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watercolorfreckles · 20 hours ago

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Static's Girl

This is a Secret Santa Snippet for @esperosisdoeswriting!! Merry Christmas, Esper, I hope you like it!!! Her prompt was villain dad who' loves his small child and is not afraid to kill ppl over it!

TW: Blood, violence, mention of needles

“Our target is a child?” The horror in Blythe’s voice seemed loud, even past the pound of blood pulsing in her ears.

Fellow members of the hero’s team poured into the back of the van, one strong-arming a terrified little girl. Her wrists were bound, mouth covered and tears streaking her cheeks. The child kicked and thrashed with pink-booted feet, legs dangling helplessly above the floor of the car where the hero’s sidekick kept her firmly hoisted in the air.

She looked barely older than 7.

Blythe’s protest was suitably ignored as the team shouted instructions at one another. The back doors slammed shut and the van lurched into action. Passengers plunged themselves into their seats.

“Are you crazy?” Blythe hissed. She stood only to stagger into the side window as the vehicle made a sharp turn. “This is crazy! Why are we kidnapping a child?!”

“Bosses orders,” another said, as if it were the simplest thing in the world.

Mockingbird said “Jump” and they said, “How high?” That was just the way of things, wasn’t it? It had never concerned Blythe before–their leader was a just one.

But now…

The child’s knees were muddied and scuffed. As if she'd fallen. As if she'd run. She squealed panicked cries against the sidekick's palm.

Blythe's stomach bottomed out and pooled again with a honey-slick dread. “Who is she?”

“Static's kid,” the driver called back. Blythe caught a shiver skating through them in the corner of her eye.

“Static's ki- I must be missing something, are you crazy?” She rounded on Mockingbird's sidekick once more. “You said we were retrieving a powered weapon that could bring Static down!”

He blinked at her as if she were exceptionally slow. “That's what she is.”

Blythe shook her head, feeling an angry tremor seize her bones. “She's a little girl, is what she is.”

Blythe startled as the radio station crackled to life, flipping noisily through channels. The driver cursed and mashed at a button. Clicking on his coms device, he spoke aloud as his free hand yanked the wheel into another screechy turn.

“On our way back with the package in hand, Boss.”

Mockingbird's sidekick yelped and dropped the girl, a red welt forming on their palm where it had pressed against her mouth. The child hit the floor and scrambled on her knees to an empty corner.

The driver's eyes lit the rearview mirror. “What's–” He hissed and ripped his earpiece away from his head as it fizzled with blaring static loud enough for the rest of the van to hear. “Hey- She's interfering with our coms!”

“Probably trying to reach her father,” another in the front seat agreed. She pointedly shut the radio off as it flitted through stations of chatter and music once more.

The child’s nose was bleeding. Had it been doing that before?

“Somebody knock her out already!”

The sidekick sighed and lifted a hand. All-consuming shadows danced at his fingertips seeming to choke the air around it.

“Don't.” Blythe hurled herself in front of Static's daughter. Her eyes tingled with a familiar heat that told her they were glowing, power teeming just beneath the surface.

They stared at each other in a terse stalemate.

The sidekick’s teeth clenched.

“Listen, rookie–”

“We do not threaten children, and we certainly do not hurt them.” Blythe was proud of how steady she managed to keep her voice–firm and leaving no room for argument.

She still wanted to cry a little. How had this become her life?

Little hands grabbed at her from behind and a warm face pressed into her back. Then, a tiny sob. Blythe softened.

“You're okay, sweetpea, it's alright,” she crooned. Blythe turned to take the child gently in her arms, gathering her close in her lap. “Shh, it's alright. I won't let anyone hurt you. I promise.”

The sidekick's seething was palpable, gaze cleaving cleanly through her, but he finally sat back down.

An eternity later, they were back at the base. Blythe had smacked away any hands reaching to grab the child away from her, carrying the girl inside herself. The little one’s legs wound around her waist like a koala, bound hands clutching fistfuls of Blythe’s shirt fabric.

Blythe’s thoughts felt scattered as TV static. She moved on autopilot, only coming back to herself when the sterile-white lights of the laboratory hummed over them.

Mockingbird was there, black curls cascading freely over her shoulders and contrasting with the icy gray of her eyes. They were not particularly kind eyes, but Blythe had always thought the hero to be good, at least.

“Boss,” Blythe heard herself speak. She cleared her throat. “What exactly are we doing here? Why did we take this kid?”

Mockingbird gestured toward the lab table. “Put her there. We need her blood.”

Blythe’s eyes widened. “Her blood?”

“We are going to use her cells to create a power inhibitor for her father and a power replicator to dose myself with. When he comes to retrieve her, we inject him with it. He won’t act out when he knows we have his daughter. And with his own powers used against him, he’ll never escape again.”

Blythe’s voice came out croaky. “I think you’re putting an awful lot of faith in the self-control of the most powerful supervillain we’ve ever encountered. When we’ve taken his only child. And stabbed her with needles.”

Static’s daughter tightened around her. Blythe glanced down and murmured a soft apology against her ear.

“I don’t care,” Mockingbird snapped. It was clipped with a danger Blythe had never felt aimed at her before. It now felt like a knife against her soft underbelly, as silver and glinting as the superhero’s eyes. “We’re close. Too close to lose now. If you plan to stand in the way of that…”

She stepped closer and plucked the child out of Blythe’s arms with her own super-strength-enhanced, bionic ones. The child knew better than to thrash that time.

Blythe wondered now, nausea climbing her throat, whose blood she’d stolen to replicate that particular gift. The metal prosthetics weren’t just technology, now, were they? Blythe had never thought much of it before…

“Then you’ll have to take a time out,” the superhero finished. “Somewhere quiet where you can re-evaluate. Understand?” Her voice was a fake-chipper, then. Something Barbie-coded but full of invisible teeth.

Blythe’s powers hummed low beneath her skin, a tamed beast waiting for permission to lash out. Her fists clenched. “I really don’t think this is wise.”

“No?” Mockingbird sounded bored as she set Static’s daughter down on the table, tying a strip of elastic around the child’s forearm.

The little one jumped, blue static zapping Mockingbird’s fingers where they touched.

The superhero jerked back. “You little–”

“She’s just scared,” Blythe said, stepping between them. “I’ll do it. She’ll let me do it. Please.”

Mockingbird’s metal hand clanged into a fist. She took a long-suffering breath, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Get it done.” She pointed at the tray of tools on the counter. “Strap her down if you have to.”

Blythe’s hands went numb as she picked up the syringe. “Mocking–”

Their attentions snapped away as the speakers throughout the building crackled and spat. A wave of clammy dizziness flooded the room. Did the superhero feel the same sick lurch in her belly as Blythe did? The two clutched opposite ends of the counter to steady themselves.

Mockingbird whirled on the little girl. “Stop it, right now!”

Wide, terrified eyes stared back at her, but no blood oozed from her nose.

Blythe swallowed, choking down a roiling wave of nausea. She felt unsteady on her feet, light-headed and woozy. “It’s not her.”

A deep voice sounded over the intercom. “I’m coming to skin alive everyone who laid a finger on Verity. Those who merely stood by–don’t worry, I’ll fill your head with radiation so quickly you won’t even be able to choke out an apology.”

Oh no. Oh, they were so dead.

Blythe grabbed the child–Verity–and took a step toward the door.

Mockingbird blocked her. “No.”

“He’s going to kill everyone if he doesn’t get her back safely!”

Blythe tried to push her way past and Mockingbird grabbed her by the throat, cogs whirring in her bionic arm. She shoved, Blythe and Verity hurtling back into the wall.

“I said no!”

Blythe’s breath collapsed out of her lungs as her back hit the wall with a sickening crunch, drywall cracking and littering the floor around them.

Mockingbird turned to the monitor screen, making furious selections on the keyboard. Security footage of the whole base blipped to life.

They watched as Static strode into a room with the terrifying grace of an apex predator, tearing down anyone in his way. Radiation flooded his fists in a green glow as he punched through the receptionist’s chest, shifting to easily grab the next closest person and brace his hands on either side of their skull. The poor soul thrashed as blood leaked from their eyes, nose, and ears. When they were no longer moving, Static let them crumple to the floor.

The next group ran and Static bowled them down with infinitely multiplied radiowaves, hurling them from open palms as if it were nothing. The speakers filled with screams, the feedback whine behind the sound forcing Blythe to cover her ears.

Her blood iced over as in the top right frame, the supervillain looked up at the camera. His head tilted, making chilling eye contact with the lens until the screen cracked and went blank with buzzing stripes of radio static.

Verity was the only one in the compound who didn’t look afraid. She looked relieved.

Mockingbird moved for the door just as it burst open. She swung at Static with her bionic fists, missing and punching straight through the steel door instead.

Static stood on a platform of squiggling waves that lifted him off of the ground. He looked god-like. Untouchable. The impulse to run coursed through Blythe, but she stayed rooted to her spot, clutching the child to her chest. Static’s hands glowed green again as he lifted Blythe’s boss into the air. Those same up-and-down scribbles seized her, wrapping her prosthetic limbs and ripping them from her shoulders.

Mockingbird screamed.

“What did you do to my daughter?”

“Daddy!”

The villain’s attention shifted immediately. Verity wiggled free of Blythe’s arms, running to her father.

Static dropped his target as if she were a ragdoll, scooping up his daughter instead. “Verity,” he breathed. His eyes fell closed, stroking her hair, whispering tender praises and apologies into her shoulder.

The child clung to him. “Daddy.”

He pulled back to search her for injuries. “Are you hurt, darling? Tell me what they did to you.”

Though his voice was gentle for her, there was still a sharp undercurrent to it, as penetrating as the radiowaves that still leaked through the air. His eyes narrowed on her bloodied knees and the stained skin between her lip and nostril.

“I’m okay, Daddy,” Verity said, looking back at Blythe.

Her vision swam as the supervillain’s focus shifted, once more, to skewer her to her spot. A calm sort of rage stretched his posture taut as he stepped closer.

Blythe, embarrassingly, may have whimpered. Her hair stood on end, floating above her head.

Verity squirmed out of her father’s hold, jumping between them. Just as Blythe had done for her.

She held her breath.

“No, Daddy! She protected me.” Verity’s eyes took on a determined sort of gleam; valorant and unwavering.

The air around them fizzled quietly as another wave of illness rolled over Blythe.

Radiation poisoning. She wasn’t going to last much longer like this.

Static’s head tilted, looking from his daughter to the broken super behind her.

“She kept me safe,” Verity insisted, turning her head to look back at Blythe. Blythe couldn’t seem to speak. “She’s hurt. Can we take her home?”

“Verity.”

“Please?” Verity moved to Blythe’s side, taking her hand.

Despite her swimming vision, Blythe couldn’t help but smile softly at her. A powerful weapon indeed. Blythe believed she could move mountains.

Seconds passed and Blythe thought she may have passed out. Her vision stretched fuzzy and dim at the edges. Then she was being lifted from the floor, broken bones screaming their protest.

Blythe whimpered again, unable to help burying her face in the supervillain’s shirt.

His voice buzzed in her ear where it pressed against his chest.

“Stay close to me, Ver. Take my hand. We’re going home.”