Anti (Hero/Villain 1x1)

[Melix]

It was four in the morning when the assaulting tone of eight or ten blowhorns, accompanied by eight angrily screaming people, woke Squallheart up. Heart pounding, chest heaving, he was having another one of those awful, "publicity" nightmares, the ones that had begun when the comics about him and his friends started. He really hadn't been portrayed in a good light, and the anxiety caused by walking everywhere, seeing them all advertised, a masked version of his face with the words: "The most evil of superheroes!" was insane.


Knox Squallheart did not like to think of himself as "evil". It wasn't a word that applied to his self-image, except the id self he saw in his most dastardly nightmares.


That, however, was not the current issue: the nightmare in his head. It was the nightmare downstairs that had him angry right now. He took the stairs three-by-three, on the landing within seconds. "Would you all shut up?" He shouted, his face a nasty shade of red. Nine sets of heads turned to look at him, and Squallheart realized they had company. "Oh, awesome," he groaned. "Would you guys like any tea?" he asked, having no idea why these people were in the home of superheroes.


"We want our friend back!" shouted a short, auburn redhead with longer than average fingers. Knox recognized her shrill voice as one he'd done battle with often: "Purple Mouse?" he asked, echoing her poorly chosen superhero name.


"Yes!" shouted the Mouse. "I know you're keeping him somewhere in this house!"


Knox stretched. "Ya...um, it's four...in the morning...and I'm too tired to... try to figure out what you're talking about. So, uh, if you could come back at a decent hour, that would be-"


"WHERE IS GINKA?" screamed Mouse.


Knox groaned. "Ginka? Don't know who...hey, aren't you a number down?"


As they talked, the other, more fed up superheroes slipped away to their bedrooms.


Purple Mouse spelled it out: "We know you guys have Ginka, who is, yes, our missing number." She sighed. "Lead me to him and I'll leave."


Knox groaned and decided to humor her. "Or you could leave now and I'll give you him later...at, like, ten. Okay? Okay. Good night." He turned around and went back upstairs, and somehow managed to sleep through The Second Coming Of The Blowhorn.


@Jacrezz

 

[Jacrezz]

By the time the sun had risen into the sky, Ginka Kymachi or Ky for short had gotten exactly one hour of sleep, and that was only because he'd passed out for a while. Why? Well, he was still trying to figure that out. Also trying to figure out how to stop his insides from wanting to be on the outside, or at least that feeling. One question Ky didn't have to wonder about was why he hurt and felt like absolute crap. Honestly it wasn't his fault, but some stupid trick of fate that caused him to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.


Just the day before, Ky had a cold. Sniffles, a sneeze or cough every once in a while, but that was it. Nothing major at all, but still a pain. He'd gone to the supermarket --hair hidden under a beanie and eyes behind a pair of shades-- to buy some stuff for soup and tea. Not a big deal, right?


Well unbeknownst to Ky, someone had started following him after a particularly big sneeze. There weren't many people around, but the one that was following him had been and had seen the sick, beanie clad man vanish and reappear when he sneezed. Yeah, not good.


After Ky left the store, soup supplies in tow, the person following him did as well and --when they were close to an alley-- shoved Ky into the alley and against a wall. It took Ky several seconds to figure out what was going on, and he scowled at the man in front of him. "Let me go before I kick your ass," Ky said, digging to get the hand off his neck that threatened to cut off his breathing.


"You can't beat me," the other said, and Ky instantly placed the voice as BioBoy, some punk kid with superpowers and a stupid name that wasn't going to get anywhere. "You're weak, and couldn't kick my ass if you tried."


Ky highly doubted that, but couldn't voice his opinion (read as 'sarcastically snark an insult') because suddenly his chest burned, like he'd inhaled fire. The stupid kid let go of Ky's neck and grinned as he dropped to the alley ground, gasping in pain. His grin faded though as Ky's body jerked, muscles spasming violently and his entire being fading in and out of sight. Slowly BioBoy backed up, looking shocked and shaking his head.


"This wasn't supposed to happen. I just increased the life force of the bacteria already inside you but..." His voice had trailed off, and Ky would have slapped him if he wasn't in so much pain. Kids using their powers without knowing control always ended bad, and that's what seemed to happen to him.


Back in the present moment Ky groaned, rolling over in his bed and pulling the covers over his head. He'd managed to get home somehow the night before, and now he hoped to get some sleep.

 

[Melix]

It was the burning feeling in his chest that woke him up; not a pleasant, reassuring warmth as it usually was, but rather the feeling of a cattle prod, accompanied by the smell of singed, burning flesh. For a moment, he suspected something, like the shadow of a human as he blinked his eyes, but Purple Mouse (who was unanimously voted Whitehall’s most persistent supervillain, despite not being team leader) wasn’t there. No one was. Squallheart coughed, ripping the amulet off of his body; it was black, with flecks of hot blue light . Squallheart sighed. This, this was the real life of a superhero—there was no trainer, no bat signal, no pizza parties in a sewer or cute girls. It was a bunch of kids with no idea what they were doing; it was late nights with no sleep, with no gain; it was not caring about the people you saved but feeling you had a responsibility; it was an amulet that burned you when you showed your lack of morality.


It was slightly lighter out; the sun hadn’t yet shown out from behind the everfirs and everpines (they were NOT evergreens- he’d been lectured enough by the science-geek team member Harun [not his superhero name] to know the difference) but the day was a later version of early, and so it was light outside. Squallheart flipped on the fluorescent rooftop lamps, turning dark corridors into hospital hallways. The amulet swung back and forth in his hand, leading him out the door and toward the edge of the woods. Dare he enter, in his PJs? He might have pathfinding abilities, but who knew if he’d have time for that after he came across, say, a hungry mama bear. The amulet swung faster. Great…now it was red- that meant there was about to be trouble if he didn’t go into the woods. No more hesitation; Squallheart hurried inside before Mouse could jump out at him again, and almost immediately he could see trails: current ones, past trails, deer trails, forgotten and ancient trails, trails he could form…the woods were overwhelming; Squallheart picked a path leading into the city and made it there within an hour, heading into a coffee shop where some of the local, teamless newbies hung. Most stared at him; it probably had something to do with his dirty, twig covered pajamas.


“I’m looking for someone,” he explained to anyone who would listen. “Ginka Kymachi.” He was pretty sure that one was the missing villain; the one he’d promised (and been guilt-burned) into helping. It was hard to believe the guy had never been in here before- that there was no hair; not a remnant of a jacket, not a person with even a memory or a picture. Freak. Villains were freaks (and that was coming from the guy who got his powers a year earlier than the currently-hailed youngest hero). They didn’t socialize.


And that was fine. Whitehall was only 453 square miles, and he was likely to frequent the urban areas as opposed to the woodsy area- it was what villains liked, and, for that matter, safer (higher populations equaled more powers). He was probably very close.

 

[Jacrezz]

Ginka woke up to his phone blaring some offending ringtone, and he curled up tighter under his blankets like it would help. Against all his wishing and hopes, it didn't help, and Ginka actually growled before picking it up and hurling it at his apartment wall. The once nice, two month old smart phone sailed across the room and shattered into a bagillion pieces, glass and computer bits falling to the floor like some weird hail.


It took several seconds for Ginka to realize what exactly he'd done, but when it finally did click he groaned and laid back down. Of course nothing could go right. And it wasn't like he could go to a doctor for help. He was a villain after all, and even though only a few months old a very popular one. Well, that's what it sounded like. All that crap about villains being pure evil, using their powers just to hurt others and make their underground lairs more awesome was all bull. Yeah a few super villains or whatever had nice lifestyles and enjoyed hurting people, but most of them were just pissed off kids with tempers. Ginka was, and though most of the time he's calm when egged on violence is always close.


That's really how he ended up a villain. Some punk super kid was teasing him about his hair, and he'd snapped, beating the snot out of the kid and walking away without a scratch. Of course the other superheroes and public heard, so suddenly there was a new villain in town. Joy. After that, everyone kinda expected him to behave violently and didn't trust him if he wasn't. The other villains weren't too nice to him, since he really wasn't all that mean. He just had a temper. And, well, a hint of pyromania, but it wasn't his fault things looked so cool when they blew up.


Ginka sighed again, rolling up under his covers, wondering how cool it would have been to be a hero instead of a villain. They had good publicity, lots of money, and yet they didn't bother at all with anyone but each other. "Freaks," Ginka mumbled, finally falling asleep for a while.

 

[Melix]

Squallheart had a vague idea of where he should be going; not because he knew where Ginka Kymachi was, but because he knew where, logically, Kymachi had to have been, at least once. There was a notorious team of superheroes (which had a name, but it wasn’t worth typing) that consistently picked fights with the villains not because they disliked evil, but rather because they collected trophies. Things villains dropped or that they stole during battle. It was completely reasonable to assume (since they’d picked a fight with the Goldshanks Group, who were mostly disbanded and generally agreed upon to be complete losers) that Kymachi had run into them, or his group had run into him, at least once. This logically meant that they had some of his stuff.


“And we’re going this way,” Squallheart muttered to the now purple amulet and chain wrapped around his wrist as he was dragged one way and another. Sometimes Squallheart wondered (although he was better at concealing his ponderies and powers when he wasn’t alone) if he really was a hero. Well, not a hero—if he really had superpowers. He’d explained that his amulet would “guide” him to several people, but really, his decisions were made by a cr*p piece of jewelry no self-respecting female would wear. At least he wasn’t a useless partier, like he had been before. Now, even if he still didn’t care, he was doing something worthwhile.


The first Goldshanks member he found was A.J. Demarco. “I hate my life,” Squallheart reflected, staring at the giant mass of human he’d crashed into ten feet from their Superhero Thrift Store/Office. He sighed. “Sorry for running into you…please don’t kill me. I’ll give you my scarf.”


He removed it and handed it over, and the guy looked down at it for a moment before asking, “You’re the pathfinder, huh?”


“That I am. What tipped you off? The amulet or the complete lack of control of my body?” Yet another thing he was famous for. “I need to find the superhero Ky—Ginka Kymachi. You have some of his stuff.” He followed the broad-shouldered superhero into the store and looked around until he found what he believed was the right mask. Finally.


He sniffed it and the paths appeared. “Amulet: take me to Ky!”

 

[Jacrezz]

Waking up to the sound of an alarm going off was not fun for Ky, and add in the fact there wasn't even an alarm clock that worked nearby was pissing him off royally. Dragging himself and the blankets off his bed, Ky resembled something like a bulky child's ghost drawing with an actual face in the middle. A very angry face, but anyone's face would look close to that if they were sick and some goddamned alarm was going off.


The alarm was still going, even after he wished it away, and with a sigh Ky dropped his blankets in a pile of the floor before wrapping a smaller one around his shoulders. Damn the sudden cold. Ignoring his new chills as best as he could, Ky wandered into his kitchen to find the source of the alarm.


His fridge, surprisingly enough. Multi-coloured eyes glared at the machine, then Ky sighed again. "Ghost," he announced out loud, and the alarm stopped, a small screen showing up on the surface of the fridge instead. It showed a bunch of bull stuff screens that he really wasn't in the mood to look at, but one was flashing with a warning sign. Tapping it, the window expanded. Ky almost fell down with the surprise, but just closed his eyes and groaned. Why? Of all days, why the hell was a superhero waltzing through his apartment building, in pjs, and carrying an old mask of his? "I hate the world," Ky sighed, defeated, and flopped down on a kitchen chair to wait for his guest. Hopefully they would knock. He really hated it when his locks were picked or the door kicked in.

 

[Melix]

Squallheart thought his arm may have popped out of socket a long time ago. The shooting pain when he moved, which normally encased his cramping legs as he was dragged across city, encased everywhere, which wasn’t helped by the large, angry security guard forcing him to move faster. The amulet clearly had no concept of “buzzing in” to an apartment, nor did it have, Squallheart reflected, any concept of unlocking or breaking down doors, which would have been much more handy than simply being slammed against the door and being unable to move until it was open, as he was.


The angry security guard prepared to charge him, looking more and more like a rhino every second.


It was in this set of dire moments between life and death that Squallheart realized how lame he was as a superhero. It wasn’t funny- he was actually about to die, and he was the only hero he knew of who didn’t have any way to defend himself. He could see his opponents next move- that was a “finding” power. But even that wasn’t going to protect him from a gigantic average, non-super human being.


His powers were keeping him trapped to the door, and he was going to die. Five seconds from impact, Squallheart had another epiphany: he was an idiot. Ripping off the amulet and “deactivating” his powers forcibly was hard, especially navigating around his shoulder, but moments later, the hallway was calm. Knox was no longer forcibly pressed against the door, and as for the security guard, he was down and out. You would too if a twenty-pound amulet was chucked at your face. It took Knox moments to scramble up before going to stand on a plant so his face took up the entire range of a security cam, the only one he’d noticed that was clearly not the same brand as the ones regularly throughout the building. “Ginka? Ginka Kymachi. Ghost.” He mouthed his words so not to alert anyone that Ghost was living there. That might cause a riot. “Please let me in. I’m here to help.”