Part 1: Sway
Walking out of a downtown highrise, a man hesitated at the entrance before shifting into the river of people moving further uptown. Long-established muscle memory had him patting his suit jacket for the object of his addiction. That memory was interrupted, only making it as far as stepping off to a corner and feeling the cigarette pack in his suit pocket. He froze mid-motion, hands falling to his sides, staring down and off into space, wondering for a few seconds why he'd stopped. He gasped and blinked a few times, set off gently by not what his eyes saw, but what his mind recalled.
Green eyes. Mind-numbing, breath-taking green eyes. Eyes bolstered by a submersible quality that made them all too inviting to all other naked eyes, they seemingly breathed vitality, coerced initiative, and other things into him, that were his reason for being there. Eyes bearing a rich coloring that practically filled his, convincing him of eyes dulling like shade, somewhere deep inside. Eyes accompanied by a female voice somewhere beyond their brilliance, voicing a reasonable bidding. One of those things had to be stop smoking, because for the life of him, a totally extinguished desire prevented any cigarette from reaching his mouth, exiting his pocket and into the nearest trash receptacle instead. As was her will, he crossed into the crowd flow to go about his day, wondering if she had anything else in-store for him, knowing he'd be helpless to stop himself if she did.
At the other end of the lobby, close to the elevators, a blonde donning an elaborate wrapped bun of a hairstyle and a black suit smirked at her latest work walking out the door, permanently ushered into a healthier direction just after one session. Ten minutes worth of bad habit altering, another fifty of programming and convincing him that obedience and generously giving to his new doctor were good habits. Of course, even a super effective dose of therapy couldn't constitute a sure-fire cure-all; he would most likely relapse, would need further programming, and would launch himself back on the couch to let her back into his mind again. Cigarettes were now just the convenient excuse.
No matter how many times Dr. Julia Sway beguiled first-timers, the thrill of bending minds stayed inexorably fresh, lowering her custom-tinted glasses and let what they hid wash away comprehension of their watcher in the tide of guileless, persuasive green. Dr. Sway's hypnotherapy experience and skill notwithstanding, all she really needed was a glance to open people up to profound mental and essentially life changes. Such was her ironic luck, years of studying academically-practiced hypnosis techniques rendered practically obsolete with a spontaneously-developed hypnotic stare. She couldn't complain too much; little more than a glance wiped out student loans in record timing.
She still found it funny how 'hierarch' became the prevailing term that stuck for super-powered citizens rather than the derogatory 'mutant' or 'freak' terms found in children's comics, side-stepping subtleties and calling those like Sway outright better than everyone else. To be fair, the phrase was coined only when a handful were known to exist in the world. As more popped up, so did the animosity, but any hateful levied words she found were much tamer in most of America compared to her hometown of Johannesburg, much tamer in their behavior compared to the violence still found there for her kind. Faring with it came easier than for most, with a power that mollified and stole away most any intentions with long-enough exposure, many accidentally. But she decided to not take chances and emigrated to America as soon as she could, finding it to truly be a land of opportunity and higher public tolerance, quickly coming into the company of those who understood and acknowledged her power, and paid handsomely for her services.
Most of the known hierarchs she'd heard about were do-gooders or upstanding citizens trying to be normal, putting on a good public face for the majority. It didn't matter to the doctor that she only seemed like an upstanding citizen on the surface, or that the only good she did was for her bank account or ego; prioritizing self-interest suited her well for decades, and fate couldn't have bestowed a better ability.
A cabal of conglomerate heads who took offense to hierarchs in-general sought to oppose the heroes who made their kind look good, and was smart enough to have Dr. Sway as a hierarch-on-retainer, to gather what usable information she could, and to set things ethically questionable at best in-motion. Both the conglomerate heads and Sway knew what they were getting with each other, and were happy to always keep things at a professional distance. She was somewhat lucky that they didn't take enough offense to capitalize on her mercenary talents. They were supremely lucky that when it came to issues between hierarchs and everyone else, the hypnotist simply didn't care. "People are people, and whoever I meet is whoever I want them to be," Julia always reasoned. It was a sensibility she kept even after she "retirement."
Riding the elevator back up to her office, she was looking forward to her day ending. No matter how much she enjoyed her work, there always seem to be fatigue in an easy day job, creating unsurety of if she was keen on sharing the night with anyone. Maybe her receptionist, maybe someone from a different floor before they left, but having played with every regular in the building, it didn't sound quite as appealing. Maybe just a bubble bath and night alone was in her future. No thoughts disputed that outcome up until entering her office, to find it not as vacant as she left it.
A strange, defensive smile greeted her new guest.
"Good afternoon. Did I miss an appointment?" A touch of a faded South African accent filled the room.
"Not at all," a younger voice replied. "This appointment was very much planned, even predestined."
Sway's smile dropped its defensiveness with a sigh, realizing whom had invited themselves in.
Sibyl, the vernal psychic and seer extraordinaire, among the youngest to ever enter the hierarch hero game. Her old costume was ridiculous and thankfully forgotten, but she still toted her crystal ball around, functional for psychic augmentation, but still a strange accessory to jeans, a light jacket over a white top, and brown pigtails, still dressing to her hippie upbringing. Sway noticed with appreciative eyes how her old opponent had finally taken a confident posture; she looked so sure of herself, like you'd expect of a conquering hero, making the hypnotist's domineering advances all the sweeter once eventually employed.
"Still acting like a cheeky child, I see. A shame you've only gotten more arrogant, or dumber...or maybe just more millennial; I can't tell."
"Still underestimating what I'm capable of. A shame you probably haven't grown any smarter."
Seated behind her desk, the black highchair turned toward the city, concealing the smile revealing she enjoyed, even missed the verbal back-and-forth heroes were always good for, at the outset at least.
"I take it my receptionist didn't invite you in."
"She still doesn't know I'm here, though I get the feeling she's truly oblivious to everything in the world but you, something she never signed up for."
The doctor turned her chair to face her interloper, toying with the temple of her glasses, teasing her with lowering them.
