Superdim 7 : end of this story

"I shouldn't kill you," Gene said thoughtfully. "Hammer doesn't like it much."

Ji-Min relaxed. And then he withdrew his gun and she was a lot less relaxed. "That would kill me!" She threw her hands up. "Don't shoot."

"Naw," he said. He pointed it at her and pulled the hammer back. "Bang bang." She saw his finger pull back.

She dodged in a roll. She heard something hit the wall behind her.

"You're fast," Gene said. It wasn't a compliment. He fired again.

Ji-Min shrieked and leapt halfway across the room. She sprinted to the entry and bounced off a fast-moving wraith.

"Grab er!"

She dropped into a roll, hoping to move past the wraith below grabbing range. It was time to go, Hammer could just win this time.

It was too late for bargaining. Bony fingers dug into her shoulder and halted her motion. She tried to twist away. The world spun around her and her head hit the ground with a crack.

For a moment, she was dazed. Metal screeched and she was heaved upwards, against the wall. She didn't know what was happening but then there was a weight on her chest. That seemed…bad.

Then she heard the slow sound of footsteps toward her.

He was going to shoot her at close range.

Ji-Min struggled, trying to jerk away. The skeletal hands holding her had no give. She realized that the metal had been twisted off the wall to pin her.

“Thanks, friend,” said the cowboy. He sounded touched. “I treasure your reliability and consideration.” He pulled the gun out of his belt and pointed it at her head. “Goodbye, law woman. Awful sorry about this, but we are diametrically opposed forces.”

Fuck, what a stupid way to go.

“No!” Hammer bellowed.

Ji-Min blinked up at him. She hadn't heard him come back in the room.

Gene stopped, finger still on the hammer of his gun. “No?” He repeated. His voice was only curious. He cocked his head to the side. “Why no?”

Hammer staggered to his feet, using the wall as a brace. He pointed one huge hand at her. “That’s my rival.” He sounded scandalized. “Look- each supervillain needs a superhero. For balance. One day, one of us will kill the other.” He paused. “Or we could fall in love,” Hammer amended offhand.  

Ji-Min shuddered.

“There’s only two ways for this to go,” Hammer explained passionately.

‘That’s three,’ Ji-Min thought. ‘I kill him, he kills me, romance. Three possibilities, according to his logic.’ She kept the correction inside. She wanted to live.

“Wow,” marveled Gene. He nodded slowly and holstered his weapon. “That makes a lot of sense. She’s your dramatic opposite.”

“The Ying to my yam,” Hammer said wisely. “We need each other. Our identities define the other.” He shook his head once and pulled his fingers through his hair to arrange it.

She wanted to die of mortification, just a little bit, but she wanted to live more. So she nodded along, in case her opinion had any weight.

“She agrees with me!” Hammer pointed victoriously. “Does this mean you’ll accept my help with your branding?” He made a gesture that meant nothing to Ji-Min. “The all-black thing is kinda cool, in a mean ninja way, but you could really use a public relations strategy.”

A wave of ice cold hate washed over her. She gritted her jaw shut so that she didn’t say anything.

“I bet there’s some really cool shit on the security footage.” Hammer put a hand on his hip. “I’m going to release the video of you throwing that big moon at me, that’s so awesome. That makes both of us look good.” He dug in his pocket and pulled out… a second phone. “Scoot over, would you buddy?”

Ji-Min didn’t track what was going on. She belatedly realized that she'd hit her head, like, really hard. Gene accommodated Hammer easily, moving a few steps to the left, away from her.

The phone clicked.

He…

“You took a selfie with me,” Ji-Min said. Her voice sounded haunted. It seemed to belong to someone else. Maybe this wasn't even happening to her. Maybe it wasn't her body lying on the floor. Had she double-checked?

Hammer turned around and grinned at her. “Well, yeah,” he said. “You’re going on my feed. Wanna check the photo before I post? We can retake it.”

Noooo. This couldn't be happening. Nooooo.

Ji-Min screamed again, a sad little shriek of frustration.

“Damn,” Hammer said approvingly. “That’s cool too.” He angled the phone so that she could see it. It…

It did look pretty cool. You could see the destruction behind her, and the twisted metal pinning her to the wall made it obvious that she wasn’t a total loser who had gone down easily. She wasn’t unconscious or anything, so it wasn’t that embarrassing.

‘I hate that he’s right. This will make both of us look impressive.’

He didn’t even earn it, though. Ji-Min gritted her teeth. She’d been kicking his ass until Gene and his boys showed up.

She might have lost some time. She vaguely remembered hearing Gene's voice. The next thing she registered was Hammer kneeling by her to show his phone.

She was aware he was talking. She vaguely registered his screen showed her and a caption that included "@ the Planetarium with my heroic rival Moonstrike 🌙 💥 (better luck next time 😜 🔥 🔨 to 💪!!!)"

Hammer said something that sounded like a question. She said yes, to make him go away. Her head was spinning and pounding.

They were gone, she realized.

That got her up. Ji-Min sat up-

And punished the breath out of her own ribs by using them to bend away the iron that Gene had apparently twisted in front of her. She gasped, hand to her chest, and then slid out from underneath.

She might have lost some time feeling sorry for herself. She'd lost. She'd lost to two hot dimwits.

Ji-Min sniffled, and tried to wipe away a tear. Her hand met her mask. Oh, good. That was still on. "You're not my yam!" She shouted to the empty building. "You're not my yam!"

A car door slammed.

She blinked. She got up, using the wall for balance. She tried to find a window. It took a while. When she did, that car was gone. She did see headlights, four sets of headlights. Heading for her.

"Oh, shit," she said. Her voice echoed. She stumbled towards the door, blood pounding in every vessel in her head. Someone was coming. She had to go. She was at the scene of a crime and she had to go.

"Moonstrike. I'm glad to see you up on your own."

Ji-Min would have jumped out of her own skin if she didn't feel so nauseous.

She stared. There were four people in suits coming up the stairs from the lower level.

“It’s good to see you in person. We weren’t expecting you,” the top agent said with a friendly nod at her. “We just follow Hammer around when he’s out of prison, since he’s sociable and easily found.” He surveyed the wrecked planetarium. “It’s generally a good bet that he’ll lead us to other criminals.”

Shit. They were investigating super crime. They were from the Bureau of Heroics. Feds? They seemed like Feds, not local.

Ji-Min felt her stomach twist into a knot. She didn’t say anything.

"Give us a minute, would you?" The man who seemed to be in charge waived off his subordinates and focused on her.

Ji-Min watched warily. He didn't get very close when he addressed her directly. He used the same calm tone you'd use on a wild animal. That was probably a good idea, given that all she wanted right now was her hitting stick.

"Moonstrike, is it?" The agent eyed the devastation. "I gather that you didn't expect ten opponents, but this was impressive nonetheless." He took a couple of meandering steps closer. He had a voice fit for movies, smooth and smoky. It was almost enough to make her relax. "I heard you did some good work earlier today in town." Something smug curled into the smile on his mouth.

“....Thank you,” Ji-Min said stiffly. She tried to look like she was not a criminal. Her heart was pounding. This was too many people to fight her way through. She was a sneaky type. This was bad, very bad. Any moment now, they were going to realize that she wasn’t any registered hero, that she must have been at the scene of a crime for a different reason-

The Federal agent nodded. “My superiors want you to consider getting into contact.” He produced a card.

She looked at it. After a moment, she reached out and took it. At a glance, it was his business card. She eyed him suspiciously. “Alejandro,” Ji-Min said, eyes darting between him and the card.

This was… good?

“To my friends, yes,” Alejandro the suit agreed blandly. “We understand that you seem to like your privacy. We can work with that. We want you to know that we can provide resources for your fight against crime.”

Ji-Min swallowed down a hysterical laugh. Yes. Her fight against crime. That was definitely what she was doing. “Resources?” She kept her tone neutral.

Alejandro nodded. “Federal heroes receive a competitive salary as well as a discretionary budget for crime-fighting paraphernalia.”

She realized, with a heady feeling, that she had accidentally conned her way into getting paid. Ji-Min stood stock still. The literal first thing that she’d done after getting superpowers was look up how to do crime for profit without getting caught. And the government wanted to get her on retainer.

‘This could be very useful,’ Ji-Min realized. “Thank you,” she said again. She cleared her throat. “I’ll be in touch.”

‘If I have a heroic persona, I can avoid getting in trouble. If I get caught or unmasked, I can say I’m a hero. No one is going to connect a federal retainer with larceny.’

Plus, holy shit. They’d pay her to upgrade her equipment. She liked the hitting stick, but the government could probably get her something better.

The ghost of a smile flickered over Alejandro’s face for the first time. “I look forward to your call. Now.” He indicated the room. “We can take care of this situation. You can leave, if you like.”

She took her leave, still in disbelief at how lucky she had been.

Ji-Min wasn't honestly sure how she got back to her car. She had the impression of walking a very long time. That might have meant that she got lost. It might have just meant that everything seemed very difficult with a concussion.

Her phone was in the car. Of course it was. Phones track you.

She sat in the driver's seat and picked it up. There was a notification from an account that she followed. She opened it to see Hammer's selfie with her. The next video had been ripped from the museum's security camera.

Extremely late, she realized that he'd had someone watching it live. That was how he'd snuck up on her.

Ji-Min looped a video a few times, watching herself wrench a concrete ball the size of a puffy reclining chair off of its frame and lob it at Hammer's back.

It looked pretty fucking sick, honestly. She took a screen recording.

After a while she realized that she had a voicemail from an unknown number. Her first thought was the paranoid jump that the FBH had already tracked down her information. She checked it.

"Sorry about how late this is," Gene drawled.

She shrieked and dropped the phone. The recording kept playing through her car's speakers.

"Calling in regards to your offer to help with my car. I'll send the - the gee pee ess point tomorrow. Thank you."

She listened to it again. Yeah. Ji-Min put a hand on her head. In the background she heard her own faint voice, shouting "my yam! You're not my yam!"

She deleted it.


EPILOGUE


Gene's eyebrows shot up when she knocked on the garage wall. "Sheeeeet." He cocked his head.

Ji-Min exchanged a nod with the wraith waiting next to the car. Her black eye throbbed. The bruise wrapped around her head and under her hair. Her sunglasses weren't really disguising the extent of the bruise, not this close.

"What happened to you?" Gene detached from the garage wall, frowning. "You in trouble, darling?"

Ji-Min cracked her gum. "I'm fine," she said. She avoided looking at the wraith. If he wasn't gonna say shit, neither would she. "Let's open up this beauty." She put the glasses on the top of her head.

Gene held out the keys. She took them with a nod. "You need the car today?"

The cowboy shrugged. "Nah," he said. "We're in town another couple of days."

"Yeah?" Ji-Min kept any interest out of her tone. She propped the hood open. "Where's next." She stared into the engine block.

There was a hum. "New Platopolis, I think."

Figured. That was kind of the national center of super crime. It was a great place to go if you wanted to get arrested.

She sniffed. "Sounds nice."

"Yuuuup." Gene blew out some air. "Let me know if you wanna ride, ma'am."

"In your broken car, yeah." Ji-Min shot him a wry grin before she got to work. "You're the darling."

The wraith sighed. But he didn't say shit.