Super•Villainous

LIV

Wait.

They weren't following me. Not all of them, at least.

Some were in front of me, too, unwittingly caging me in.

I nearly flung myself off my feet in my haste to skid to a halt, my hand blindly finding one of the nearby doors and jerking it open. Unlocked, fortunately. Ducking inside, I slid the unbelievably heavy, abysmally loud contraption closed and waited with baited breath for the sound of the oblivious pursuit to pass.

"Are we up to no good?" whispered a wily, overtly feminine voice, the owner having gone unnoticed while I monitored the door.

My spine nearly shot out of my skin, and I whirled to face my unexpected company. "Who are you?" I asked.

A slow smile spread across a woman's face from behind thick stone bars, wider than each of my wrists. "No, who are you? You don't belong here. I do."

I swallowed, mouth suddenly dry. "That obvious?"

Visibly giving me a once-over, smirk ever-present, she said, "Yes. The lack of boring gray is one thing, but the most glaring clue is that you're here in front of me at all, when everyone knows only Aqua can handle me."

I believed her when she implied she was trouble. Any supervillain spelled trouble, but her straightjacket trapping her arms into useless extensions of her torso told me she was especially so. Padding made up the entirety of her cell. No tables. No bed. Nothing with a hard edge.

Either displeased by my scrutiny or otherwise choosing to provide an example of why only the water-user could control her, she bit down on her lip, drawing blood, and across the four feet separating us, sprayed her bloody saliva onto my arm.

"What-" The rest of the sentence got bit off by my teeth snapping together, clenching through a spark of burning pain, the type of pain that lingered, like accidentally reaching for a pan straight out of the oven before giving it time to cool. The type of pain that had you rushing to hold your hand underneath a running faucet for hours.

Her blood ate clean through my clothes, burrowing down into my skin. I took an involuntary step back from her cell when she added, "Don't be dramatic. It won't completely riddle you with holes, since my blood was diluted by my spit. You're welcome for that, by the way. I'm not so generous with everyone. But," her feverish green eyes were locked on my rapidly closing wound, "clearly there's more to you than meets the eye."

"I can see why they keep you locked up," I managed. Already, the pain was beginning to fade as my skin healed over to an angry red, until even that faded. "Clearly you don't play well with others."

"My neighbor in my old cell block would probably agree with you, if they were still alive. That was before they tossed me in here. They made sure not to make the mistake of giving me a roommate again."

I took another step towards the door, increasingly willing to take my chances on the patrolling guards outside having passed. "So you're a murderer."

She shrugged. "Thief by trade, murderer by choice. She deserved it, if that helps things."

"I'll just... be going now."

In a musical voice, loud enough to make me cringe for the fear of who might overhear, as was no doubt her intention, she said, "I hope you have a good plan, because if you're in here, you can't be doing too hot so far." In a flash, she rammed her face into the bars, glaring up at me through her lashes with her chin tilted down. "Let me out and I might even help you. Obviously, you're not one of them, so that means you're one of us, taking your chance at an escape. I'm right, aren't I?" A bright, jubilant laugh. "You're not going to make it very far with only healing on your side. Help me help you."