Origin Story: Part 15
“This is going to be fun; like hitting a practice dummy that screams.”
Madeline watched in horror as Fatale emptied the bag of crickets on the ground. They hopped off, and then the chirping began, the forcefield currently surrounding Madeline fluctuating to their sound before finally completely giving out.
Now Madeline stood there, completely exposed to Fatale and the Cowl’s gun. But the Cowl put away his revolver as he smiled. “You’re not as naive as you seem, Maddie,” he said. “You told marketing your powers don’t work well at night, but you didn’t really reveal your weakness, did you?”
Madeline stood there, trying to get her forcefield up, but the chirping was too much. “How’d you...”
“I’ve always been a study of superhero weaknesses — it’s a nice piece of knowledge to have. For you, I was able to detect a certain frequency of your forcefields when you used them. And guess what had the antiphase of it?”
“Crickets?” Fatale laughed. “That’s a pretty lame weakness for an already lame superhero.”
Madeline smiled weakly. “I just try to be careful not to say bad jokes.”
Neither the Cowl nor Fatale responded to that, the only sound being crickets chirping.
“Fly-Over was tougher to figure out,” the Cowl said. “He apparently gets his powers from dark energy or something. But I eventually found in his personnel file he has a bad perfume allergy.”
“And you used me to kill him,” Madeline growled, her anger coming close to — but not quite — overcoming her fear.
“That made everyone fear you; wasn’t that neat?” the Cowl asked. “Anyway, I need to get busy. There’s a Soviet-era nuclear missile that I have to get to launching. Thanks again for distracting the Mokovian military while I took over this base.”
“But why are you doing this?” Madeline asked, so frustrated that she started to tear up. “You framed me.” She looked at the still form of Harvey and felt so much anger boiling inside her she felt sick. “You killed Harvey! And now you’re launching a nuclear missile? Why?”
“There will be plenty of time to explain the master plan when the missile is in the air and headed to a city,” the Cowl told her.
“Can I kill her now?” Fatale asked.
“No, that would ruin the whole point of all this,” the Cowl said. “Just beat her up.” He turned to Madeline. “This should be invigorating for you; haven’t you seen Fight Club?”
Madeline shook her head. “Fight Club is rated R.”
The Cowl pursed his lips. “You’re in way over your head.”
The Cowl left the area to go further into the complex. Fatale had a smug smile and sunk into a fighting stance. “This is going to be fun; like hitting a practice dummy that screams.”
Madeline imitated Fatale’s fighting stance and tried to look determined but failed. She could feel her powers still fritzing to the crickets chirping, which meant she only had her completely non-existent fighting skills to rely on. “He’s going to kill a ton of people with a nuclear weapon!” Madeline exclaimed. “Why are you helping him?”
Fatale laughed. “You’re asking why I’m working for a billionaire? Do you need more clues to help you figure that out, Nancy Drew?”
Madeline frowned. “You are not a nice person.”
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