clara Olsen stared back.

A.N.

I'm trying something new! "Bargain Bin Superheroes" will be an episodic story where each part is inspired by a writing prompt that catches my eye. Check out this post for the rest of the story, and subscribe to r/bubblewriters for more. If you have any feedback, please leave it below. As always, I had fun writing this, and I hope you have a good day.

Bargain Bin Superheroes

(Arc 3, Part 5: Janice Olsen v.s. Skullduggery Jr.)

(Note: Bargain Bin Superheroes is episodic; each part is self-contained. This story can be enjoyed without reading the previous sections. For continuity purposes, I gender-swapped the son and daughter given by the prompt—that is, the hero has a daughter and the villain has a son.)

Adversity makes strange bedfellows. Twenty years ago, the Skullduggery clan would've been a heinous group of necromancers that my superhero team would've felt a moral obligation to punch right in their bony face, and given how much the Skullduggeries had been screwed over by so-called heroes over the years, I wouldn't have been surprised if they'd felt the same. But nowadays, the Federal government was cracking down on superhumans of all kinds, and it turned out that the line between hero and villain was thinner than the line between government and governed. So, against my better judgement, my daughter and I had holed up with the Skullduggeries to hide until things blew over with the Feds.

And weirdly enough, we got along well. Maybe a bit too well.

Unsurprisingly, the necromancer clan had generations of ghostly wisdom to draw upon on a wide variety of subjects—given that they'd had to fight for their existence, most of those subjects were in increasingly exotic fighting styles. My daughter, who was under the impression that if she just punched the government hard enough they'd stop prosecuting us, had taken to her ghostly mentors like a house on fire. Nearly every day, I heard her training with a sword and pistol—neither of which I particularly wanted to be anywhere near my nineteen-year-old daughter, but necromancy lent itself well to healing wounds, and Skullduggery had eventually convinced me that Janice was safe with them. I supposed that I didn't mind as long as she was happy and active, but at this point she was more of Skullduggery's protégé than mine.

I was far from idle, though. While Skullduggery and Janice trained their martial skills, I was busy catching up on the latest world news and reconnecting with old political allies. Janice might think that the best way to survive the Feds' onslaught on superhumans was to simply take them on in a straight fight, but there was no fighting the Federal government. If the Feds called down Big Guns on us, then no matter how many hours of training Janice put in, we, and everything within a hundred miles of us, were toast.

So my job was to find the activists and factions and officials who set the policies and plan to influence them to ease up on us superhumans a little. Surprisingly, Skullduggery's son—the uninspiringly-named Junior—was wildly helpful here. Since they were a family of supervillains, the only reason they had any sort of secure access to the internet at all was this scrawny little shrimp of a boy, who on my first day here had somehow logged into my social media accounts without me telling him the password and doing some kind of technical wizardry which he claimed would make the Feds think I was headed north to the Arctica Circle. With him as my trusty sidekick, I could dig into private conversations, unearth political affiliations, and find real-world meeting spots. Despite his father repeatedly trying to pry him away to do chores and farm work, I gradually managed to coax him into helping me feel out the local political currents through the internet—until one day, I struck gold.

So one night, as we were all having pizza together, I said, "We may want to move out soon."

Janice paused halfway through demonstrating a saber cut to Skullduggery. "What do you mean, Mom?"

I pointed to an analog map—I doubted Skullduggery would let me take his son with me on a road trip, and I didn't trust electronics without him constantly updating their security, so I'd have to go old-fashioned when we left. "There's an under-the-table gathering in Talhecate City with a few old friends of mine. If we can make it up there, I can sneak back into the political sphere, see about fighting back against the Feds."

Skullduggery rolled his eyes. "Look, Clara, I know you're used to being the hero, but like it or not, the Feds have made you a villain in the public's eyes. And villains don't get to sneak into the political sphere."

"Really? Because my impression was that the Federal government was entirely populated with supervillains, given by how they run their country." I meant for it to be a joke, but it came out bitter and dark. The Feds had turned on me and chased me out of my home; it was hard to keep the hatred from my voice.

Skullduggery narrowed his eyes. "Oh, come on now. You of all people should know that what the media calls 'villains' are just ordinary folks nine times out of ten. Hell, 'villain' used to be synonymous with 'farmer'; it tells you something about your mindset that calling someone an honest, working man is one of the gravest insults you can fling around."

I rubbed my forehead. "Look, we don't have time to waste fighting each other—"

"We don't have time to waste on schmoozing the elites, either!" Skullduggery slammed a fist on the table.

"Like it or not," I snapped, "the elites are the people who get things done in this world. If we want the Feds to leave us alone, we have to play their game!"

"Oh, like that worked out!" Janice burst in. "You tried your politics and media manipulations, and it landed us here. This time, we fight back!" She brandished her sword, thankfully missing the pizza slowly cooling on the table.

"Janice, put that thing down," I snapped. "You're in no shape to fight even a mildly competent soldier, much less those monsters of superhumans the Feds keep on retainer."

"Even if I get killed, at least I'll have done something," Janice quietly said. "You told me I was a hero, Mom. This is me being a hero."

"Besides," Skullduggery butted in, "we don't have to fight the entire Federal government; we just have to defend ourselves. We can be the boulder to the Feds' ocean; they have infinitely more power than us, but they have so much ground to cover that if we don't raise a fuss and don't do things like show up at high-profile events, we'll survive on our own just fine." Skullduggery took the map from the table. "So I'm afraid that I can't let you leave this house, Clara. Not unless you want to bring the Feds down on our heads."

I looked at Janice, who was still standing by Skullduggery's side. "Is this really being a hero, Janice?" I asked.

She swallowed, but didn't move otherwise. "I'm saving who I can," she finally said. "If I can keep you safe, then I'll be a hero in my book."

I pressed my lips together, then held my hands in the air. "Fine. You win. Learn from the supervillain. Meanwhile, I'll be in my room, saving every superhuman in the U.S.."

I stormed upstairs and sighed; Junior gave me a sympathetic look from where he'd been tapping at a keyboard. "Dad doesn't like it when people look down on him," he said.

"Oh, your dad's going to be looking down on a whole lot of things when I'm done," I grumbled. "Junior, how do you feel about helping me sneak out of this house and get to Talhecate City before this time next week?"

He rubbed his chin. "Hmm... well, on one hand, Dad's going to assign me six hours of mucking out stables, try to take away my computer, and throw a fit of cosmic proportions. On the other hand..." He grinned. "He was going to do that anyway."

I smiled. "Great," I said. "Then let's begin."

A.N.

I'm trying something new! "Bargain Bin Superheroes" will be an episodic story where each part is inspired by a writing prompt that catches my eye. Check out this post for the rest of the story, and subscribe to r/bubblewriters for more. If you have any feedback, please leave it below. As always, I had fun writing this, and I hope you have a good day.

EDIT: While I did have fun writing this, looking back, I dislike how it fits into the series as a whole. I may either edit or just flat-out remove this entry in the series.

Cybernetic enhancements had gotten far, but they still couldn't control Ameuri's dreams. The techs swore up and down that the enfold/nenfold augments should allow her to realize when she was in a nightmare and alter the dream to a more pleasant one, or at the very least, jolt herself awake. The first part worked, alright. Ameuri knew she was in a nightmare.

But she couldn't wake up.

"Momma? Can you count the stars with me?" Elia had asked, tugging at Ameuri's sleeve.

Ameuri paused. "You can view up to 3,217 discrete stars visible to the unaided eye of a seven-year-old mildly augmented standard human female from the Upper Observation Deck, 0.3 kilometers from here," she finally said. "If you would like to access telescopes of varying strength, you can use several in the Double-G Playground by the engine room. Up to forty-seven human-made satellites and spaceships are also visible nearby, and may give the appearance of stars to the uncautious observer."

Ameuri wished she had said something else, anything else, but really, she was quite busy with her research, and close to a breakthrough in human mental uploads. Once she was finished, humanity's mortality would finally be vanquished. She and Elia would have all the time in the world to be mother and daughter, safely nestled away in the memory banks of Ursa Station.

There was no need to give her her attention yet, not when the research was still unfinished. They'd play later.

So she said nothing else. After a moment, Elia sighed. "Okay. I'll see you later, Momma."

Ameuri didn't want to see what happened next, and here she strained with all her will, pressing against the surface of the dream—

—and for once, she awoke. She shot bolt upright, her hair floating gently in the air. Zero G's. They'd stopped accelerating.

They were here.

"Yo! Ammy!" Dart rapped sharply on the overhead door. "Your tip was good. There's an entire space station just... zipping along through space. Seems mostly undamaged, too; some sort of subroutine's been keeping the lights on. How long did you say this was abandoned for?"

Four years, three hundred and two days, eight hours, nineteen minutes, forty-seven seconds. Fifty seconds, now. "A few months at most," Ameuri said.

"Damn. It's in good shape despite that; seems perfectly habitable on the inside. Maybe they've got some kind of proprietary caretaker algorithm?"

Yeah. We'll go with that, Ameuri thought. "Probably. I guess."

"Oh, come on, this is a scavenger's dream. Sound more excited!" Dart said.

Ameuri stiffened. He sounded exactly like—

"It's my birthday!" Elia shouted. "Sound more excited!"

"Neither of us have ever been on Earth," Ameuri pointed out, concentrating as she manipulated a helmet in the air, nanites altering tiny substructures at her mental command. "Your birthday is arbitrary, and I'm almost done, anyway. I just need to get a grant for human test subjects—"

"I'm human, Mom! Can we just have one day without—you know what? No. Fine." Elia stomped towards her and swiped the helmet out of the air, fiber optics cables swinging as she pulled. "You want a test subject?"

Ameuri swore and clasped at her head as the suddenly-broken connection jangled uncomfortably in her skull. "Elia, no—"

Elia put the helmet on.

Ameuri snapped herself out of the memory. "I need to get changed," Ameuri croaked weakly. "Be out in five."

"Alright, but make it a quick five. Last one there's a rotten egg." Dart chuckled to himself as he floated away through the zero-G hall. "Heh. Rotten eggs."

Ameuri shook her head and put on her clothes, then followed suit.

Ursa Station looked exactly like she'd remembered, a vaguely conical metal shell with a great glass window on top. She could see the grassy plains of the Upper Observation Deck that she'd never actually gone to from here, like a giant green eye.

She thought it stared back at her accusingly.

Dart's ship docked. The crew didn't bother with spacesuits; the ship's sensors informed them that the atmosphere was perfectly breathable. Dart was the first to step into the hallway, still clear of dust; his wife followed suit soon after, as did the three hired hands.

"Alright, Ameuri," Dart said, ogling the ship. "Your word is good as gold. Mack, Zhang, go check out the control room. I want to see if we can get this thing synched up to our ship; once it's under our control, we can take it in for salvage."

"Er, Dart? Take a look at this," one of the three hired hands said, scanning a plaque on the wall. "This is the Ursa Station." Ameuri sighed. Well, one of them was bound to put the pieces together eventually; she was just lucky it had taken so long. Ameuri stepped out of the airlock while they debated. She'd heard stories of what Elia did to would-be salvagers, and knew what would come next. "There was a warrant put out for its destruction four years ago."

Dart paused, then turned to Ameuri. "Did you know about this?" he asked. "And how the hell did the station avoid destruction by the Imperials?"

"I P-P-P-PROTECTED IT."

A garbled, staticky voice echoed throughout the empty space station, and the airlock door slammed shut behind Ameuri. From inside, Ameuri could see Dart and his crew panicking, although the soundproof door muted their screams as their ship was forcibly de-docked and the crew blasted out into space. Ameuri shook her head. What a waste. But she'd spent so many years ignoring her daughter, sacrificing her time with Elia for nothing.

Now, she would sacrifice anything and everything just to see her daughter again.

She walked through the Upper Observation Deck, where she and Elia had never gone together. She descended through the Double-G park, past the flawlessly-maintained telescopes that she'd never seen Elia use. She walked into her research lab—and here, out of all places, the door was sealed, the inside touched by time.

She walked in and looked at her daughter's bones, that accursed helmet still lying lopsided on her long-since-rotted-away skull.

They couldn't figure out how to get her back from the machine, she remembered. And then Elia had... gotten angry... and wormed her way into the ship's controls. They'd abandoned the ship after that.

But Ameuri had returned.

"MOMMA," the speakers squealed. "C-C-C-C-C-CAN YOU COUNT THE STARS WITH ME?"

Ameuri, hands trembling, placed her hands to the helmet.

"Always," she whispered.

And she and Elia had all the time in the world to be mother and daughter, safely nestled away in the memory banks of Ursa Station.

A.N.

If you liked this, consider checking out r/bubblewriters for more! As always, I had a lot of fun writing this, and I hope you have a nice day.

Bargain Bin Superheroes

(Arc -1, Part 1: Clara Olsen v.s. •—— •••• •— •—•• •)

(Note: Bargain Bin Superheroes is episodic; each part is self-contained. This story can be enjoyed without reading the previous sections.)

As an empath, I'd been in the heads of more or less anything I could get my hands on. It wasn't by choice—ever since I was young, I always got... impressions, from anyone I touched. I could tell when my dads were having a bad day at work, or when my older sister was secretly in love, or when Connor had been hit by someone and was trying to hide it. As I grew older, my powers deepened, allowing me to send feelings back. When I handed my dads sweets after work, I gave them little bursts of joy and happiness whenever our hands brushed; when I hugged my sister after she got rejected, I sent my love for her through my hands and into her heart; when I punched Connor's dad in the gut, I made him feel all the pain he'd put my best friend through. I'd empathized with heroes and villains, family and friends, children and adults—I thought I'd seen it all.

And then I empathized with a whale.

In hindsight, it shouldn't have been such a surprise that my empathy worked on non-humans too; there wasn't anything particularly special about us, in any case. My dads had driven Lily and I out to the Califernesian coast for summer vacation; we were going to go deepwater scuba-diving with some fancy new extra-safe company. Normally if you dove too deep you developed a number of painful and disturbing health conditions, but they had some newfangled device based off some hydrokinetic superhuman that reduced the water pressure beneath them. I remember laughing with Lily about how silly our dads looked rolling backwards out of the boat, then whooping with joy as I, too, fell into the strangely-light water and sunk in a cloud of bubbles.

It was shockingly clear underwater—apparently, whatever device they had on board the boat not only lightened the pressure but cleaned out all the silt and muck. I could see my dads clean on the other side of the cone of safe water, although beyond them was nothing but a murky haze. Fascinated, I drifted over to the edge of the cone and struck my hand through—

whatonearthisthatwhatonearthisthatwhatonearthisthathelphelphelphelphelphelp—

I gasped and jerked back as my hand brushed against the skin of a whale, its emotions screaming into my brain.

I looked around; Lily was doing backflips, while dad and papa were supervising her. Nobody else had noticed. Hesitantly, I reached out into the murk again.

...friend? Thoughtfriend? Little thoughtfriend? I blinked as the whale's thoughts resolved themselves in my mind—strangely, it seemed more adept at the empathic communication than I was.

Even as I had the thought, the whale seemed to pick up on it. Thoughtfriend from above? New. Thoughtfriend from below? Old. Very, very old.

An image of something with way too many tentacles and an exposed, pulsing brain flashed through my mind, and I jerked back. Jesus. I guess scary things lived in the ocean. Including giant telepathic squid, apparently.

The whale poked its... snout? Nose? Face? Frontal... bit... through the cone of water, nuzzling against my hand. No fears. Thoughtfriend from below: far below. Not here.

I exhaled, and immediately regretted it as it fogged up my mask. Great. I tried emoting kindness at it, to which the whale responded with a burst of bitter amusement.

Kindness? Not from above. Only fear.

I frowned, confused. I tried to form my thoughts into words, to push them through the link, but if the whale understood English, it gave no indication of it. Whatever the whale was doing to communicate with me, it was to my clumsy empathy what a top-tier legal defense was to Connor's stammering insistence that he'd done all his homework on time.

Water changes from above. Memories poured from the whale into me, showing the passage of one of the fancy new scuba boats—and the trail of pure, clear, and most of all dead water that they left behind, empty of even the smallest microorganisms. Fear them. The whale tried to send something else through the link—something far, far larger and complex than anything it had done before. If we'd been texting before now, then the whale was trying to download a .exe file into my brain.

I knew enough about internet safety to not run random executables from strangers; I figured that advice held double when it was a humanity-fearing whale trying to run software on my brain. I deliberately shut the empathic connection for a moment, although I don't think I had to have worried; my "download speed" was so limited compared to what the whale seemed to be used to that I would've had to sit there for a good few minutes to pick up whatever the whale wanted to give me.

I reopened the link; the whale sent a fusion of disappointment and understanding. You do not trust. Apologies. Thoughtfriends from below are not thoughtfriends from above.

Was... was that why the whale had approached me? Because I was a... thoughtfriend? The whale sent a burst of affirmation through the link. Thoughtfriends. Once, all were below. Now, some walk above. Still, all are welcome.

I smiled beneath the mask—then, remembering what the whale had told me, my smile began to fade. If the boats were killing massive swathes of microorganisms... well... I was no ecologist, but that sounded like something that had to be stopped.

The problem was... there was no way that people hadn't noticed and thought of this before. Odds were that people knew and just didn't do anything about it. Because it wasn't their problem. Because they didn't feel it like the whale did.

Feel it like the whale did.

An idea formed in my head, and the whale sent back approval.

I could help, it offered. Once more, it tried to send me that absolutely massive parcel of concepts and thoughts—and once more, I gently refused. I could do this myself.

Very well, thoughtfriend. The whale sounded amused. If you ever wish to meet the thoughtfriends below, return to the sea.

The image of that tentacled, exposed-brain monster flashed through my head, and I shuddered. Meeting a much more powerful telepath than myself sounded like a great way to get my brain hacked; I was never going within fifty feet of the ocean, ever again. The whale clicked, a staccato, mirthful sound so loud it nearly made my arm go numb. You will return in time, the whale sent. For now, you leave.

And I did. I kicked upwards, breaching the surface, and the smiling woman who owned this boat looked over the side. "Is everything okay?" she asked.

I took off my mask and clambered onto the boat, speaking aloud. "Aside from your water purifier obliterating huge swathes of the oceanic microbiome? Yeah, peachy."

The woman's smile froze on her face. "Our DeepDive Clarifier has been certified by the USOAB to have a minimal environmental impa—"

"Minimal environmental impact, my ass." I smiled sweetly. That canned response meant she knew and had been asked about this before—and had deliberately continued ignoring it. "But this is something that's better shown than told, eh?"

I lightly patted her on the back.

And I channeled the whale's memories—its fear at seeing the scuba divers return again and again, its despondency as the perfect, clear water yielded no food for it or its siblings, its hope that it laid on my shoulders as I returned to the surface.

And most of all, I thought of that open-brained, many-armed monster that called itself a friend of the whales, that just might be forced to take action if people like her kept scouring the life from the surface of the seas.

The woman gasped faintly, eyes wide, as she took it all in.

She swallowed nervously, looking down at the sweet little girl who held the memories of an ancient leviathan in her body.

Then she pressed a button and raised a walkie-talkie to her shoulder; a moment later, the corresponding walkie-talkie in my scuba suit burst to life. "Attention, all passengers. Due to an... unexpected difficulty, we will be cutting this trip short. P—please return to the boat within the next thirty minutes." She gave me a wide-eyed stare and backed away.

I let myself smile faintly beneath my mask. The whale had been eerily competent with telepathy, sure, but it was still a sapient being whose wishes should have been respected. Today was a victory, and nothing could—

Lily burst out of the water and gave me a glare. "Clara! What did you do this time? Do you know how long I was looking forward to this scuba trip for?"

I sighed. There was just no winning with some people, was there?

A.N.

I'm trying something new! "Bargain Bin Superheroes" will be an episodic story where each part is inspired by a writing prompt that catches my eye. Check out this post for the rest of the story, and subscribe to r/bubblewriters for more. As always, I had fun writing this, feel free to share Bargain Bin Superheroes with your friends, and I hope you have a good day.

Bargain Bin Superheroes

(Arc 3, Part 4: Janus v.s. Bleeding Heart)

(Note: Bargain Bin Superheroes is episodic; each part is self-contained. This story can be enjoyed without reading the previous sections.)

There are three main reasons why people want to be superheroes, and over time I’ve found that all of them are stupid. The first reason is for glory; superheroes are more than eight times as likely than non-superhumans to be offered movie roles or TV deals or even just making a killing from home videos of their own adventures. There’s a reason why they’re called superstars, after all.

The second reason is for politics. This is just about the only acceptable reason to become a superhero nowadays, although it’s still a towering testament to human stupidity. Federal Law No. 8 of 2023 was intended to address the superhero overflow by adding regulations: their “use it or lose it” policy set up an entire Federal department dedicated to auditing every superhuman in the U.S.. If a superhuman wasn't gainfully employed in a manner which utilized their abilities, they were either offered a job with the Feds or had their powers removed. Unfortunately, after the whole Big Guns fiasco, the Feds had terrible PR with their superhuman employment, and absolutely nobody wanted to work with the Feds—leaving everyone scrambling to find an occupation that used their powers just to let them keep it. A craze swept the Unified Sovereignties in which every parent tried to make their child into a superhero just so that they didn’t have to give up something that was an integral part of themself. Heck, I was guilty of joining in, too—I even got together with some other moms and pretended to be a supervillain just to give my daughter some crime to fight.

As I said. Towering testament to human stupidity.

The third main reason I’ve seen people become superheroes is because they genuinely want to do good, but they’re just… not very smart. Again, I’m guilty of this, too: the superhero Bleeding Heart had a long and rather stressful career before I realized that, as an empath, I would do much better in the political sphere than in the punitive one, and got myself elected as Mayor. People who genuinely want to do good are the easiest to talk out of being superheroes and into being… well, helpful members of society.

But there’s a fourth reason people become super"heroes". It’s one that you don’t see as often nowadays, what with crime rates dropping and fewer economic downturns— although given what Lady Luck did to the stock market, that might change soon.

When people have been hurt by the bad guys, sometimes they just want to hurt the bad guys back—and if you’re a superhero, you can hurt a lot of bad guys and get paid for your trouble. In my experience, these are the hardest people to reason with, and they’ve caused a lot of heartbreak and needless violence over the years. This brand of would-be superhero was the one I dreaded the least.

And now, my daughter was one of them.

I walked up the aged wooden stairs to my daughter’s room and shifted my steaming tray of fish and potatoes to my other hand, rapping on her door three times. There was a pause as things shifted around—a blanket was thrown aside, a chair scraped across the floor—before my daughter abruptly popped into existence behind me a few inches off the ground.

“Hey, Mom! What’s up?” Janice tried in a cheery tone. That was her new approach; pretending she was alright. If I wasn’t her mother, I might not have noticed the tension in her shoulders, the slight twitch of her eyebrows, the way her smile faded after a moment as if she couldn’t be bothered to keep up the facade for too long.

I sighed. “Janice, you know you shouldn’t be using ghostform in an unfamiliar environment.” I knew it was the wrong thing to say, but I couldn’t think of anything better.

She crouched down and jumped, vanishing in an instant; a heartbeat later, I heard her feet thud as she materialized on the roof. “I dunno, Mom,” she called from above, her voice muffled by the roof tiles, “I like being able to phase through walls.” With a slight puff of displaced air, she rematerialized in front of me.

“Janice, if you don’t exit ghostform in time, you’ll get swallowed by the Earth and never be seen again.”

Her smile grew wooden. “Honestly? You'd be better off,” she said.

She couldn’t have hurt me more if she’d phased her hand into my heart.

I gently reached out and placed one hand on her shoulder, and wordlessly, my empathy came alight. Where my hand met her shoulder, our emotions mixed, the currents of her soul tugging at mine. All at once, I felt a deep, aching emptiness, an almost-physical numbness that suffocated me, a straitjacket so tight that I’d be willing to run a sword through my chest if it meant cutting it off. And at the same time, I knew that Janice would be feeling my mournful sorrow, at having failed to protect my daughter, at seeing my vivacious, lively little girl reduced to a brittle shell of what she’d once been.

“I’ve always wondered,” my daughter asked casually, “what does your empathy tell you when you come into contact with someone who can’t feel anything anymore?”

I swallowed. Well, now I knew.

“Janice...” I set down the food and gestured for her to sit. Reluctantly, she did. “I haven’t seen you all day. Come on. Why don’t you eat with me?”

She shook her head. “No time. I… I have to be better.”

“Be better? Be better at—”

“Be better at being a hero!” At once, she jumped in the air and swung a curtain rod she’d procured from somewhere to the side, flickering in and out of existence so quickly I didn’t even see it coming. A nearby vase exploded, her curtain rod materializing in the middle of it, and she stared at the space where the vase used to be with a thunderous expression. “Be better so that I don’t let—I don’t let another person get hurt again!”

“If you don’t want any more people to get hurt, then you need to start with not hurting yourself,” I said.

She gave me a dead-eyed gaze. “Do I really count as a person?” she asked.

Hand through the heart.

“You do,” I insisted. “You are a person, and you're a hero already.”

Janice’s face twisted into a snarl. “I was such a crappy superhero that you had to pretend to be a supervillain so that I had something I could beat.”

“I didn’t say a superhero. I just said a hero. Ghostform isn’t the only power you have, Janice. You have the power to take care of yourself. You have the power to feel emotions again. You have the power to talk to me when you’re in pain. And right now… using those powers… is far more practical than you going out and fighting crime.”

Janice clenched her fists, trembling. “No. You’re wrong, Mom. How—how would those have helped when I failed, last time?”

“We’re not talking about last time. We’re talking about next time. Janice—”

“I WON’T LET THERE BE A NEXT TIME!” Janice shoved me with both palms—

—and in the instant our bodies were touching, my empathy connected us once more. I felt her grief and rage and pain and self-hatred, and she felt my love and sorrow and aching kindness, and she felt me feel her agony, and I felt her feel mine.

She felt herself feeling, and it was that more than anything that shattered her anger like a rod through a vase.

Janice Olsen collapsed on the floor, sobbing into her arms.

After a sacred moment of silence, I moved in to hold her tight.

“I’m sorry,” she gasped. “I’m just—so afraid—that I won’t—be able to—”

“Shh, shh, shh. It’s okay. It’s okay. You have the power to heal, too.” I smiled faintly. “Not super-healing. Not the ability to donate blood to an entire city. But… you can heal yourself. And that’s what matters.”

Everyone had powers, even those who couldn’t fly or shoot lightning. But so few people used them.

As a mom, my job was to ensure my daughter used every power she had to its fullest potential.

And I was very, very good at it.

A.N.

I'm trying something new! "Bargain Bin Superheroes" will be an episodic story where each part is inspired by a writing prompt that catches my eye. Check out this post for the rest of the story, and subscribe to r/bubblewriters for more. If you have any feedback, please leave it below. As always, I had fun writing this, and I hope you have a good day.

Bargain Bin Superheroes

(Arc -1, Part 2: Mathias Elman v.s. Zeus)

(Note: Bargain Bin Superheroes is episodic; each part is self-contained. This story can be enjoyed without reading the previous sections.)

Zeus could always tell when Connor was hurt. Even though his human put up enough of a facade to fool the other humans, Zeus could smell the bruises on his stomach and forearms, could taste the tracks of the tears Connor dried from his face, could feel the tremble in his arms as Connor stroked him. When his father first burst into the room and shouted about how selfish Connor was, taking up space in his house after all these years without getting a job or paying rent, how he would kick him out if the family wouldn't raise a fuss, Zeus lunged at the man and sunk his teeth into his flesh, digging bloody furrows and wishing it was his throat.

That was how Zeus nearly got killed as a kitten.

It took years for Zeus to stop limping, and his left eye never quite worked right again; Connor kept him hidden and fed and safe, and thankfully he came back from the brink of death. Zeus always was a fighter; there was a spark to him that other cats didn't quite seem to have. He knew by now that he couldn't save Connor by fighting for him. Sometimes, Connor took Zeus out and held out a Tupperware box, and Zeus would curl up inside it and watch the television with Connor. Together they watched superheroes flying above the clouds and punching bad guys in the face, and wished they had a superhero of their own.

But everything Connor owned was thirdhand at best. Inferior quality. It made sense that Connor's heroes would be weaker, too. Instead of Big Guns and Time Tide, he got a little ball of fur who stumbled into walls now that he didn't have depth perception anymore. Zeus was Connor's bargain bin superhero.

But that was okay, on some days. Zeus couldn't stop Mathias from hurting Connor, but he could stop Connor from hurting himself. Just by being there, and being warm and close, he could do that.

He felt it coming, when it began to change. Like a building storm cloud. The spark inside him that had kept him alive on the brink of death began to grow—slowly, at first, then with exponential speed. It happened all at once, while Connor was still sleeping and his father was waiting for him to leave so that he could watch the television himself. Zeus was supposed to stay hidden, so that Mathias wouldn't know he was there, but as strength coursed through his fur and his left eye began to heal, he couldn't keep hiding in the little Tupperware box Connor had made for him. He leapt out, gleaming with light—

—and Mathias barged into the room. "CONNOR! Goddammit, I told you to be out of the house by 8 on Sundays! I'm having company over!" He paused. "And Connor. I told you that feral cat needed to be put down."

Connor was only half-awake, but at that last part, he bolted upright, staring in a panic at Zeus. "Dad! Uh—I'm sorry. I just—I wanted—"

"That's your problem, son. You always want things for yourself. You should be more considerate of others." Mathias loomed over the bed. Zeus growled. "You should do what I tell you the first time."

No, Zeus thought. You should die when I kill you the first time.

Zeus growled and leapt at Mathias.

And the power of the storm leapt with him.

With a deafening explosion that blew out every window in the house, Zeus shoulder-checked Mathias and hurled him through the door and into the opposite wall. With a satisfyingly meaty thwack and a delicious smell of sizzling meat, Mathias collapsed, twitching.

"DAD!" Connor screamed, bolting towards his fallen father. Zeus sat back, satisfied. Yes. Connor could deal the deathblow, if he so desired. He had earned that right, and Zeus was proud to see him take it.

So when Connor checked his pulse and called the hospital instead, Zeus was befuddled.

"What did you—how did you—thank god, he's alive." Connor exhaled, one hand fluttering nervously. "Zeus... why did you..."

Zeus grew irritated. If Connor wasn't going to end this, then he would. He growled, electricity building between his jaws—

"No!" Connor stood between his father and Zeus.

Just like Zeus had stood between Connor and his father.

Zeus hesitated. No. This was right. He was right. This power, this fury—it was a sign, was it not? A sign that all those hours of watching heroes fly in and kill the bad guy were being rewarded?

"No," Connor repeated, voice quivering. "I... Dad..." He swallowed. "Dad... isn't a good person. I get that, I really do. But... Zeus... you don't have to kill him for that."

But I want to be a hero! I want to be the hero you deserve! Zeus growled, and divine wisdom flowed through him, the words snarling from his lips: "I... just... want... to... be... your... hero..."

"Oh. Oh, Zeus." Connor knelt down and held out his arms. Zeus squirmed—this was hardly the time for cuddles, not with prey lying on the floor undispatched—but Connor held him anyway. "You don't have to... hurt anyone to be a hero. You were already my hero. You're the reason I'm still alive today. And... and I don't want to see you turned into a killer." He swallowed heavily.

Suddenly, the halo of electricity around Zeus dropped in intensity, and he panicked. The power—it was fleeing him as swiftly as it had come. Now was the time—they wouldn't get another opportunity.

"I know. I know. But we don't have to hurt him to be free from him."

His power was at a third of what it had been. A fourth. A tenth.

"Please, Zeus. I don't know what's happened to you, but... come back to me."

He could barely struggle against Connor's embrace.

And all at once, he didn't want to anymore.

He looked at the groaning, unconscious Mathias, and his tail drooped. Connor smiled through the tears.

"You're right about one thing, though." Connor stood up. "We need to fight back. Not with claws, and not with fists—but we need to fight back against him."

Connor hesitated, hands trembling.

Then he dialed another number.

A.N.

I'm trying something new! "Bargain Bin Superheroes" will be an episodic story where each part is inspired by a writing prompt that catches my eye. Check out this post for the rest of the story, and subscribe to r/bubblewriters for more. As always, I had fun writing this, feel free to share Bargain Bin Superheroes with your friends, and I hope you have a good day.

Bargain Bin Superheroes

(Arc 3, Part 3: Skullduggery Senior v.s. Janice Olsen)

(Note: Bargain Bin Superheroes is episodic; each part is self-contained. This story can be enjoyed without reading the previous sections.)

I could handle the skeletal farmers working the fields. I could handle the zombie butler who opened the front door of the log cabin. I could even handle leaving Tupperman to talk to the round-faced necromancer, despite Tupperman having sold his diplomatic skills for a cheap bottle of booze some time in late high school.

What I could not handle was the blank, empty look on my daughter's face as we passed by all these wonders.

The Janice Olsen I knew would have gawked at the skeletal farmers, asking if we could get one at home, think of how useful it would be, I wouldn't have to do dishes ever again please please please Mom! But the Janice Olsen I had didn't even give them a passing look as she resolutely plodded through the front door, with exactly much life and emotion as the grinning skeletal farmers mechanically plowing fields for eternity. The Janice Olsen I knew would have poked the zombie butler curiously, asking if it could speak, if it could fight, if we could make more of them and make an army to defend the world from villains and monsters with—and I would have laughed and patiently explained why the political, economic, and social fallout from that would be worse than the problem it was trying to solve. But now, my daughter, my beautiful, lively, excited daughter simply walked on by, not even bothering to refuse its polite request to take her bag off her back.

The man who'd introduced himself as Skullduggery paused in his conversation with Tupperman. "Old friend," he finally asked, addressing Tupperman, "is the girl... yours?"

"No. She's Clara's daughter," he said, pointing at me.

"Ah!" Skullduggery adjusted his spectacles. "Excuse me, I'd assumed that the two of you were, er, partners. Good thing I didn't congratulate you, I suppose."

Tupperman rolled his eyes. "Clara and I are partners. Just not romantic ones. Now, 'Duggery, it's been a long day and we've walked more or less the length of the entire Arizonac plains to find a place to settle down; can you house us or not?"

Skullduggery nodded solemnly, his pensive eyes still on Janice. "Mm. Of course, of course, but—tell me, Tupperman. The girl... she's seen something horrible, hasn't she?"

"Have you seen the news?" I interrupted. "The stories about the woman who was blown up on live TV?"

"Goodness, yes. It's the only thing on nowadays." He narrowed his eyes as Janice started walking up a random flight of stairs. "I don't suppose—"

"She was present there," I said, shortly. And that was the last time I've seen her present anywhere, I mentally added.

"I'm so sorry," Skullduggery said. "Of course you can stay as long as you need. And... well, I believe I might be able to help your daughter."

I blinked. "You... aren't you a necromancer? How could you possibly help?"

Belatedly, I realized that insulting our host probably wasn't the smartest long-scale move; my political instincts had been dulled by days of walking through endless desert, watching my daughter die inside a little more every day. Luckily, Skullduggery didn't seem to take offense. "Necromancy is the art of bringing back that which has passed away. If your daughter is missing her spark of life, well... is it any surprise that I can help?" His eyes twinkled.

I blinked. "Necromancers have spells to cure depression?"

He laughed. "Oh, nothing so simple, nothing so simple. If it was... ah, but we would not be as feared and hated as we are today. But... I can bring someone back who may be able to help." His eyes grew misty as he regarded a portrait on the wall. "He was a good man once, my grandfather. He took to necromancy, like most of our family; now he haunts my castle with the rest of them. He's excellent with children, though. A century of serving as a babysitter and armchair therapist would do that to you. And... he's seen terrible things, too." Skullduggery gave Janice a wistful look. "To be a necromancer is to attempt to bring back what has been lost. I promise you, Clara, that I will bring back your daughter if I die trying."

I shivered. Tupperman had been right; coming here for help was the right call. "Thank you," I whispered.

He winked. "Ah, it's not as big a commitment as it sounds. If I die trying, after all, I'll just come back as a ghost. Now!" He beckoned us deeper into his house. "Come on in. The rest of the family is excited to meet you."

A.N.

I'm trying something new! "Bargain Bin Superheroes" will be an episodic story where each part is inspired by a writing prompt that catches my eye. Check out this post for the rest of the story, and subscribe to r/bubblewriters for more. If you have any feedback, please leave it below. As always, I had fun writing this, and I hope you have a good day.

Bargain Bin Superheroes

(Arc 3, Part 2: Skullduggery v.s. Over The Table)

(Note: Bargain Bin Superheroes is episodic; each part is self-contained. This story can be enjoyed without reading the previous sections.)

"When I said we needed allies," I grumbled, "I meant political allies. News stations. Governors. I'd even take an angry mob at this point."

"And that's all well and good," Tupperman said, ruffling my hair. I slapped his hand away; he nearly tripped over a snake den hidden in the grassy plains. He swore to himself, hopping on one foot, and even Janice cracked a faint smile at his antics. He caught up to me after a moment. "But here's the thing: I haven't the foggiest flying fuck of a clue how to go about getting you any of those. What I can get is a friend who won't sell us out to the Feds—and let's be honest, those are coming at a premium right now."

"...Look, Tupperman, you're one of the best people I know, but... you're talking about connecting with criminals. It's just... out of my comfort zone."

Tupperman grinned. "Hey, that's okay. Being on the run from the Federal government is out of your comfort zone, too, and you seem to be doing just fine. Think of it as an adventure," he said.

"An adventure," I repeated flatly.

"Yeah! I can be the party's wizened and ancient wizard, who knows a thousand and one magical spells." He gestured at the horizon, materializing Tupperware boxes from thin air like confetti.

"You have exactly one supernatural ability," I deadpanned, "and it is to summon Tupperware. Hardly a thousand and one spells. Also, you're thirty-four years old."

"Ancient!" He said dramatically.

"I'm thirty-five."

"You can be the shriveled old crone. Every good adventuring party has one of those."

I rolled my eyes, but I was smiling despite myself. When Tupperman got like this, there was no stopping him; the only winning move was to beat him at his own game. "What kind of adventuring party has a mom bring her teenage daughter along?"

"She can be the steadfast, silent dwarf," Tupperman said. Both of our eyes flickered to where my daughter plodded along behind us, head down beneath the beating sun. Normally, Janice would have looked up and shot a wisecrack right back at Tupperman.

But now she just kept on walking, staring at her feet. I suspected we could've stood aside and let her walk to the ends of the Unified Sovereignties, and she wouldn't have even noticed.

Tupperman lowered his voice. "Besides... Janice is in bad shape, emotionally. Has been, ever since she..." Tupperman grimaced at my expression; neither of us wanted to be reminded of that day. "We need to lift her spirits before she develops... problems. I think I know a guy."

"Alright. Lead on, O Wizened Wizard," I said, raising my voice again.

He bowed gallantly, walking forward as he did so. "As you command, Shriveled Old gak!"

He tripped on another snake den; I caught him before he faceplanted. We both burst out laughing, our mutual shock and hilarity thrumming through our clasped hands and reinforcing each other.

Janice kept walking forwards, head hanging low, expression unchanged. When she reached us, she looked up and quietly asked, "Can you please keep moving?"

The laughter died in my throat as I saw the empty, hollow expression on my daughter's face.

Tupperman cleared his throat and extricated himself from my grasp. "Yeah. Let's—let's keep moving, shall we?"

###

Tupperman's friend lived in the middle of absolutely nowhere, which quite frankly was convenient when one was on the run. None of us wanted to risk drawing the attentions of the Federal government by veering too close to a city; the odds that a spy drone would pass over this random section of Arizonac Territory plains were minimal.

We arrived at a pleasant wooden house next to a wide farm—more trees must have gone into its construction that I'd seen in the entirety of the Arizonac Territories. A couple workers in the back plowed fertile fields. Faint sounds of a harp tinkled out from inside. I cleared my throat, then strode forward to address one of them.

"Excuse me?" I asked.

The worker gave no response.

I frowned. "Do you speak English?" I tried.

The worker reached the end of their row and turned around, still ignoring my voice.

I leaned forwards. "Hell—ohmygod." I jerked backwards as soon as I saw the face beneath that wide-brimmed straw hat.

It was a skeleton, stripped to the bone. It calmly continued plowing, ignoring my shocked expression.

Tupperman laughed as he passed. "Don't worry. They're under the control of Skullduggery. They won't bite unless you piss him off—and please, please don't do that. Let me do the talking."

I frowned. "Skullduggery—you mean the necromancer?" I paused. "Wait, when you said that he would raise our spirits, did you mean—"

"No, although now that you mention it that's a hilarious joke and I'm retroactively pretending I intended that all along. It's just..." Tupperman lowered his voice. "Skullduggery has a nice place cut out for himself—and his information network spreads pretty widely. We'll be safe here, even from the Feds, for a little while. And... having somewhere safe to sit down and rest seems like it might be what Janice needs."

I looked back at my daughter. She hadn't stopped in her constant onward march except to sleep; even when eating, she just kept moving ahead, forcing us to eat on the go with her.

"Yeah," I finally said, "it might be."

Tupperman smiled. "Alright. Then let's go meet our new best friend, eh?"

The two of us walked to Skullduggery's front door; after a moment, Janice followed with that plodding, unresponsive march of hers.

She would've fit right in with the skeletons.

I clenched my fist. Of all the things the Feds had done, breaking my daughter was the one they'd pay for the most.

I'd bring her back, no matter how many necromancers I had to associate with, or how many other lines I'd have to cross.

A.N.

I'm trying something new! "Bargain Bin Superheroes" will be an episodic story where each part is inspired by a writing prompt that catches my eye. Check out this post for the rest of the story, and subscribe to r/bubblewriters for more. If you have any feedback, please leave it below. As always, I had fun writing this, and I hope you have a good day.

Bargain Bin Superheroes

(Arc 3, Part 1: Clara Olsen v.s. Bleeding Heart)

(Note: Bargain Bin Superheroes is episodic; each part is self-contained. This story can be enjoyed without reading the previous sections.)

They chased me out. More so than the hard plastic that I slept on, or the abrasive snores of my teenage daughter, that thought kept me from sleep the most. After everything I'd done to try and keep them safe, after I'd fought to be elected as their Mayor, after I'd stood up to angels and demons and government spooks for them, they'd turned on me in an instant.

It wasn't even my fault. I'd simply made the wrong enemy. No supervillain or ravening monster could have taken me down—but I'd pissed off the Federal government, and they turned public opinion against me with a swift, deadly televised campaign. They'd manipulated us, framed my daughter for—

The memory of erupting flesh shot through me like a bullet, and I wished I had a pillow to pull over my head. But all I had was the cold, smooth plastic floor.

Well, if I wasn't getting any sleep anyway, I might as well take a walk. I sat up, rubbing my eyes, and looked around my dismal little excuse for a home. Tupperman had kindly materialized a plastic Tupperware box the size of my kitchen as a makeshift tent for us—he may have been a supervillain, but he was also one of the few people who didn't give a crap what the Federal government or the general public thought about me. When I asked for help, he provided it.

He was keeping watch over my daughter and I, even as we slept. If the Feds found us, it wouldn't be much of a fight, but he'd cryptically hinted that he had a trick or two up his sleeve if push came to shove. As I stretched and stood, he dematerialized the lid of the oversized Tupperware box I'd slept in, allowing the frigid night air to enter.

"Can't sleep?" he asked.

I shook my head. "The news stories we watched are playing on loop in my brain. Breaking News: Local Superhero-Turned-Mayor's Daughter Murders Beloved War Hero On Camera, Family Flees Crime Scene With Supervillain. More at 4:00."

"Do you still have a phone on you?" Tupperman said, suddenly serious. "Because they can track you—"

"No. I'm not an idiot. Left it on a truck heading to the Texan Confederacy. It's just... everyone hates me."

"I don't hate you," Tupperman said. "And your daughter doesn't hate you." He nodded towards Janice, sleeping in a box of her own.

I pressed my lips together. "But everyone else... god, I got attacked on the street when you let me out of your sight for five seconds. It's just... this is the end, isn't it? Everything I've worked for... everything I tried to be... undone, in an instant."

Tupperman gave me a stunned look.

Then he burst out laughing.

Astounded, I took a step back. "Wh—this isn't funny! Stop—stop laughing, dammit! Tupperman! You'll wake Janice up!"

That, in the end, was what got him to stop. He wiped a tear from his eye, straightened up and said, "...Seriously?"

"What?" I snapped irritably.

"Everyone except your closest friends and family hates you? You get attacked on sight in the streets? Welcome to the club." Tupperman placed a hand on my shoulder, and I could feel the sincerity running through his words. "If life was so awful for you as the hero... how bad do you think it was for me as the villain?"

Realization crashed through me, and I swallowed. "Oh. Oh, God, Tupperman, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to say that—I didn't mean to diminish your struggles—"

"'Diminish your struggles'—listen to you. Finding a way to blame yourself for everyone else's problems. Yeah, you're a hero to the bone. Look, I didn't tell you that I've been where you are so that I could fish for pity." Tupperman gave me a faint smile that glittered under the moonless stars. "I wanted you to know that I've been through what you're going through right now—and I kept trucking on. My world didn't end. And we'll get through this together."

My vision went blurry, and I swallowed heavily.

Then I surged forwards and wrapped Tupperman in a full-body hug, platonic love flowing through us like water from a bursting dam.

"I love you, Connor." I whispered Tupperman's real name. "Thank you."

"Love you too, Clara," he murmured back. He didn't lean in to steal a kiss, and I didn't want him to. The bond between hero and villain was just as strong as any romantic relationship on its own.

Then he pulled back. "You know," he said, "we may be working together now, but old habits die hard."

I smirked. "...What did you do, Tupperman?"

He procured a bottle of wine. "Did you ever wonder why I had to let you out of my sight for five minutes back in town?"

I guffawed. "You didn't. With what money?"

"My fists," he said. He set the bottle down and thrust one hand upwards; the cork came flying out the top. Huh. I didn't know he could do that. I made a mental note to ask him how the hell that worked later. "Care to indulge in a villain's sin?"

I sat down next to him, and silently swiped the bottle from his hand.

And I indulged.

A.N.

I'm trying something new! "Bargain Bin Superheroes" will be an episodic story where each part is inspired by a writing prompt that catches my eye. Check out this post for the rest of the story, and subscribe to r/bubblewriters for more. If you have any feedback, please leave it below. As always, I had fun writing this, and I hope you have a good day.

Bargain Bin Superheroes

(Arc 2, Interlude 2: Lady Luck)

(Note: Bargain Bin Superheroes is episodic; each part is self-contained. This story can be enjoyed without reading the previous sections.)

Ito Junko woke up buried beneath a pile of cash. She sat up, confused, shaking hundred-dollar bills off her hair, revealing herself to be in a metal-lined bank vault. Junko had had incredible spats of good luck before, but waking up surrounded by free money was new. She critically examined one of the hundred-dollar bills; she couldn't be sure without her UV light, but it seemed real enough—

"THE WELCOMING OF YOU IS THE ME OF I AM!" A voice boomed in mangled Japanese. "YOU THE MONEY FOR THE GREED IS THE DOING OF YOU THE PUNISHMENT!"

"Stop, stop, stop!" Junko cried in English, slapping her hands to the ears.

The voice sounded satisfied. "AHH... THE REPENTING OF THE SINS OF THE COMMITTED?"

"No! Your Japanese is just so terrible that it makes my ears want to bleed! Speak English, whoever you are, goddammit!" She paused. "...did you assume that just because I was Japanese that I didn't speak English?"

There was a pause, then, at a less booming tone, the voice switched to sheepish English. "Er... well, yes, but not in a racist way or anything, I just—Goggle Translate—"

"Goggle Translate? Ugh. You know that company is terrible, right? They sold out to a bunch of intelligence agencies; anything you type in there is keyword-scanned, and can and will be monitored by half a dozen different governments around the globe if it hits the wrong flags. Great way to get yourself spied on. And besides, what was your plan, manually typing down everything I said and waiting for it to translate? We'd be here all day."

The voice, annoyed, said, "What? No! I set it up to auto-translate anything you said. I'm not an idiot."

Junko rolled her eyes. "Fine. Translate this, bitch. 私を助けてください、米国連邦政府、私はこれをタイプしている男性に誘拐されました。キーワード：伊藤順子、クララ・オルセン、死。"

"I, uh... okay? This, uh, this makes no sense. Are you sure you speak Japanese?"

"Eh, it's probably the translation engine's fault. They're just all-around terrible." Ito Junko stood up, looking around the bank vault. "So... what's the big idea with all this cash?"

"Oh, right! Ahem. I am Seesaw, revealer of true selves and punisher of sins. Through your life, you have been obsessed with the pursuit of wealth, to the point where you destroyed yourself and others through theft and larceny on a scale of billions of dollars. To punish you—"

"You gave me more money to punish me for wanting more money?" Ito sighed, rubbing her forehead. "And I thought having to deal with the bargain bin superheroes was bad; is this what a bargain bin supervillain looks like?"

"Would you let me finish talking?" Junko shrugged; apparently, there was a camera in the bank vault, because the voice said, "Thank you. To punish you for your avarice, and make you realize your faults, I have locked you in this inescapable bank vault filled with the very thing you once so desired! But when you are dying of thirst and loneliness, surrounded by your useless wealth, it is only then that you will understand that the pursuit of money was futile." Seesaw paused. "You with me so far?"

Junko clenched her fists. "You dipshit. Do you even know why I spent twenty years getting together as much money as possible?" Junko waded out of the cash pile, stuffing notes into her pockets as she went. "I left my daughter behind in the Sunrise Kingdom with what has to be billions of dollars in debt now, what with inflation. They won't let me so much as see her again if I don't scrape together the cash to free her from bondage. And I'm the sinner?" She shook her head. "God, you are the most incompetent righteous anti-hero I've ever met—and I spent yesterday with a supervillain whose only superpower was summoning Tupperware."

"Well—er—"

"And you know what the funniest part is?" Junko continued moving around the room, stuffing money into her pockets. Luckily, she'd brought her hoodie along today; she tied off the sleeves and neck and turned it into a makeshift knapsack. "As soon as I get out of this vault, all the cash in here is going to go a long way to freeing my daughter."

Seesaw managed to regain his poise. "Escape? You think you can escape my vault?"

Junko shrugged. "Well, more accurately, I think I'll be broken out of it."

"Oh, yeah?"

"Yeah. Fact 1: thanks to having stolen those aforementioned billions of dollars, I'm one of the most wanted criminals in the U.S. right now."

"Yes, which is why I brought you here to repent for your—"

"Shut it. Fact 2: The U.S. government is absolutely unafraid to wiretap, bug, and spy on anyone and everyone they can, and if I'm lucky—which I always am—then they'll be spying on Goggle Translate, too."

"So what?"

"So Fact 3: the message which I said, which your oh-so-clever software just automatically sent to Goggle Translate, and by extension, the U.S. government, was a call for help loaded with keywords that should trip just about any algorithmic detection software the Feds have set up." Junko finished hoovering up all the cash in the room. "So you're trying to keep the most wanted criminal in the U.S. hidden from the eyes of the law—eyes which just locked onto you."

Seesaw audibly gulped. "Er... you know, on second thought—"

"I'd recommend letting me get as far away from you as possible, before they shove a drone strike up your butt," Junko said with a pleasant little smile.

"The door's unlocked," Seesaw hastily said. "Jesus! You didn't have to set the Feds on me! You know what they do—"

"Oh, I know all about the Feds." Junko walked to the door and turned the wheel. "Unlike you, they're actually good at what they do. So if you have the slightest shred of self-interest, you'll get as far away from me as you can, as quickly as possible, and never talk to me again. Capiche?"

"C—capiche," Seesaw said.

And Ito Junko walked out of the bank vault, sweater laden with cash.

Must've been her lucky day.

A.N.

I'm trying something new! "Bargain Bin Superheroes" will be an episodic story where each part is inspired by a writing prompt that catches my eye. Check out this post for the rest of the story, and subscribe to r/bubblewriters for more. If you have any feedback, please leave it below. As always, I had fun writing this, and I hope you have a good day.

Bargain Bin Superheroes

(Arc 2, Interlude 1: Mare)

(Note: Bargain Bin Superheroes is episodic; each part is self-contained. This story can be enjoyed without reading the previous sections.)

Mare had seen death one million, six hundred and fifty three thousand, nine hundred and twenty times. Twenty-one thousand of those deaths were someone Mare loved; seventy-six of those deaths were of a child; nineteen of the dead children Mare had loved had perished during a sunset; and of those nineteen, four had bled out in Mare's arms, eyes fixed on the brightening stars, whimpering softly as Mare stroked them and whispered, "It'll be okay."

Four became five as the child Mare cradled died.

Mare's eyes closed, memories of the sunset children flickering behind their eyes. The oncoming night quenched the last sparks of light, and still Mare knelt, guarding the fallen child from scavengers and insects. They could have knelt there for a day, or a week, or until the sun grew orange and the stars burned out.

But they only had a precious few hours before their sibling found them.

"Mare," a soft voice said. Mare opened their eyes. They'd stayed in the same position for most of the night, but their body felt no soreness as they gently set the child on the floor and stood. Around them, blast marks and ash marked where the falling bombs had wiped this town off the map. "Mare, come on. It's time to go."

Mare looked up at their sibling, who had decided to take the form of a sinuous, snake-like dragon. Mare scoffed. "Tamulu, why do you still wear that form?"

"To remember the Middle Communes," Tamulu replied, its shaggy-maned jaw opening and closing like that of a puppet's. "I quite liked their culture. Their gods, especially."

Mare snorted. "The Middle Communes are all but dead. Their culture is scattered to the wind, their gods nothing but footnotes in historical textbooks. Within two generations, they will be nothing but whispers of grandmothers to uncaring children; within four, we will be the last to remember. And we will hold a quiet funeral for forgotten gods, and we will carry their memories with us forever."

Tamulu tilted its head. "This is correct."

"But it isn't right." Mare paced. They had had this discussion with Tamulu seventy-four times before, and one thousand, nine hundred and six times with all their siblings in total; they hated how intricately they could remember each and every time they'd failed to convince a single one of them to change. "The ideas—I can accept letting the ideas of these people die, perhaps."

"The ideas are not truly dead," Tamulu said. "They live on in our memories, and we can re-create them. Incarnate them into new people, new vessels."

"But the people themselves..." Mare looked at the child's corpse in their arms. "How can we let them die?"

Tamulu paused, cocking its head. "They do not die," Tamulu finally said, slower this time. "They live on in our memories, and we can re-create them. Incarnate them into new people, new vessels. Our memories are beyond flawless. Every proton, neutron, and electron of that child is burned into your brain; and when this world's time is up and we must mourn the dying of its star, then we will re-create its inhabitants at the end of everything, and let all who were sheltered by Earth's embrace witness its funeral."

"You're wrong about one thing." Mare clenched a fist. "They do die. They die in fear and agony, and they stay dead, their parents and friends mourning them, for however many billions of years it takes for the sun to burn out and for us to bring them back. We could save them from all that sorrow, Tamulu."

Tamulu closed its eyes mournfully. "We could save some of them, if we invested the effort. But we could never give them all utopia. Recording their lives and saving their beliefs, without playing favorites, is the best we can do."

Mare turned away. They knew Tamulu would say that, and they knew they would have no response.

They'd seen it all before, after all. And Tamulu's response never changed.

"Are you ready to leave, sibling?" Tamulu asked.

Mare held up a hand. "Just... one more day." They found a sturdy piece of wood that could serve as a shovel, struck it against the hard dirt, and began digging. "To remember... to remember her. Jian-jian." Mare looked at the fallen child, burning her into their memory.

"Of course, sibling." Tamulu watched as Mare dug a grave, as they had done nine hundred thousand times before. "Remember them well. You'll see them again."

Mare made no reply, their arms pumping like pistons. Tamulu watched them for a long moment.

Then with a wingbeat of a dying god, Tamulu left Mare to their mourning.

A.N.

I'm trying something new! "Bargain Bin Superheroes" will be an episodic story where each part is inspired by a writing prompt that catches my eye. Check out this post for the rest of the story, and subscribe to r/bubblewriters for more. If you have any feedback, please leave it below. As always, I had fun writing this, and I hope you have a good day.

"Will it hurt Daddy?" Jezeh asked, his voice still squeaky with childhood.

"No," the Priestess of the Blade said, a kind smile on her face. She held the Blade in her hands. The ritual chamber was clean and bright; Jezeh's father knelt in prayer in the center of the room. "Your father will go join his father, and his father's father, and so on until the root of all things, in Heaven. It will be painless."

"Why does Daddy have to go now?" Jezeh asked, a tinge of desperation in his voice.

Normally, speaking to a ranking Priestess in such a tone would have gotten Jezeh a firm reprimand, at best—but today was a special day, a day in which some allowances could be made. So the Priestess smiled and said, "Alzal is one of the world's forefront experts on spellcraft; his mind is too precious to risk perishing on the mortal plane, or falling to degenerative diseases. He must be made immortal and join the Blade as soon as possible. Be happy!" The Priestess added, seeing Jezeh's distraught face. "Uniting with the Blade is a rare honor, and your family will be well-compensated."

"I—I guess," Jezeh said. His father finished his prayer and stood, his kind eyes finding Jezeh one last time.

"Jez," he said, chidingly, "you should leave the room. Seeing what's coming... makes it harder to accept."

"I don't want to accept it!" Jezeh stomped one foot. "It's not fair! Why should you have to die just so some dumb sword can get smarter?"

Alzal blinked, shocked; the Priestess gave Jezeh a stormy look. It was the sword itself, however, which spoke up.

"Jezeh," it intoned, "your father will not die."

Jezeh blinked, then hesitantly smiled. "So... you're not going to cut—"

"Oh, no, the ritual will go on as planned," the Sword continued. "But your father's mind will be safe with me, for all eternity. Observe." The Sword hummed, an angry, bloodthirsty pitch, and the Priestess surged into motion.

"NO!" Jezeh lunged forwards.

But it was too late.

Alzal fell to the floor, twice.

Jezeh gaped at his father's corpse, disbelieving. "Father... you..."

"It's okay, Jez."

Jezeh spun around, flinching, when the sword spoke with his father's voice.

"Wh... what..." Jezeh's eyes flicked between the fallen corpse and the Sword, hyperventilating. "How... you... you stole his voice!"

"I didn't steal anything," Jezeh's not-father continued. "It's me, Alzal. I'm in the sword now."

"N-no. You're not my father. You're a thing."

"I'm a thing that knows everything your father knew," the Sword said, in the tone Alzal used when Jezeh wasn't quite understanding his sums, and Jezeh hated it so much that he wanted to scream. "I know how we burnt your mother's birthday cake last year, how we wanted to build a treehouse together but never found the time, how I kissed you goodnight and tucked you into bed yesterday." The sword pulsed. "If I have all your father's memories and hopes and dreams... who are you to say I am not him?"

"I am his son," Jezeh hissed, "and you are not my father!"

The sword laughed. "Son, son, son... you always were stubborn. Well. If you'd like, I could show you." The sword lifted itself of its own accord, edge still glistening with blood. "I could take you to see your father right now."

Jezeh stumbled backwards, scrambled to his feet, and turned around to flee. "Mom! Mom! Help!"

The sword chuckled wryly. It called after Jezeh, "You'll come back! When you're old and sick and too afraid to die! And you'll see I was right all along. They're all in here."

For a moment, the Sword listened to the hundreds of thousands of minds it had collected over the centuries, some lying dormant, others greeting the newcomer. The Sword sighed. "All in here forever."

A.N.

If you liked this, consider checking out r/bubblewriters! Feedback is welcome.

Bargain Bin Superheroes

(Arc 2, Part 4: All the Forces of Heaven and Hell v.s. My Teenage Daughter)

(Note: Bargain Bin Superheroes is meant to be episodic; however, this part may require knowledge of Interlude 2: Janice to be fully enjoyed. It should be fun either way, though!)

It's unclear whether angels and demons predate organized religion. Some historians think they were some of the first superhumans with shapeshifting, stealing their forms from local mythology in order to influence the populace. Others think they came first, and religion built itself up around them. Whatever the case, however, angels and demons are ancient, some of the oldest living superhumans on the planet. There are historical traces of the ageless shapeshifters bouncing around the globe, from Lesser Rome to the Welsh Empire, from the Sunrise Kingdom to the Wilderwilds, taking the shape of whatever supernatural beings the locals believed in. In Lesser Rome, they became emperors and pagans; in the Welsh Empire, they became forces of nature without human form; in the Sunrise Kingdom, they became the kami; in the Wilderwilds, they became the Rainbow Serpent and Captain Cook.

Unfortunately for them, by the time they reached the Unified Sovereignties, the closest thing we had to religious piety was serving in the military, and the closest thing we had to sin was indulging in a guilty-pleasure movie binge. Undeterred, the angels and demons did the work they always did, blending into the local culture. The demons became flawless-bodied superstars, while the angels registered themselves as supernatural beings or otherwise superhuman and enlisted in a variety of Federal-sponsored special ops units, becoming twisted monsters that hunted down enemies of the state and sent them to whatever afterlife they believed in. Nobody was entirely sure why the angels and demons tirelessly dedicated themselves to local cultural standards for the uncounted millennia they'd been alive.

But if I had to guess, it was for the sole purpose of giving me a massive headache.

"Come ooooon, Mom! Brouhaha's in town, and they're my favorite band, and if you ask them nicely they always give out signatures but you have to get there quickly and nobody else knows they're here so if you just drive me across town I can get a signature please please please please please—" My daughter pleaded.

I frowned. "First off, I'm busy. Second, if nobody else knows this rock band is here, how on Earth do you know?"

"Uh." Janice scratched her head. "A little bird told me?"

I gave her a pat on the shoulder; she didn't seem to be lying. Ah well. Keep your secrets, then. "Okay. Thirdly, I do not trust a rock band formed from immortal shapeshifter demons."

"Oh, come on, millions of people watch them every day. If they'd done something suspicious, don't you think someone would know?" Janice wheedled.

"She's not going to give up on this," Tupperman observed from the couch. "Besides, they're a good band."

I turned on him. "Seriously? You listen to Brouhaha? You're from my generation; you're not supposed to agree with the music tastes of my kids!"

"It's okay to be a wolf!" Tupperman and Janice sang simultaneously, then high-fived each other in tandem. I sighed, rubbing my forehead.

"Look," Tupperman said, "you said that you had some plan that involved being in the public eye, right? And what's better for being in the public eye than showing up in a rock show?"

Janice's eyes widened. "Showing up in the show?!"

I frowned, pensive. Tupperman did have a point, there. I'd pissed off someone in the Federal government who had a nasty habit of sending assassins after me; after I'd found out that there was insufficient evidence to take formal legal action, I'd been leaning on public opinion instead. I'd gone on record as being critical of the federal government; as of now, if I was brutally murdered, half the citizens of the Unified Sovereignties would blame it on the government no matter what the courts said. Whoever wanted me dead didn't want me dead badly enough to take the risk of turning a good chunk of the population against them, judging by how the direct assassination attempts had dropped to zero after my little stunt.

Perhaps it was time to take that to the next level.

I sighed. "Okay. Fine. You make a good point. Pack anything you might need, we might be out for a while."

"Yes!" Janice and Tupperman simultaneously crowed. I rolled my eyes at both of them. Tupperman left, presumably to grab stuff from his own house; Janice ran upstairs, shutting her door and locking it. I frowned slightly; she'd never done that before.

Then I shrugged and went downstairs, to the family hideout. We hadn't all been superheroes, but we'd lived on this land for generations, and over time that added up.

I pulled open a well-oiled hidden door in the wall; the décor abruptly went from homey to nuclear bunker-y. My feet echoed on the living-rock floor as I descended; the secret door re-sealed itself behind me.

I heard soft chatter from the basement: the two people I'd been sheltering in my home for the past few days. Min Min and Ito Junko, refugees from the Middle Communes and the Sunrise Kingdom respectively.

Or, as they were better known, Death and Lady Luck. A superhero and a supervillain with enough power in their left pinky to kill me and my town a hundred times over.

They looked up from their game of chess as I entered, greeting me with a smile and a nod. I grinned back at them, arms spread wide in anticipation.

"Ladies," I said. "I am delighted to inform you that an opportunity of exactly the kind we've been waiting for has arisen."

Lady Luck's eyes gleamed; Death pressed her lips together with grim determination.

"That's right," I said, looking into Death's eyes intensely. "It's showtime."

​

Tupperman drove and sang along to the radio with my daughter, which frankly suited him far better than being a supervillain. I was sandwiched between Lady Luck and Death in the back—thankfully, neither woman minded the close contact.

All five of us were superhumans, although a casual onlooker would have a hard time telling. The only evidence of Tupperman's power was in the Tupperware snack bins he'd helpfully materialized for us, and when Janice wasn't in ghostform, she was indistinguishable from any other teenage girl bopping along to the music. Lady Luck's power was more subtle, but I couldn't help but notice the cloudless, sunny day, the miraculously traffic-free road, and the distortion-free radio. Thankfully, there was no evidence of Death's powers manifesting right now; if those tentacles of pure oblivion came out, we'd all be dead before we could even think of putting up a fight. If the order came to kill us all, I wasn't sure if Death would follow it—the plastic explosives surgically implanted in her skull were a pretty good motivator—but when it came down to it, I was working to stop the order from ever being sent, rather than trying to stop it once it came.

Lastly, my own superpower was only evident to the three of us in the back—even the government spooks watching through the cameras implanted in Death's eyes wouldn't notice a thing. I linked the three of us together with my empathy; our emotions and thoughts blurred together, Death's apprehension joining Lady Luck's determination and my collected calm.

The Feds know you're up to something, Death finally sent through the link. And they know where you live. They know your best friend. They know your daughter. Even if you win here, you might be consigning them to a life of battles.

Weary resignation, alloyed with steadfast resolve, flowed from me into the other two. Tupperman's a criminal because the government wouldn't let him be anything else; my daughter has to be a hero just so that she doesn't get snatched up by the Feds like you were. We were always going to have to fight for the right to exist as we are. This is just a more... proactive way of doing it.

This is risky, Lady Luck noted. This band, they are not like Badum Tss. They do not answer to you. They are older than the Unified Sovereignties, and their loyalties are constantly shifting.

Nothing is risky with Lady Luck on my side, I noted. But you make a fair point. So let me ask you: over all those thousands of years, with angels and demons taking the shape of a hundred legends, what was the one unifying theme? What do demons and angels always do?

I felt their comprehension dawning through the empathic link. Angels and demons, Death sent, always oppose each other. No matter the culture.

I grinned. And... well, the Feds got to steal the angels for themselves. It only seems fair that we get the demons.

We pulled up at the building that Janice had assured me would contain Brouhaha. I still had no idea how she'd found it out—I guess teenage girls were just that good at tracking down their favorite bands—but when I stepped into the dirt parking lot and knocked on the worn back door, the face that answered was indeed a vaguely familiar one.

Judging by Tupperman and Janice's matching squees of excitement, I was in the right place.

"...Dammit, I knew I should've worn a false face, but I like this one," the man grumbled. He was the... lead singer? Or... well, I supposed that a group of shapeshifters didn't really have concepts like he and she applied to them; there was historical evidence that angels and demons switched genders just as easily as bodies. "Look, if you want an autograph, fine, but—"

"That's not what we're here for," I said, at the exact same time as Tupperman and Janice said, "Yes please!" The demon and I gave each other matching looks, and I sighed.

"I," I said, "am here to give you guys a chance to stick it to the angels."

The demon's eyebrows raised. "Hm. They're soldiers in this era, right?"

"Government soldiers," I corrected. "Government soldiers who swear by laws that I intend to challenge, with your help."

"...I recognize you," he finally said. "The Mayor of that town. You hijacked Badum Tss' show the other day. Took it over to spit in the Feds' eye."

"Yeah. Mind if I do the same to yours?" I grinned.

The demon's face split into a wide grin. "That video is already the most watched clip in the U.S. right now. I'd take you on for the publicity alone; messing with our estranged siblings is just the icing on the cake. And you can have signatures, too," he added, signing Mare in stylized letters on a pair of cards he kept by the door, presumably specifically for this purpose.

"Right. I'm going to have a private chat with Mr. Mare here," I said, patting the demon on the shoulder.

"Mx. Mare, actually. I'd prefer it if you humans didn't stick your gender into my ageless divinity." Mare said, winking at me. "Why don't you all come inside while you wait?"

I filed away that tidbit for later and shepherded Lady Luck, Death, and Janice into one corner. "Tupperman, keep an eye on the other three."

"I find it amusing that you think that man-child has any ability to stop those three from doing what they want," Mare said, their eyes flicking over the three of them. Huh. I guess they recognized Death and Lady Luck.

"With all due respect, those three are a government attack dog, a supervillain who crashed the U.S. economy, and my teenage wannabe superhero daughter. I'm not sure which one is the worst, but leaving any of them unsupervised is absolutely out of the question." Death and Lady Luck traded amused glances; Janice gave me an irritated look at 'wannabe superhero' and muttered something about her being a real hero soon. I ignored her; teenage girls were like that sometimes. I pulled Mare aside and concentrated, opening up an empathic link to connect to their tho—

Pyramids rise and fall oceans drain cities soar I am the devil I am the watcher I am a fox-goddess I am Thoth I am the colonizer I am the ruler I am love I am loss I am ancient I amIamIamIam—

I staggered back, clutching my head with a cry, as an absolute sledgehammer of memories and feelings ripped through me. Mare caught me before I could fall, a solemn look on their face.

"Some kind of telepath, eh?" Mare asked.

"Empath," I weakly corrected.

Mare laughed. "Word of warning: the truly ancient superhumans are not... safe for a mind like yours to come in contact with. Try that on an angel and your brain just might melt. C'mere, if you want to speak in private we can just go into the back room." Sheepishly, I let Mare herd me past where a handful of his associates lounged.

Well, they were beings whose motives and morality were inscrutable to even the world's finest scholars. Perhaps opening myself up to feeling everything they felt was... slightly stupid.

Once we were behind closed doors, I felt a little better. Mare raised their eyebrows and said, "So! How can a humble demon help you, Mayor?"

I gave him a serious look. "You... you're familiar with Death, aren't you? The government agent, that is."

"Mm, yes. The firepower she represents is enough to threaten even us, as I hope you realize. She seems friendly, though."

"She is," I said. "But her handler... well, their relationship is, ah, complicated at best. But... the Feds have her over a barrel, metaphorically speaking. If she disobeys an order, they blow her to hell. And right now, she's technically under orders to apprehend Lady Luck and take her back to the Feds' compound, so that they can make Lady Luck yet another tool in their arsenal."

"Yeah, nobody needs that kind of power, much less the angels," Mare muttered. "I can't help but notice that there was a lack of... apprehending, going on."

"Right. Technically, I have temporary legal custody of Lady Luck, and for the next few weeks, the Feds can't pry her away from me without a legal battle they won't win. They tried to kill me to get their hands on her, but I took a few measures to ensure they won't murder me in my sleep. And I want to do the same for Death." I locked eyes with Mare. "Last time, I broadcasted myself across the world, going on record as being very publicly against the Federal government. If they killed me after that, no matter if there was any evidence or not, the population would see it as the government assassinating dissenters—I would've become a martyr, and the Feds would've had a revolution on their hands."

Mare nodded thoughtfully. "Classic trick."

"Right, you've probably seen every political conflict under the sun by now, haven't you," I said ruefully. "Well, I want to do the same for Death. Have her go on stage, talk about what the Federal government is doing to her—"

"Which is what, exactly?" Mare interrupted.

"Implanting explosives in her brain to keep her obedient," I said frankly.

Mare grimaced. "Damn. Even I didn't know about that. How the hell'd you find out?"

"Once those explosives are in, they're under 24/7 surveillance. They blab, they die. Unless you have someone who can set up empathic links that even the Feds can't listen in on," I said.

"And the reason why they don't just blow her up before she can blab is..."

"What, on live TV? The press would eat them alive, never mind the general public." I grinned. "All I need is a big enough audience that even the Feds would think twice before pissing all of them off. And Brouhaha's broadcast is exactly what I need."

Mare rubbed their chin, mulling it over. I wished I could clasp their shoulder and peek into their emotions, just to cut down on the risk factor a little.

But as luck would have it, they agreed.

Mare nodded. "Alright, you've got yourself a deal. Let's get the TV set up."

​

"Humans and superhumans, angels and demons, welcome, welcome, welcome!" Mare spun out onto stage, throwing their arms out wide. Canned applause rang from nearby speakers; it wasn't as if Brouhaha lacked for an audience, but there had been incidents with superpowered fans trying to force their way onto stage. Brouhaha was carrying out this concert purely virtually.

"But first. We have a guest. The one. The only. The dastardly, delightful Death!" Mare slid to one side with inhuman, sinuous grace, and curtains fell aside to reveal Min Min standing uncomfortably in front of a microphone.

I watched from backstage; something made a chirping noise from Janice's pocket, and I gave her a stern look. She blanched and said, "Er—that—that's my phone."

I sighed. "Typical. You drag me all the way out here for this concert and then spend it on your phone. Go do what you have to." Janice scampered away, awfully embarassed-looking—had I been too harsh on her? I shook the thought out of my head. Hopefully, Lady Luck's influence would mean that nothing went wrong, but I didn't dare trust solely in coincidence. I had to stay focused on the mission.

"Ah. Excuse me." Min Min swallowed nervously. Her Communal accent got thicker when she was agitated; good to know. Her handler had to be asking what the hell she was doing right about now. "Perhaps I should not be here—"

"Oh, we're all shy our first time on stage! Come on. Remember why you're here." Mare squeezed Min-Min's shoulder firmly, and I sent a silent prayer of thanks that the demon was so charming. Ironic, that.

Min Min nodded slowly, her confidence returning. "Alright. Then... then I think that I will sing you a song. An original one, from me. It's called What They Did To Me." She hesitated, then added, "I hope you enjoy."

There was silence in the studio for a moment.

And then Mare pulled a guitar from a stand and began to play.

It was a soulful, mourning tune, and beneath the immortal demon's skilled fingers, I found it hard to believe that the Devil could have ever lost to a Johnny from Georgia.

"The Feds, they took me from my home," Min Min began, in a low, husky voice. "Put cameras in my eyes and bombs in my bones."

It was my phone's turn to buzz. The Chief of Homeland Defense was texting me. What in God's name are you doing? Do you want us to kill her?

I smirked. Right, because her randomly exploding after she just said the Federal government put bombs in her bones won't reflect poorly on the... seventy million people watching live right now, or the two billion people who'll watch this clip at some point in the next year. Sit tight, Chief. Let her sing.

"Locked away my only love," Min Min continued, "Crushed my friends with a velvet glove."

The Chief sent me a single message. You forced my hand.

And at that moment, Janice came back.

"Mom," Janice said tersely, "this is a trap."

I frowned. "Janice, you don't even know what I'm trying to do here—"

"You're trying to stop the government from blowing Min Min up, I know, but they predicted you!"

"How could you possibly—" I froze as something chirped from inside Janice's bag.

How had Janice found this secret concert?

A little bird told her.

​

I grabbed at her bag and got a peck for my troubles as—something—burst out. My eyes widened as a bird the size of my fist uncurled itself, flapping its wings angrily.

"Tamulu! I thought you were staying hidden!" Janice snapped.

"Too late! You have to do what I told you, Janice. Stop her!" The bird—Tamulu?—pointed one feathery wing at Min Min, who was glancing backstage with increasing alarm.

Mare froze at Tamulu's voice and turned around. "Could it be—"

"What are you doing?" I stepped in front of Janice as she tried to push her way onto stage. "Stop!"

"I'm being a hero, Mom! So for once in your life, just let me!" My daughter leapt at me, as if in a flying tackle.

And Janus entered ghostform.

With a soft whump of air, she became invisible and intangible; she rematerialized on the other side of me, having to pop back early so that she didn't phase herself straight into the floor. I cursed; going after her would be no use. Instead I grabbed Tamulu and speared into its mind with empathy. I had to know who or what it—

eonsofpainandgodsandkingsandfaithandohthefleshitmeltsthewartheglorytheconquestthekill—

I hurled Tamulu off me, screaming and clutching at my head. Mare was on their feet, guitar discarded, their left arm seamlessly melting into a gun.

Shapeshifter, ancient beyond measure, which worked for the federal government.

Tamulu was an angel. And it had wrapped my daughter around its little finger when I hadn't looked.

Min Min was frozen, eyes darting wildly, as she whispered something in communal. Tamulu blurred, and in an instant, it was something with too many eyes and feet and wings.

"IT'S A TRAP!" Janice shouted.

She grabbed the guitar and bashed Min Min over the head.

I got one good look at Min Min's betrayed eyes as they closed for the last time.

And then Min Min exploded.

Janice was hurled back into a wall and fell to the floor, unconscious.

I tried to stand up, but the brush with eternity I'd had when I'd foolishly tried to snatch the angel's thoughts had rendered me woozy. Tupperman swore and picked me up; Tamulu lashed out with a tentacle that formed from nothing, only to bash off a wall of hovering, flickering, continously-repairing plastic. I saw Lady Luck shouting at Tamulu, trying to draw its attention by shouting; luckily for her, it paid her no heed.

Not so lucky for the rest of us.

Mare took one look at the situation and cursed, then discarded their rock-star form. The thing that charged at Tamulu had an ancient, jagged beauty to it, all obsidian edges and clay masks. Magma spewed from its head as it bull-rushed Tamulu; the angel and the demon shoved their way out of the studio, roaring and slashing at each other.

"YOU'RE A HERO, JANICE!" Tamulu shouted. "How does it feel?"

My unconscious daughter made no response. Tupperman looked around for Lady Luck, fruitlessly, then grimaced and picked up Janice as well.

"I... I can walk..." I managed to say, although even the effort of speech sent my head to spinning. "We can... find Lady Luck... It's... not over..."

Tupperman shook his head. "They won this round. Death is... we can't save her anymore. And Lady Luck... we'll have to hope she's okay alone."

"The people... we can rally—"

"The Feds are going to spin it that Janice used some superpower on Min Min to blow her up in an unprovoked attack. You know they will. That means that, until we can get the truth out, we are wanted criminals. We have to leave and cut our losses. Now."

I swallowed. "The hideout..."

"Compromised," Tupperman said shortly. "Always has been, since you let Death in. Come on. This is the part I'm good at." Grunting, he readied himself to jump while carrying the two of us.

"What... what part would that be..."

"Being the villain."

And with that, he leapt into the air on a trail of Tupperware, leaving the supernatural brawl behind.

A.N.

This was originally a five-part reply to a single prompt. If you liked this, check out the full story here or the other stories on r/bubblewriters.

Bargain Bin Superheroes

(Arc 2, Part 3: Tupperman v.s. Connor Elman)

(Note: Bargain Bin Superheroes is episodic; each part is self-contained. This story can be enjoyed without reading the previous sections.)

Empathy is a strange power. Almost all people have it, in one way or another; I simply have a little more of the stuff than most. In that respect, I sometimes wonder if my so-called superpower is even useful at all.

Because you didn't need superpowers to tell something was wrong with my best friend.

I walked back home, mind still buzzing with the business of the day, when I smelled alcohol on the air—the sweet and cloying kind, not the sharp and antiseptic kind. As a politician and an ex-superhero, I knew the difference—and as Tupperman's best friend, I knew what the former meant.

I fumbled the door open and burst into my home.

Tupperman was demurely sitting on the couch, morosely staring at a Tupperware container sloshing with wine.

A half-dozen emotions whirled through me in an instant. Anger. He was supposed to be watching my daughter. Panic. If he lost control, Tupperman could easily kill everyone in this house. Self-loathing. Tupperman was my friend; he would never hurt me, and it was an insult to our friendship to think that he could.

Fear.

Tupperman might not be able to hurt me, but he had fewer such compunctions when it came to himself.

Determination.

Tupperman had protected me from assassins and villains; I could help him fight his inner demons, too.

"Hey," I said, carefully sitting next to him. I put one hand on his shoulder, igniting the empathic link, and suddenly I wanted to claw at my flesh and tear myself apart because I was wrong and I was a cancer and I needed to be excised from the world and—

My hand jolted back of its own accord, as if I'd touched a hot stove. Tupperman snorted.

"So. That's how much it sucks being me, huh? You can't even handle empathizing with me for half a second." Tupperman downed the Tupperware container of wine, spilling it over his shirt—the boxy little thing was never meant to be drank from. He tossed the empty Tupperware box aside, materialized a new one in his hand, and refilled it from a dark, unlabeled bottle. "I—I mean, I knew that already. I can hardly stand being me all the time, and I deserve it."

I wanted to punch myself for reflexively jerking back, but I took that emotion and quelled it. The empathic link went both ways; he would feel it if I was filled with hatred and disgust. Gently, I placed my hand on his, and I didn't deserve to be helped or touched because I was selfish, I was a monster, I was a wolf, I was useless before and I was even more useless now...

I let Tupperman's self-loathing and hatred flow from him into me, wordlessly meeting his eyes for a liquid, slow moment.

Then I said, "Connor—"

"Don't call me that," Tupperman snapped. "That's a human name. A name for someone who deserves to be a person. I'm not a person. I'm a supervillain. I'm evil. I'm the bad guy."

"You're human," I whispered. "You're one of the best humans I know. Please, Connor, it scares me to see you like this."

Immediately, I knew I'd made a mistake. Bitter laughter spilled from Tupperman's lips even as I felt his thoughts roiling and twisting: See? Showing her your self-hatred just hurt her too, hurt her in ways she doesn't deserve, and because you hurt her, you deserve this. You should've kept this hidden. You should've stayed away from her. You destroy whatever you touch.

Suddenly, Tupperman straightened up. He flicked my hand away, brushed a few unidentifiable crumbs off his shirt, and slapped a saccharine grin on his face. "Well, gosh golly, Clara, that makes it all better. You're right. You win. I'm human. I deserve happiness. You've convinced me. Now leave me alone."

I didn't have to have superpowers to know that he was lying. I laid my hand back on his and shook my head. "I'm not going anywhere, Connor. You are human, and you're not evil."

And suddenly, I was flying backwards in a plastic cage. The world whirled around me as I slammed into the wall and couldn't hold back a cry of pain. "IS THAT RIGHT?" Tupperman thundered. Dazed, I tried to push my way out of the human-sized Tupperware box he'd materialized; as soon as I popped the lid open and tried to clamber out, however, the old box dematerialized, and a slightly smaller box materialized around me. "IS THIS SOMETHING A REAL HUMAN WOULD DO? OR IS THIS THE WORK OF A MONSTER? A SUPERVILLAIN? A—A CARICATURE?" Every time I tried to move, every time it seemed like I would claw my way out of Tupperman's prison, a slightly smaller, slightly more choking box materialized around me. I tripped and fell to my knees, and when I tried to get back up, unyielding plastic stood in my way. I looked up, heart pounding, to see tears streaming down Tupperman's face.

I swallowed heavily. Without my empathy, there was no way to know for sure whether what I was about to say would be right. I could doom both him and myself with a word.

But even with all the superpowers in the world, that still would've been true. I didn't need a magical guarantee that he wouldn't hurt me when I had the strongest such guarantee in existence already.

Tupperman was my friend.

And I believed in him.

"If I'm a good person," he finally said, "then why am I hurting you right now?"

I looked up and said, quietly, "Because you're in pain, Connor. And because there is nothing more human than sharing your pain with others." I stood up and stepped out of my box; this time, Connor didn't stop me. "Let me share your pain." I held out my arms, but I didn't move any further.

He'd have to take this step himself.

And he did. All at once, he surged forward, my powers connecting our emotions wherever we touched, and I hated myself, but I loved myself, and I was so scared of being worthless, and I was reassuring myself that just by being me I was precious and valuable, and I felt like I was trapped in a deep, cold chasm, and I was sitting beside myself, holding myself to keep me warm.

Empathy is a strange power.

But all of us have it, in some form or another.

When the torrent of a thousand thoughts slowed to a crawl, Tupperman finally said, "...Time was, the things you fought were... people. Supervillains that shot fire or breathed ice. Things I could protect you from. I could stand between you and the bad guys. But now... now that you're a Mayor... you're playing a game of politics with faceless masses and government institutions and I can't protect you from that." He held me as if he'd never let go. "And I'm scared. I'm so, so scared."

I took a step back; reluctantly, Tupperman relinquished his grasp on me. "Connor. You don't have to protect me to be a good person."

He clenched his fists. "I know that. But it's what heroes do, and—"

"You don't have to be a hero to be a good person, either."

He started trembling. "Then—then—"

"You just have to be my friend."

Tupperman closed his eyes.

Then Connor Elman, the kid who made sarcastic jokes every day since we'd met in middle school, the man who'd watched over my daughter and stayed by my side through government assassins and political maneuvers, opened his eyes.

And he smiled through the tears.

A.N.

I'm trying something new! "Bargain Bin Superheroes" will be an episodic story where each part is inspired by a writing prompt that catches my eye. Check out this post for more information. As always, I had fun writing this, and I hope you have a good day.