#Confessions of a Willowsburg Assassin

[kaywritepieces]

Confessions of a Willowsburg Assassin

Alexander’s childhood had never been what most people in Willowsburg considered normal. His father was a mad scientist who spent the majority of his time creating strange machines that bent reality and stranger genetic monstrosities that crept in the shadows. His mother was a world-renowned assassin who hid razor blades in her long dark hair and never had fewer than four weapons within easy reach. They loved each other very much, and if they sometimes fought whenever she put one of his monsters out of its misery with a swift knife to the throat, they made it up to one another one way or another.

They had met when one of Alexander’s father’s rivals had hired her to kill him and steal the plans to his latest invention. He had defended himself with his previously untested Freeze Ray, which had exploded and left the both of them paralyzed from the neck down and with nothing to do but talk and bond over their mutual love of history. Over the course of the conversation they fell in love, and eleven months later baby Alexander was born.

Both of his parents loved Alexander deeply, and they tried to take the best care of him that they could. For Christmas when he was five, Alexander’s father built him a custom train set with over a thousand tracks and an engine strong enough to pull young Alexander across the lab if he held on too long. On his ninth birthday, his mother took him on a camping trip in the Colorado Rockies and taught him to hunt with a crossbow. For his bedtime story, his mother read him the legends of the constellations and his father told him the histories of the great scholars. He grew up reading Shakespeare, Poe, and Dante. By the time he was twelve he could crack safes, pick pockets, build and disarm bombs, fight in four different styles of martial arts, and prove difficult mathematical theorems.

When he was thirteen, his mother got breast cancer. His father worked night and day trying to find a cure. His mother pulled Alexander aside and told him very seriously, “When I go, you have to take care of your father. He isn’t like you and me; he doesn’t see the world the way that we can. People are going to come for him, and they’re going to try to hurt him, and I need you to stop them if I can’t. You need to keep him safe.” She died after six months.

Eleven years later Alexander still wasn’t sure if he’d fulfilled his mother’s request. His father had become obsessed with curing the disease that had destroyed her and had lost any sense of ethics he had once had. In the course of his quest, he lost contact with the outside world, confining himself to his lab. Alexander couldn’t remember the last time that he’d actually gone outside, let alone interacted with someone who wasn’t either part of one of his experiments, someone trying to stop them, or Alexander himself. Sometimes his experiments put the rest of the city in harm's way, and the media took notice and started to call him “Dr. Death,” as though he were purposefully trying to kill those around him. It only got worse when the man himself heard about it; he started ranting about how cancer was life, out of control and unbridled, and that “if being the arbiter of its destruction placed him on the side of death then he would gladly wield the dread scythe and follow the darkness if that’s what it took to destroy it.”

Thank god he had Ellie. She reveled in disrupting the banal, everydayness of Willowsburg with well-timed instances of out-of-control chaos, but she never did it with the purpose of hurting people. She understood just how painful it could be to be designated by the media as the villain of the story, and she could always be counted on to raise Alexander’s spirits. If nothing else, the two of them could bitch about that goddamned Black Thunder who kept sticking his nose where he wasn’t wanted and ruining their plans while somehow playing himself off as the hero saving the defenseless city.

It had been hilarious when Ellie found out about the girl. “Jane Goody,” she had said. “What dumbass hero could resist her with a name like that?” They’d played at guessing who she was to Black Thunder—a girlfriend, a sister, an alternate dimension version of himself (okay, sometimes they played over a bottle of wine, and Ellie was a weird drunk). It hadn’t really been any hardship to steal her away to his father’s lab a few times and wait for Black Thunder to appear in a shriek of pure sound waves, enraged and unthinking and ready to fight, and even though he always got away with the girl he’d leave enough blood or DNA behind that Alexander’s father could continue on with his experiments.

Of course, it had to come back to bite him. He walks into work at Cher one day (the life of a mad scientist doesn’t pay well, and besides Alexander figures that it’s important to have a life outside of villainy and vengeance) and there she is, talking to his boss about how her last place of employment got destroyed by the Gonnam’s giant robot last week and how she’s got lots of experience in retail. She introduces her self with a smile and a self-deprecating joke about “yes, that really is my last name, I swear I’m not lying,” and he smiles and nods and tells her his name, his real name because he thought that he could at least have this job without the rest of his life bleeding into it.

They work a few of the same shifts, and he tries to avoid her as much as he can without being impolite but he can’t help but learn that she’s got a boyfriend (Brad, because why wouldn’t the superhero who consistently tries to ruin his life sound like a frat boy) and that she was an English major in college and that she genuinely, sincerely believes that the world is inherently good even though he knows for a fact that she gets kidnapped on the regular, and sometimes by people much more vicious than him.

And then one day he’s talking to a customer about handcuffs and he sees her freeze out of the corner of his eye and turn a little green, and then run to the back of the store and he knows that she’s finally recognized him. He goes after her (and he brings her some water because if she’s thrown up then he doesn’t want to smell that on her breath, doesn’t want the customers to smell that on her breath, and doesn’t really think that she deserves the taste in her mouth anyway) and he makes some vague threats about outing her and her boyfriend (and it’s nice to know that he was right about the boyfriend—Brad—being Black Thunder). He goes back to work and she follows him a few minutes later and everything goes back to normal.

And when some customers come in talking about Black Thunder and how hot he is in his costume and how dreamy he must be under the mask (and he won’t lie, built and bossy may not be Alexander’s type but he is a full-blooded bisexual and he’s wondered the same thing once or twice) he hears Jane sigh and shake her head ruefully and then go deal with said customers with a cheery smile, and he remembers that she knows exactly how dreamy he is under the mask.

And when a man comes in looking for ropes he almost dies holding in his laughter because Jane cooks up some story about closeted lesbian girl scouts and a life-changing ski trip, and his life may be a mess but at least he’s never had to lie and pretend that Electriss and Aguagirl were his childhood friends who discovered their forbidden love for each other by tying him to a chair. He’s honestly impressed with the span of her knowledge though, especially since she almost definitely gained most of it under duress. He’s equally, though perhaps less honestly, impressed with her glare when he teases her about it after the customer leaves.

And when Ellie creates an army of giant hamsters (“R.O.U.S’s, Alexander, it’s hilarious!”)  using Gladiator and her own magical charms and he gets trapped in an empty shop with Jane, he learns that apparently supervillains are the world’s worst gossips and that Ellie is severely underappreciated by the community because Jane seems to think that she’s not that good of a villain and that’s just wrong. Somehow the two of them end up debating over who is the most useless supervillain in the city, and Alexander can’t help but champion Macbeth because why would an environmentalist themed villain name themselves after a Shakespeare character, and Jane starts to agree that the man really should have thought better than to name himself after the guy who loses everything and dies. But then she sees a dildo on the counter and picks it up, and she grins at him and just says, “The Plumber,” and he hasn’t laughed this hard in ages.

And when he hears some rumors about the Marion Gang gearing up for some kind big job involving the First National Bank and worrying about Black Thunder, he surprises himself when his first reaction isn’t, “Someone to take the pressure off of me and dad,” but rather is, “They better not try to kidnap Jane.” He tries not to think about it too hard, but he isn’t shocked when he finds himself bringing in a can of mace to work the next day. He promises himself that he’ll just tell Jane that there were some rumors and that she might want to be careful, but when her face turns pale and she starts to cry all of those promises fall crashing to the ground and he holds her tight like his mother used to when he had a nightmare and he tells her that nothing will happen to her, he swears, they won’t touch a hair on her head. Two nights later the cops get an anonymous tip and find the majority of the Marion Gang knocked unconscious and surrounded by drugs, guns, and records of their dirty dealings going back a year.  

And when Black Thunder finally gets him, when Alexander finally falls and has to crawl away, blood in his mouth and body aching, he wonders if this is the end. His father is in police custody and will probably get put away for life unless Alexander somehow manages to break him out (he’s not sure if he wants to break him out). Alexander is beaten, and it will be a long time before he’s in any kind of shape to go back out and fight again. It takes three days before he can even try to walk again, and he knows that he’s probably lost the job at Cher too. Everything’s fallen apart, and he doesn’t know how to get it back.

Except that when he goes back to Cher, praying like he hasn’t for years that he’ll still have a job waiting for him, he finds Jane. She looks pale and frightened, but she gets a chair for him to sit in behind the counter when there aren’t any customers and she gets him water and gives him half of her lunch. She asks if he’s okay to be at work and tells him that she can cover his shifts if he needs her to, really, it’s fine. She asks if he’s gone to a doctor (he hasn’t, technically, but he knows how to treat wounds and he knows his own limits), if he has a place to stay (he can stay will Ellie, but he only tells her that he’s got a friend who will let him crash on her couch, and she doesn’t ask who). She opens her mouth, closes it again, and crosses her arms over her stomach. She looks down and asks the floor, “will you be okay?” and he—doesn’t know (He chokes on a response and she’s there immediately, hands folding around his shoulders and shoulder cradling his head and he sobs into her shirt because he just—he messed up, he should have done better, and he doesn’t know how to live without his father’s pain and obsession to drive him.)

[kaywritepieces]

The Willowsburg Retail Experience

Concept (created with the caveat that I have never gone to a sex shop but I assume that the general principles of retail apply): Jane Goody spends her days in Willowsburg, a mid-sized city on the east coast, working at a department store and dodging the various super villains that occasionally try to attack the city. The only problem? Her boyfriend, Brad, just so happens to be Black Thunder, the hero foiling their plots (not that anyone knows. Thank God for secret identities, right?) Every so often Jane gets kidnapped by a villain who's somehow worked out that she's important to Black Thunder, but Brad always manages to save her before anything too bad happens, and she's come to expect it as par for the course (that's a bit of a lie, but she could never tell Brad; he's a little too good at superhero angst sometimes). Her life has settled into an admittedly weird pattern, but a pattern nonetheless, and she's happy.

Happy, that is, until the villain of the week destroys the department store and she finds herself summarily unemployed. She ends up working at a sex shop called Cher because she's a mature adult and a job's a job, right? Sure, her coworker Alexander keeps giving her weird looks and won't really talk to her, but that's fine. Sometimes people are a little strange, that's all.

That is not all. One day she hears him talking to a customer and something in her brain clicks and she remembers last month when Dr. Death kidnapped her and his pet ninja kept making sarcastic remarks about Brad, and suddenly Alexander's weird behavior makes terrible, terrible sense.

He finds her behind the shop THIS close from throwing up and he offers her a bottle of water (sealed, she checks, because God knows how many times she's been poisoned) and threatens to out Brad (because shit he heard her on the phone to him that one time after Metalman tried to kidnap the mayor and put the pieces together GOD DAMN IT) and possibly kill someone if she ever tells anyone, including Brad, who he is or where he works. Then he goes back to work and she drinks the water and...nothing happens. No one dies (yet, she hasn't forgotten that Alexander's a ninja and she DEFINITELY hasn't forgotten how hurt he left Brad after their last fight) and no "anonymous tipper" tells the news about Black Thunder's identity, and work at Cher continues without much break, and she can almost forget that she's working with the pet ninja of a mad scientist who kills people and has almost killed her.

(Except that every now and then Alexander moves too quickly, too gracefully, and she remembers the sound of Brad hitting the floor.)

(Except that when some asshole kids come in and start playing the dildos like they're swords or something and the part of her that's seen way too many nut jobs with swords wants to roll her eyes and she sees him SMIRK.)

(Except when a serious customer has some questions on bondage and she can answer most of them and then has to lie quickly about where she learned so much about getting tied up and she thinks he's going to laugh but he just nods at her like he's genuinely impressed. And then asks if she and Brad ever use that practical knowledge themselves, which, she is just not answering that question oh my god.)

(Except when Gladiator and the Sorceress team up and somehow manage to release a hoard of enlarged hamsters which, while not actually all that dangerous, are numerous enough that leaving the shop is probably a bad idea and she and Alex end up having a discussion about who is the dumbest villain. Macbeth almost wins because of the awful Shakespeare reference, but in the end, the Plumber takes the cake, mostly because they're surrounded by sex toys and the guy chose to be called "the Plumber.")

(Except when he grabs her wrist at the end of her shift, and the part of her that's been grabbed too many times tenses to run but the part of her that still believes that there's good in the world reminds her that he's holding it gently and pressing a can of mace into her hand and warning her that the Marion Gang has been acting up recently and that there have been some rumors, and that's all she hears before she can't breathe because fuck, last time the Marion Gang took her one of the goons LICKED her cheek and the Boss just laughed, and sure Brad got there before anything else really bad happened but she still wakes up at night sometimes with his sweaty stench in her nose and that laughter in her ears, only this time it's Alex in her ears talking to her and promising pain for anyone who tries to hurt her.)

(Except when Black Thunder battles Dr. Death one day and she picks up Alexander's shift at Cher without his asking, and she doesn't mention it to either of them even when Alexander comes in limping with bruises and Brad boasts to her that night about how he "finally got that ninja bastard for good, you should have seen it, Jane, it was amazing.")

[kaywritepieces]

Objectively Terribly Adorable

“Okay, so, on the one hand, I get that this is objectively terrible,” Brad began.

“I, for one, don’t understand why you haven’t started punching your way through walls in rage,” ninja guy said. He’d made his way up to the top of one of Professor Man’s oversized mechanicals (his full name was Professor Wasp Elephantman, which Brad had honestly tried to take seriously) and probably had a better view than Brad of the activity in the sunken area further into the lab. Jerk.

“I, for one, don’t understand why you’re even here,” Brad said. It sounded a lot more childish in real life. He frowned.

Ninja Guy smirked and shrugged. “The good professor hired me to protect his lab while he finished his latest experiment.”

“You’re freelancing?”

“Don’t shout--”

Too late. Jane’s head, previously leaning down so she could stare into one of the chipmunks’ eyes, snapped up to stare at him. “BRAD,” she yelled. “BRAD, COME OVER HERE! Everybody, bring me Brad!”

The hoard of chipmunks, dogs, cats, birds, anteaters, lizards, and other assorted zoo animals overwhelmed him in seconds. They carried him back to Jane simply by the sheer power of their collective movement--well, they could have. One of the tigers saw fit to clamp his collar in her--his?--jaws to prevent escape.

“Brad,” Jane said, stroking one of his cheeks. He had ended up mostly flopped into her lap, but she didn’t seem to care. Her pupils were huge. “Brad when did you--stop laughing--when did you get here?”

“About fifteen minutes ago,” he said. An ostrich was sitting on his legs, preventing him from getting up. “You doing okay?”

“I am doing wonderfully. Absolutely wonderfully, this is the best kidnapping that’s ever happened to me. Look, I’ve made so many friends!” She gestured widely at the circle of animal companions. An orangutan butted its head against her shoulder and she stroked its fur.

Slowly he tried to ease his legs out from underneath the ostrich, who squawked loudly. At least it didn’t peck at him. “Can you ask your friend to get off me?”

“Huh? Oh, sure. Move, please.” The ostrich stood regally and walked to the side. Brad sat up thankfully and tugged Jane under his arm. He always worried when she got kidnapped. Professor Man’s name might have been a joke, but even he could be dangerous when need be.

If there were any way to stop it from happening...but everyone in the super community and half of everyone else in the city knew that Jane was [COLOR] Thunder’s weakness. Take her and he’d come running. The only way to stop it would be to let them keep her and he couldn’t do that. But they’d had this argument before, and it wouldn’t be fair to try it again when she was obviously high out of her mind. “You look like a Disney princess,” he said instead.

She gasped. “You think I’m a princess?”

“You’re always a princess to me.” He kissed the top of her head.

Slow clapping filled the air and Brad tensed for a moment before remembering who else was in the lab. Ninja Guy had no interest in hurting anyone unless he was getting paid for it. “Are you always such an asshole?” Brad asked.

“Only when the situation calls for it,” Ninja Guy said. Then, just to prove what an asshole he was, he stood up front-flipped off of the giant machine he’d been sitting on. Asshole. “But as beautiful as your little dalliance with Miss Jane has been, I’m afraid I must take my leave.”

“What?” Jane asked. Were those--oh god, she was actually starting to cry. Brad tried to shush her but she had none of it. The animals surrounding them started to growl at him, too. It was one of those days. “Why are you leaving?”

Ninja Guy smiled at her. It wasn’t one of his usual smiles, which were made for mocking good people who tried to do the right thing instead of defending crazy murderers for money. Brad had never seen him smile like this before. With a quick glance towards Brad, Ninja Guy said, “I was hired to keep the good Professor’s experiments safe. You were one of his experiments. Now you are safe.” He looked at Brad. “The serum should wear off shortly. It was meant as a trial run, not anything permanent.”

“You know, I don’t think Professor Elephant expected it to work as well as it did,” Jane said, tipping her head back and staring up at the ceiling. She was still petting the orangutan. “He seemed really surprised when I set the animals on him.”

“Perhaps you should send him a card once your paramour returns him to jail. ‘Apologies for tying you up with snakes and then throwing you into a closet.’”

Jane giggled into Brad’s shoulder.

“Hey, weren’t you supposed to protect him from stuff like that? Not that I’m complaining, but…”

Ninja Guy looked at him for a beat, then smirked wide. Oh, great. “I was hired to protect him from outside threats. Anything consequences of his experiments fall outside my purview.”

Jane stopped petting the orangutan and stared up at Brad. “Alexander let the animals loose.”

“Okay… wait, is that you? Since when are you two on a first name basis?” Brad asked Ninja Guy.

Ninja Guy stood perfectly still. Jane answered, “I’m not sure. A couple months, maybe? Alexander’s nice, I wish you guys got along better.”

“I wouldn’t expect that to happen anytime soon,” Alexander said quietly. “Particularly not in the near future.”

With that enigmatic sentence, he stepped silently back into the shadows and vanished.

“How does he do that?” Brad asked without thinking.

“He won’t tell me. I think he’s just sneaky, or maybe one of his villain friends gave him a cloaking device.”

“Okay...what the hell did he mean, though, about not in the near future? Do you think he’s planning something?” Even drugged with mystery science, Jane was a good judge of character. At least she seemed to know Alexander better than he did.

She leaned up until their noses were practically touching. “You were glaring,” she whispered. “I think you scared him.”

“Really? I mean. Good. He should be scared if he’s going to--”

Jane sat back down and pouted. “You didn’t need to glare at him, though.” A few snakes hissed and an eagle cawed.

Brad sighed. “We should probably go before the serum wears off.” He wouldn’t apologize for glaring at Alexander. The guy was a villain! A freelance villain, apparently, so he would be around even more. Brad couldn’t even count on Dr. Death being in jail to be free of him.

“But what about my friends?”

“I’ll call animal control. They like me, I’ll make sure they all end up in good places.” The Willowsburg Zoo could probably take most of them. Hopefully, Professor Man hadn’t mutated them in any way. Then again, the Zoo could probably handle that by this point.

Jane sighed and leaned her head against his shoulder. “Okay. Carry me?”

He smiled. “Anything for you, princess.”