To be a friend

Felicia laughed over my retelling of the events of today. I had just gotten to the point where we had found Regina sucking on Randall Reptile’s ‘snake’ long after the poor guy had cummed. “I think I would have loved to be there to see Amelia’s face. She always insists on being there whenever Randy gets a blowjob so she can tell whoever’s sucking him off that what’s actually going down their throat is his shed skin, in order to spook them out or something like that. I can’t think of anything more annoying for her than to find that someone eagerly deepthroating him like he pisses out milk and honey.”

“Gross” I gagged. “Both what she says, and what you said. Both of those things are incredibly gross.” I thought about the name she used and was reminded of what I had seen in the business card. “Wait, so you’re telling me that you and Captain Critter are on a first name basis?”

“When you keep sleeping with someone, it becomes more and more awkward to not know their first name. Especially if they’re, in a sense, your coworker. And what can I say? She knows how to take care of pussy really well.” She grinned as I laughed. “Seriously, if you get on her good side, she’s genuinely a great dominatrix. At least when she’s still acting as the captain. The real her is an absolute softy.”

I contemplated the words. The biggest names across both camps, those of professional heroes and professional villains, sleeping together was an open secret. Nobody knew quite well who was doing it with whom, but the same names tended to be rotated. Even then, the general consensus was that, with outlier exceptions, nemesis didn’t do that. And now I was given evidence that either Felicia was an outlier or that the assumptions had been too conservative. “Indulge the fan inside of me for a moment. How do you balance having a relationship like that with the same person most people consider to be your nemesis? Captain Critter and you have fought a lot, and it’s not like you haven’t **** each other to pay the hospital a visit. How can you still have sex with someone who often leaves you bruised and battered?”

Felicia looked at me in a strange manner. Her expression went from confused to apologetic in a manner of seconds. “Right, you haven’t been at this for too long. Well, to put it bluntly, it’s just how the lifestyle is. There’s a whole culture between powered crime-fighters and crime-committers. To a certain point, it's a sport. They don’t give professional privileges to someone who’s constantly risking or causing harm to civilians, so it’s hard to think of their crimes as being too awful. And with what happened years ago with the Defenders and the Masters, all the mentors that survived kept telling the newbies to never take it personally. Because hating the other side and wanting them gone forever is what made so many of us and them die. Once you take both those things to heart, it becomes a sport, sorta. Your nemesis is your sports rival, and it would feel silly to have a grudge over an injury you got while ‘playing against them’. And sure, there are genuinely rotten crooks out there, but they’re not the person you’re having a battle of wits and fitness with every week or so. They’re the person who tries to do something awful, you beat them, and they are kept in jail. It’s two kinds of people, the only thing in common between them being that you’re supposed to foil both of them.”

I took in Felicia’s words. It made sense, yet I still couldn’t fully agree with it. Professional villandry as an addition to professional heroism had been the governmental solution post-Newark, and it changed a lot of things. I could see how the heroes that survived, and those who started after it, had come to see the fellow professionals in a different light. Yet, there was something inside of me telling me that it was wrong. It was hard for me to imagine sleeping with someone I’ve fought against out of their own will (my brainwashed idols were a different story). Even if, say, me and Amelia hit it off, I don’t think it could ever go past a couple of nights in bed. But under Felicia’s logic a hero and a villain could date, and that just couldn’t do. Perhaps it was wrong, but my gut told me that such stuff couldn’t and shouldn’t happen.

“You’re free to disagree” Felicia mentioned. I must have shared the story of my thoughts across my face. “Not saying that you’ll have the same reason as her, but Land Shark has always been against the idea.”

“She has?” I had the feeling that I was about to step into a landmine of interpersonal drama, yet I couldn’t resist myself. To know more about the Twelve, even if it was about their disagreements with one another? Yes please!

“In her case, it is because she thinks there should be no community at all.” Huh? “She agrees with me in that we’re all coworkers. But she spins that into the notion that we shouldn’t bond at all, neither with our fellow heroes nor with the villains. You know how everyone and their mom thinks that she’s so cool and mysterious and that’s why she doesn’t talk to the civilians she saves and why she does the bare minimum of interview work that her contract mandates? In reality, she just treats this as her nine to five. She treats me like I’m delusional for thinking that what we do is a little more grandiose than being an office worker.”

The more Felicia spoke, the clearer the animosity became. Somehow, I had never even contemplated before that some of the heroines of the most famous group in the world might actually personally dislike each other and just hide it from the public. If that was the case, then I would have to try and take Felicia’s words with a pinch of salt, even if I did want to believe her.

“Why did she become a pro hero, then? It’s not like her powers wouldn’t be useful for other fields. Couldn’t she find a job where it would be easier to keep her privacy, and not have to deal with all the baggage? And for someone who just sees it as a job, she seemed really eager during our fight. I know that could just be a result of the mind control she’s been under, but that doesn’t seem like something that our puppet master would do intentionally.” A simple question going straight to the point. Not directly casting doubt on anything Felicia said, yet seeking to get her to explain the parts that seem contradictory.

Felicia shrugged. “That’s down to avarice and hypocrisy. Hundreds of millions a year is more than she would ever need, but that doesn’t mean she still doesn’t want them. And as hard as it might be for her to admit, what with the whole ‘I’m efficient and will do things the smart way’ posture, she likes to brawl. She will deny it all day, but she’s a shark! I bet the smell of blood gets her wet.”

It was then that we heard a wall being banged and a muffled scream. “Shut up!”

“Oh, you didn’t like me letting others know about that?!” Felicia shouted back, eager to taunt her from the safety of her cell.

“Unlike you, cat girl, I don’t pretend that I’m actually an animal!”

Felicia seemed ready to shout something again, but went still. She then turned to me. “Hera, I have an idea. But you’ll somehow need to make sure that Land Shark can see us while still being stuck in her cage.”

“I’ll find a way to pull it off.” I said, confused but excited. “What’s happening?”

“Cat girl is what Land Shark calls me out of disrespect for my hero name. And she hadn’t said it once to refer to me since she got controlled. We need to channel into her anger!” Felicia then started removing her clothes.