“All I know is that if she doesn’t come along something bad always happens, if not during the mission, then after.”
“I’m afraid that I can’t sanction someone who is ostensibly a civilian to go out on a mission this important. Even in these dire times our ethics board will not allow it, I’m sorry, King Flame.”
Dark clouds loomed outside of the skyscraper’s windows; pulsating purple lightning punctuated by haunting screams and thunderous grinding gears. The commissioner pressed his cigar into an ash tray, once, twice, then twisted away the nub. The end was ruined. With a sigh, he scratched his chin with his thick fingers, each covered in a number of brass rings. In his youth he was known as Brass Knuckles, the fist fighting hero. Now he just managed heroes, a tiresome job that made him appreciate how the old commissioner dealt with him and his former colleagues.
King Flame paced around the office, his fingers rolling into fists compulsively, over, and over. “Fine. Fine, we’ll do it alone. But I’m not going to be the one taking the blame if this all goes tits up.”
“Thank you, Branagh. I’m glad you see it my way, finally.”
He slammed the door as he left, happy to see the end of that conversation. It didn’t matter what the commissioner said, Lucy was coming along, no matter what. She may had been diagnosed with no mutant powers, but he was positive that she was more than just a superstitious good luck charm. And they needed all the good will they could get.
“Branagh, how did it go? Am I allowed to come with you all?” Lucy looked up at him with those big, brown eyes. Like a lost puppy. He continued towards the elevator, simply gesturing for her to follow him.
They stepped into the small box, standing side-by-side as the doors closed.
“You’re coming. But you ain’t allowed.” He sniffed, pressing the button for the ground floor. They had a long way to go from the near top-floor office.
“But if I’m not allowed, how am I going to get on the Hero Jet?”
“We’ll find a way.”
“And what about equipment? I’m not going up on that thing without protective equipment.”
“Would ya stop asking questions! I’ll work it out. You’ll be fine, I promise, Luce,” he still hadn’t looked at her straight since he’d left the commissioner’s office. Instead, he was working out every facet of the polished steel elevator door.
“Ok, Ok. I trust you, Branagh.”
They left together, through the eerily empty reception. Most civilians had been evacuated by now, by car or by boat, to avoid riling up whatever it was that had entered New York’s airspace. Within the hour, King Flame was suiting up in the Hero Commission’s barrack, alongside his team. Lady Water, his first and only sidekick, was lacing up her leather boots while making small talk with Lucy: girl business, he supposed. Commander Cueball slid on his signature helmet, its white sheen as blinding as ever. And Knight of the Round was sharpening his swords, as always.
Cueball was first aboard the Hero Jet, settling into the pilot seat. Round was the last one on, bar King Flame and Lucy, sat waiting nervously in the co-pilot chair. They were the best in the business, but that didn’t make dealing with planet-level threats any easier. Finally, Flame and Lucy stepped aboard, with her hiding in his immense shadow. She slipped into the gunner’s seat, located in a hatch below the main deck, hidden from the others, and from the camera they had in the cockpit that was streaming a constant feed to the commission.
“Is she going to be ok, King?” asked Lady Water.
“She is, and so are we,” Flame gave a reassuring shoulder rub to Lady Water before settling into his own seat beside her and buckling himself in.
Cueball wheeled the Jet around the landing zone, and within seconds they were in the air headed straight towards the UFO.
It launched a volley of steel tentacles toward the Jet, each expertly avoided by Cueball. “It’s getting hairy, captain. But I think I can bring her in.” Twists and turns, pirouettes through the air, a gut-wrenching display of flying prowess for everyone in the jet saw them to the UFO’s surface, and Cueball brought them down steadily on its flattest section. They filed out of it together, and Lucy followed shortly after, slipping between Lady Water and King Flame.
“If the eggheads back at the commission are correct, I can bring it down if I super heat its core. Cueball, look after Lucy. Lady Water, Round, make sure none of those tentacles make their way to me,” King Flame cracked his knuckles and stretched his arms and shoulders. Making enough fire to take down a ten thousand tonne mass of alien metal wasn’t going to be easy, but he was the best shot they had. The surface was calm, as though whatever entity controlling the UFO hadn’t registered their landing. But it creaked and screeched into action as the first of the flames streamed from King Flame's fingers, taut and cylindrical, like tendrils of lava.
Tentacles whipped and cracked at the team, but to no great avail, their combined efforts rebuffing them at every turn. It wasn’t long until a harrowing sound of twisting, bubbling metal began to echo out from the UFO's centre. The tentacles stopped, lying limply on it surface, and the heroes had won. They scrambled back onto the Jet, with Lucy safely in tow, and Cueball took off into the sky.
Whatever was holding up the UFO in the sky had broken as the core burst from the heat. It creaked and cried out as it tumbled from the sky, bits of it exploding off and slamming into the city below, wiping out buildings with ease. It finally crashed down on Manhattan, leaving a crater the size of the lower east side radiating out of Central Park.
The next day, the commission began to rebuild the city. Thousands of volunteers all happily joined the efforts, and thousands became hundreds of thousands as the civilians of New York slowly made their way back to the city from their evacuation. Within the next two months it almost felt like nothing had happened, skyscrapers were still surrounded by scaffolding and some work was being done to bring the subway back into full working order, but the city had been brought back to life without so much as a collective shrug at the work required.
It was like this every time Lucy helped out on their missions. Nobody wanted to believe King Flame or the rest of the team; he'd had every manner of test carried out on Lucy to determine if she had any kind of mutation at all, and they always came back negative. Perhaps she was just a new stage of human evolution, perhaps whatever was different about her couldn’t be found with their current technology.
She was happy to help either way, mutant or no. Maybe that was her power. That smile that could never be diminished, her eyes that made you want to do whatever you could to help, or her passion for doing the right thing, always.
From a prompt on reddit:
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