Been writing this one in my head for a while. Finally got round to putting somewhere someone else can read it. Really hope you enjoy it. Feedback (positive and constructive) is always appreciated.
Giga Girl completed her third sweep of the area. She'd been trying to locate a specific building in Star City for the last three hours. While the powers her alien biology bestowed upon her made her immune to fatigue while also giving her almost unlimited strength, speed and the ability to fly, she was not immune to tedium. What didn't help were two things; one, the alleged general location of the building she was looking for was the industrial district, a huge sprawling maze of old warehouses and manufacturing complexes on the outskirts and the second was the description she'd had of the building from Overwatch at HQ which was, rather unhelpfully, a large grey warehouse. It was unhelpful as nearly every building in this area were large grey warehouses.
She was trying to locate the building as it was the last reported location of her team mate Crimson Angel who had been looking into a couple of disappearances, namely of a couple of minor superheroines. Only tier 4 ones but still, even tier 4s could easily overpower most humans.
Herself and Crimson were both tier 1s. Normally only called upon for Omega level (world ending) threats. A level named after last year's Omega-cron Crisis. It had taken all six tier 1s to bring that bastard down. One of whom didn't survive the encounter. Black Scorpion, a good friend of hers had made the ultimate sacrifice. A number of heroes were still in mourning from her loss.
Giga Girl shook herself from her reverie and stopped in midair. She decided how she was going about this was inefficient. She began to let her mind slip into a trance like state, her breathing slowed, her senses and awareness stretching out. Several minutes passed and then she heard it. Somewhere below her, she could hear breathing but it was strained like it was being done through a gag. That had to be Crimson. She got a direction for the noise and flew at full speed down towards it, recklessly ignoring the nagging feeling in the back of her mind that this was a little too easy.
She hit the concrete roof of the warehouse at mach 3, shattering through it and hitting the floor below hard enough to crack the floor in a 3-meter circle radius. She looked around, seeing mostly darkness, with only a couple of low wattage light bulbs hanging above her providing a couple of circles of illumination. She span around and saw the source of the breathing sounds she'd heard. Crimson was there, naked and suspended from the ceiling on a hook supporting chains secured to each of her wrists by manacles. Her ankles were also manacled and secured to the floor.
Crimson's head was down which meant she was likely unconscious which would explain why she hadn't escaped. She had the ability to summon infrared light from her hands which could melt just about anything. Those chains wouldn't last long at all. The more worrying question now nagging at her was, what had rendered CA unconscious? All tier 1s were immune to drugs and any of them could hit a speeding train at full speed headfirst and not even get a headache.
She started towards her team mate but paused when she looked at the floor and noticed a weird red and white stain a few feet from where she'd landed. She crouched down and placed two fingers on the stain and was surprised to find it was some kind of gooey substance. She lifted her fingers and smelled, her heightened senses immediately told her it was thermosium, the element that all superhero costumes were made from. But this couldn't be that, she'd been reassured that she could stand on the surface of the sun and her suit, also made from the same substance would remain intact. Whether she could survive that was a regular argument for hero forums.
What in the hell could melt thermosium then? She moved that question to the bottom of her priorities. First save Crimson then worry about that.
She stood back up and wiped the thermosium residue on the skirt of her costume. Hopefully it'll wash off later.
She was closing on Crimson when she noticed another oddity on the floor. Three feet in front of her friend there was a line drawn on the floor. She only hesitated for a second, it had to be something from this building was still in use. She stepped over the line and started reaching up to lift Crimson from her suspended state and she noticed two things. One, despite thinking about flying up the hook that held the chain connected to her friend's wrists, she was still on the floor and the second she noticed how heavy her arms were. Then she felt the fatigue spread, down her arms to her shoulders, then her chest. She started feeling very heavy and a little faint, her breathing was also starting to become laboured. Next the fatigue started sliding down her legs and it was now she started to panic. She'd never been tired. It just didn't happen. It couldn't.
She lost her fight with gravity and her arms slumped to her sides. Her left leg followed, her knee giving way forcing her to the ground. Her mind reeled. Had someone discovered her weakness?
Then came a slow clapping noise from the darkness in one corner of the cavernous warehouse. The noise reverberated around the empty space. The clapping stopped as abruptly as it had started and was replaced with a sound like metal scraping on concrete accompanied by several sets of footsteps.
A figure emerged from the darkness into the light on the other side of Crimson Angel to her. He was dressed in a light grey suit and white shirt with no tie. Best thing she could come up with to describe him was "non-descript". 5ft 10 so slightly taller than her own 5ft 7 frame. Trim build, short dark hair, clean shaven. Handsome in a clean cut way but he had a strange scar running down his left cheek to his neck that looked like the injury that had caused it had hurt, a lot. The metal and concrete sound was being made by an old plastic seated chair with metal legs he was dragging behind him. He moved around to one side of the circle of where Crimson hung, off to Giga Girl's right hand side before placing the chair down and sitting on it.
"Well, well, well... If it isn't Giga Girl herself. I'm honoured." He smiled in a way that seemed triumphant. Was he not aware she could break his spine without much effort?
"Who the fuck are you? What have you done to Crimson?"
"My name? You can call me Parasite. Oh you mean Catherine Angellicus? I haven't done anything to her she didn't beg me to do, trust me."
Giga Girl was aghast. She couldn't believe that Crimson had revealed her secret identity willingly. She had a husband and kids at home for Gods sake.
"How do you know that name? And what do you mean she begged for it? What the hell did you do to her?" She spat, angrily.
"She told me it." He shrugged in reply. "As for what I did to her, it was more what WE did together. She was grateful to me for freeing her from her burden."
"Burden? What burden?"
"Her powers of course." He opened his right hand and a ball of light began forming. Infrared light, identical to what CA wields... or wielded.
Giga Girl shook her head. "No no..... you can't just steal someone's powers from them?" She tried to lever herself up to get herself back on her feet, if only to give her more options but found she'd lost even more strength since her left knee had given way. It was taking every ounce of strength she had left to maintain her current stance on one knee.
"Well no... but you see, that's where my powers come in. My powers manifested, just like Catherine's in my teens. I was getting hot and heavy with a girlfriend of mine and my hands were... exploring virgin ground so to speak and well... it turned out she was a potential superhero too. I mean what are the chances?" He leaned forward at this point, his hands clasping together as he did so, his elbows supporting him from their position on his knees.
"I started to notice feeling... stronger? I could feel her essence flowing down my fingers, enriching my cells with potential. But there was a downside to my abilities. I discovered I needed physical contact in order for this transfer to happen."
"So you stole that poor girl's future from her before she even realized she had one?"
"Yes. I had the power to do so which gave me the right. Would you like to know of the other powers I have collected? My collection is extensive."
