The Good, and the Bad(And the Sidekick(s))

I slam into the edge of the brick roof, gasping slightly. The mortar lines would probably be ingrained in my uniform and my stomach, along with the wooden beams I knocked into last week, the metal bars that had almost impaled me two days ago….

I could go on at least eight years back.

I heard Pyre’s chuckle before I saw him. The villain in training—or whatever the hell his shtick was—was staring at me with disgust in his eyes.

What I could see of them, at least. Most of his face was covered by his balaclava, which was styled to look like it was covered with flames.

“What, did the little hero get tired?” Pyre asked, voice dripping with sarcasm.

I growled and pushed myself to my feet. “The great and powerful Eden doesn’t get tired.”

Actually, my name was Belladonna. The downsides of being a sidekick were many, but being able to hide your identity from the entire world(including the number one villain and his sidekick) was not one of them. I just wish I had been able to choose my name. Eden is the name of my favorite garden(but of course the Program wouldn’t respect that).

“Are you sure?” Pyre held out his hands and they caught fire, large flames dancing across his fingers. “You look pretty tired. Why don’t you let me help you out?” Pyre’s idea of helping out was probably to burn me to a crisp. I had to distract him until a plan could form.

“Of course I’m sure. I don’t get quite so uncertain. Unlike Exemplar Program dropouts like you. Remind me, how long did you last?” I felt vines curling around my palms, sprouted from the pouches of seeds I kept in my belt. I thought of a flower that had the perfect chemical composition to knock Pyre down a peg. If only I could reach that bag….

“I endured what you can only dream of being able to take in that damned program,” he hissed, jaw clenching. His eyes were glowing red; obviously I had hit a sensitive subject. But I felt a stab of anger. Pyre didn’t know what I had endured.

But no matter. My hand closed around the pouch and I felt the seed that I needed respond to my call.

Pyre barely had time to react before I threw the seed at him, my emerald green magic twisting around it to form the plant in time. He caught it easily, the flames on one had extinguishing as he inspected it. Idiot move, really. Especially when he realized exactly what it did.

He gasped and dropped it. I smirked behind my mask, though he couldn’t see it. “The thing about stinging nettle,” I said conversationally, like Pyre didn’t just hold an entire handful of it, “Is that it usually takes a few minutes to do its magic, or even hours. But by doing my magic, I can spread it across your body in a matter of seconds.”

And it only took a tiny bit of it to be exposed to skin! I reached out mentally to the stinging nettle traces on his skin and let them use my abilities to grow.

Within about four seconds, Pyre was on the ground, almost whimpering. I kinda felt bad, so I didn’t let it go on for too long, but it was kind of entertaining watching him squirm.

I stood there for a second, soaking it in, before I took off across the rooftops, in search of some crime to stop. The villain sidekick would be in pain for a few minutes before he could even think of calling for backup—and I would be long gone.

Stupid Pyre had interrupted my normal patrol with a brief fight. I didn’t even know how the Exemplar Program thought he was a threat.

But I guess that’s what you get when you had ‘fire death powers,’ as Jo says when she rants to me about the terrible state of our government and how terrible the villains are. She really likes the word ‘terrible.’

Running on top of buildings, jumping like I didn’t have a care in the world, that, that was where I felt the most like myself. I leapt off a balcony, doing a complicated twirl that absorbed most of my impact. I tucked myself into a roll and came up standing, grinning, arms outstretched like I was waiting for applause.

Which didn’t come.

Because I was alone on a roof.

You’re stupid, Belladonna, I scold myself.

A beep from my comm brings me back onto the roof. I flinch at the loud noise and bring my hand up to activate the communication back to Headquarters.

“Eden? Is your communication device activated?”

As if I could tell you if my comm was off. “Go for Eden. What’s happening?”

The tech person behind the screen must be new, because she didn’t immediately scream at me about using informal language. Well, she will in a few weeks, tops. They always did.

“Vanguard could potentially need help, he’s facing off with Alchemist currently, so please be on stand-by.”

“Roger that, standing by.” I had gotten lucky tonight, but on the patrol schedule for next week, I probably wouldn’t get the nice tech lady. At least she hadn’t gone through the whole song and dance lecture.

The roof I was on now was a news outlet, I think. One of the many in New York, but this was bigger than most. Certainly their radio equipment was more plentiful than the vast majority of other news stations.

I scaled the radio equipment quickly and efficiently. Vanguard always asked me why I didn’t just use my vines or something to get up there, but I always just shrugged. It doesn’t take a lot of energy to control vines, but I really liked climbing.

I took a deep breath. The fight with Pyre had left me on edge. I know that he had escaped from the EP at a very young age, and I couldn’t help the twist of jealousy I felt when I thought about it. I had to focus on something else. Maybe I would pray? No, the tech coordinator could still hear me.

I spoke to her. “Uh, can you send me the location of Vanguard? If I’m on standby, I’m gonna head on over there.” I internally cringed at my grammatical dialect. Even with the voice changer attached to my mask, I doubt it made a difference. Even after living in New York for over three years, I was still a Texas girl. And I doubt people from the North slip up and say y’all on a daily basis.

“Please give me one moment to pull up his coordinates.” The voice is cool and concise, giving away no hint of emotion except from a tad of annoyance. In a few weeks, she won’t be nice, and she’ll fit in with the rest of the techies.

I felt a beep on my wristwatch and opened the hidden panel, giving me the exact address where the elite superhero was.

I was in the air and onto the next building in just a few seconds.

***

The sounds of glass breaking and the feeling of magic thrumming, swirling with the air, overrode me even two blocks away from the action. I spotted a glass bottle soaring high above the buildings, headed straight for me. Of course Alchemist would sense me before I could do anything.

I dived for the bottle, intending to smother its contents with leaves or something, but between my eyelids, I saw a bright orange glow and felt myself land on something warm instead of cold pavement.

I opened my eyes to myself laying on a sphere of orange-gold magic surrounding the cracked vial—and the hallucinogenic pressurized gas inside it. I slid off the force field and jumped off the building, landing narrowly on the smaller one below. If Alchemist was mad enough to be throwing crazy gas at me this early in the fight, something must be up.

“EDEN!” Or not. Maybe Vanguard had just annoyed the sense out of him with his needlessly loud voice.

I turned on my heel, searching the skyline for Vanguard and Alchemist. I hear the hiss of a bomb before I see Alchemist, and the entire world goes dark.

Flash bomb, I think blearily. Oops.

Though I can’t see, I can feel where I am in relation to the vegetation on the roof. The potted plant on someone’s fire escape, the mold growing on the wall behind me. I hear a person to my left, probably peeking out from behind the low wall surrounding the edges of the building, based on what the weeds growing there are saying.

Danger, bad-smell, help us, brave one, they mutter, waving a little too much for it to be just the wind.

My vision is clearing, and I send a wave of reassurance to the weeds, before lunging for the dark outline of the man trying to sneak up on me.

He yelped, surprisingly high pitched for the supposed top villain.

I grab at him, but he sidesteps quickly and tries to remove another bottle from his bandolier.

I throw a handful of seeds and vines shoot up where they fall. One of them catches his ankle, he stumbles, and I launch myself at his chest, going feet first.

Alchemist falls and winces, and I quickly start lashing him to the wall.

Right when I’m tying vines around his wrist, he opens his hand and I yelp as a glittering cloud of pink dust enters my vision.

I back up quickly, but its already in my eyes and nose.

Christ, but I hate that stuff. Alchemist made it especially for me, to target the way I control plants. I didn’t know how he did it, but when it got inside me, I couldn’t use my abilities for at least two hours.

So I pulled a knife out of my own bandolier.

But before I could use it, I heard another person running towards us, identifiable only by the sound of his light metal chain mail.

I cursed internally, then ducked and rolled out of the way like I was supposed to. I heard the ring of metal as Vanguard drew his sword and looked up to see it pointed at Alchemist. The cavalry had arrived.

(I mean, I was technically the cavalry, but whatever.)

He swung at Alchemist, who dove out of the way. I spotted Pyre in the distance, looking very angry. He was propelling himself through the skyline with jets of searing hot air.

Vanguard signaled to me to escape, so I gritted my teeth and ran to the edge of the building.

Climbing down was easy, and I ran into the alleyway. As I went, I shed the most distinct parts of my uniform.

The black open trench coat was wadded up and put under my arm. My hood was attached to my dark green undershirt, so it was fine. My bandolier folded into my trench, and I pulled the vines dispersed from my wrists and ankles. I plucked the flower out of my buttonhole and carefully put it in a crack in the ground.

I walked quickly through the back alleys. I could obviously take care of myself, but I didn’t want to hurt anyone else tonight.

And my powers didn’t work right now. Which was an issue. I was off my game tonight—this rarely happened. And when it did, Vanguard made me go to the safe house.

So to the safe house I went.

It was a tiny top-floor apartment on the corner of a block—good visibility, multiple angles, super overpriced(but the government was footing the bill, so why should I care?)—but still a safe space.

I felt the familiar twinge of pain in my left ankle as my old injury revisited my body. It always did when my magic wore off.

I took out my key and let myself into the safe house, opting to wait by one of the windows, watching for Alchemist and Vanguard’s fight instead of going to get something to eat from the heavily stocked fridge. I saw a few orange flashes of light and magic, spirals of fire, and a heavy explosion that rattled my teeth as well as the plates on the counter.

About thirty minutes after I first entered the safe house, Vanguard entered, opting to wave limply at me before crashing on the couch.

He slowly took his cowl off—which was styled like a knights’ helmet—and groaned.

“Hi, Rowan.”

“Hi Eden-will-never-let-me-know-their-name.”

“How was the fight? I wouldn’t have bowed out, but….” I smiled thinly. I was a petty person, and me not being allowed to battle without my magic was an argument me and Rowan had gotten into a lot.

Tonight, Alchemist had been trying to steal industrial chemicals, ones that you definitely couldn’t find in your local Walmart. Not that New York City has Walmart. Pyre had been a distraction, meant to draw attention from the main crime of the night.

“It was fine, it was mostly Alchemist trying to kill me with mixed banter-slash-flirting. He’s so weird.”

Rowan did not fool me for one moment. The one thing that me and Pyre had bonded over was the disgusted looks we traded while our mentors badly tried to flirt with each other. But I trusted both Vanguard and Alchemist to be adults about their… situation.

“Uh huh. Well, if that’s it tonight, I’ll be off.”

“Wait! Do you want a ride home?”

I didn’t even acknowledge it as an attempt to discover my true identity. “Nah.” I strode to the door, giving a half-mocking salute to my mentor. “See ya later.”

“Bye, Eden, see you in a few days probably!”

I hid my limp until I got into the elevator, then I allowed myself to lean on the wall, wincing softly.

No matter what the Exemplar Program had done to me, I was immensely grateful that they had allowed me to keep my identity secret from as many people as possible.

I would take the bus back to my own shitty apartment and try to get a few hours of sleep before I had to go to school the next day, taking the same smelly bus.

I hate being poor. And having to go to public school. And living alone.

Today had been a pretty normal day.

All things considered.

Fighting a fire-user, a crazed chemist, and getting my welfare worried about by the number one hero in the world.

A day in the life of an underappreciated sidekick.

God, I hate the government.

A/N: Hi! I might write more of this--I kinda have a plot--and if I do, it'll be about Belladonna trying to navigate life and superheroism while trying to keep her identity secret(which kinda doesn't work) so if I continue it, try to read it!

Have a good day/night/life!