Breaking Butterfly

Party Crashers (Part 3)

4 hours 15 minutes 23 seconds left

"Ok, I'll suit up, but you have to explain everything to me first." I tell Molly, my hands shaking at the knowledge that whatever Molly tells me will change the course of the rest of my life. "If I suit up, then you'll try and convince to leave and you'll tell me later. I need to know what's going on now."

"I don't know where to start." Molly murmurs.

"Start will the truth." I say while making eye contact with her. She avoids my gaze, her emerald colored eyes teeming with grief.

Molly pauses, biting at her lip, as if trying to find the right words. She inhales deeply, and finally meets my gaze. "I have powers because I used to be Crystal Violet." 

With those words, my world begins to crash in on itself. Dr. Morris told me that Crystal Violet was dead. Oh, that fricking liar. Has my whole life been built on a series of lies?

"But..." I stammer. Words. I can't seem to find the right words to say. I mean, what do you even say when your whole world is falling apart.

"When Dr. Morris told you that Crystal Violet is, he was telling the truth. Crystal Violet is dead. Never again do I intend to suit up as Crystal Violet. After what we did, I can never be Crystal Violet again." Molly confessed. "I even had a power inhibitor chip place in my neck. It was part of one of the SIRA's projects, Project Neutralize. The chip blocked telekinetic signals from reaching the brain. When Nighthawk attacked, he removed the chip from my neck."

Project Neutralize? That was the project file that Star stole for Whiplash, back when Whiplash threatened to drop me off a building. That was one the same day I first met Apollo. And the chip. That must have been the metallic object I found on the floor after Molly was attacked. 

Maybe I was wrong to think that my world is falling apart. Maybe the pieces of my world are falling into place.

"Ok. You said you were Crystal Violet. Tell me about that." I prompt her.

"The Crystal League. In the beginning, it was just the four of us. It was Rachelle, Jessabelle, Katherine, and me. But back then, called Jessabelle 'Jessie', and Katherine 'Kat'. It was the close of our senior year at Myst City High School, and we decided that we would spend spring break together. Kat suggested that we should go camping. There was going to be a meteor shower, and Kat wanted to get out of the city so she could see it. knowing how much Kat loved to study the stars, we all agreed to go with her." Molly delves into her origin story. "When were watching the meteor shower, it looked as if one of the meteor came streaking through the sky and landed in the woods nearby. Kat freaked out and took off running to find the meteor."

This story, I recognize this story. It's similar to the story Rachelle wrote in her Crystal Flame comics. The only difference is that this is the real story. It's not some fictional book that you can set down, and walk away from. This story isn't limited to the pages of a book.

"Oh did she find what she was looking for. She found a glowing opalescent space rock, roughly the size of a shoe. I'll never forget the look on her face as she passed the rock around to each of us, pure childlike wonder. Kat fangirled over a space rock." Molly chuckled softly. "None of us can remember how we got back to camp that night, but when we woke up, we had superpowers. Kat was the first to touch that rock, naturally she was the first to discover her powers. She could manipulate light. She could shape it to any object, or fire concentrated blasts of light. Whenever she used her powers, her iris would change to the color gold."

Her description of Kat sends my mind racing. Golden irises? Light powers? That sounds exactly like Apollo.

"Jessie was the next to discover her powers. Jessie had the power of superspeed. She could race at speeds faster than sound, leaving a streak of blue in her wake. She could alter her voice through the vibration of her vocal chords at higher frequencies, and run so fast that she could phase through solid objects. Jessie was always the most athletic of the group. She had been on both the varsity cross-country, and varsity track teams, she had even placed at state. Running was her life, her passion. So it made sense for her to get superspeed." Molly smiled strangely as if caught in a flashback.