“Let’s see… Paprika? Really?” Anna asked the recipe on her V-screen. Reading ahead, she eventually conceded that it seemed like the author knew what they were doing. “Alright, but if this blows up in face I’m blaming you,” she squinted, “Cooking_Mama312.”

Measuring, then adding the paprika to the boiling pot of water and noodles, Anna hummed a little tune while thinking about the last few days.

About four days ago, she’d had her meeting with Eve on top of the Eiffel Tower. And, while Anna hadn’t heard anything on the news about Eve or her team, she was sure that was just because Eve was consolidating her resources or something along those lines.

In truth, Anna could’ve gone and peeked on her using her own powers but she just… didn’t think that was very fun. ‘And, yes, I know that’s a shallow reason, but, to be honest, I don’t really care. I’m going to be a god for hundreds or thousands of years, at least. Those years are going to be very boring if I ruin every surprise.’

Anna furrowed her brow and slowly her stirring came to a stop. She looked up from the pot and checked her surroundings. “Who the fuck am I... thinking to?” She asked the empty room.

To avoid the creeping sense of loneliness that was hovering over her, Anna got back to reviewing her week.

The next three days had been fairly normal. Anna had actually managed to get herself caught up at work as it turned out that she didn’t need as much sleep anymore. She was even getting to work early for once.

Cary had invited her out for drinks again and, against her better judgment, Anna had accepted. It went about as well as expected. ‘The girls’ as Cary called them almost completely ignored her, and while Cary had tried to include her, Anna definitely felt that it was forced.

Sighing to herself, Anna moved on. ‘Ok, let’s see, what else?’

Anna had also managed to get a bit more spotlight on her super persona, Witness. Whenever she got an alert from her phone about a televised broadcast of a super fight, she’d quickly pop over as Witness, watch for a few minutes, then pop back. She wouldn’t talk to anyone, she wouldn’t interact with anyone, only watch the battle, then leave.

Speculation has been rampant online about who or what she was and what she’s doing. Of course, Anna hasn’t been doing anything nor did she have any sort of grand plan. She was just trying to build her reputation as this mysterious figure that did have a grand plan.

It was working to.

‘Besides that… well, I cleaned.’

Though Anna had cleaned the week before, that was mainly picking things off the ground. She hadn’t organized anything, plus, her ‘research’ had also messed things up a bit.

This time around Anna had been much more through. She’d busted out the vacuum cleaner for the first time in months, bought a duster, washed her clothes and sheets, even gone shopping online for some bookcases so that her comic collection would no longer be haphazardly stuffed into cardboard boxes, hell, she’d even organized them. Her flat was now squeaky clean from the top to the bottom.

Now she was trying her hand at cooking. ‘Though I don’t think it’s going to well.’ she thought as she looked at the brown sludge she was pushing around with her big spoon. ‘This does not look like egg noodles.’

Checking her phone and looking at the pictures Cooking_Mama312 had posted and comparing it to her own efforts she hummed. “Think I’m doing it right. At least, based on what a person from the internet says I should be doing.” Shaking her head, Anna opened up a streaming app and set a local podcast to start playing in the background as she cooked.

“...So, have you heard about this vigilante named Paradise?” One of the podcasters asked, their voice echoing over the house speakers. The topic immediately causing Anna to perk up.

“Yeah, isn’t she, like, fake though? I mean it sounds like an urban legend dude.” the other one spoke, sounding significantly higher.

“Nah man, she put the Black Mob in the hospital the other day. All of them in comas.” He said, sounding unnerved.

“Comas?”

“Yeah, man, that’s her like, whats is called? Mody- Mobi?” He continued to try and find the right word before being interrupted by his high friend.

“Modus operandi?”

“That’s the word! Yeah, that’s like her modus operandi,” he said, stumbling over the word a little. “She puts people in, like, week-long comas ‘nd once they wake up they ain’t the same, dude!”

“What? How?” The high one asked, getting curious.

“Well, like, this is only rumors ‘n stuff but, like, what happens is that, all she needs to do is touch you and she’ll send you to ‘paradise’.” Anna could hear the implied quotation marks.

The high one laughed. “Well damn, I guess I need to go find her then!”

“Nah man you ain’t getting it! She don’t send you to your paradise, she sends yous to hers!”

“Huh?”

Anna paused the podcast as she put the noodles into the boiling… substance within the pot, and set the timer. Cleaning her hands, she picked up the V-screen and sat down on her couch. After getting comfy she unpaused it.

“What I mean man is that like, she sends you to hell for a week! Any shit you done that she don’t like you get punished for. You stole somthin’, you gettin’ punished. You kill someone, you gettin’ punished. You rape someone… you’d be lucky to be able to breathe after the week is through.”

Anna heard the high one shuffle a bit. “What do you mean?”

“Well, like, you get punished based on what you did.” the main podcaster explained. “Like, if you stole somthin’ you might get your hands cut off over and over. Or, if you like, kill someone, then you might be chained to the bottom of a sea of blood to drown again and again. As for if you rape someone, well, no ones made it through that punishment sane enough to tell us.”

“Really?! Why the hell are we calling her Paradise then?!” The high one asked loudly.

“Well, she always asks when she appears if you want to enter ‘paradise’. The name kind of stuck.”

They continued talking from there but Anna found herself pulled away by a dinging sound that resounded in the apartment. Lowering the volume of the podcast, Anna sat up and looked around. “What was that?” She asked having never heard the sound before. A few moments later the sound rang out again, coming from the front door.

“Is that the… doorbell?” Anna wondered as she got up and headed toward the door. In her two years of living in her apartment, she had never heard the doorbell before.

She’d never had any visitors.

‘Did someone get an address wrong?’ She thought as she peeked through the peephole.

A man in a black hoody stood ominously on the other side of the door. The shadows concealed his face while his breath could be seen in the cool night air.

Anna shook her head as she backed away from the door. ‘Nope, nope, nope, nope, a whole lotta nope. We do not open doors for strange hooded men in the middle of the night.’ Walking back to her kitchen, Anna checked on the ‘noodles’ that she was making. They were looking better. The sludge had been absorbed by the noodles making them nice and soft.

The doorbell rang.

Focusing on the podcast still playing in the background, Anna started stirring the pot again.

“...I mean, its crazy man!” The main podcaster said. “ Some of these supers are like gods! It’s like some new, uhh, para- pana…” he stopped, trying to find the right word.

“Pantheon?” The high one provided.

“Yeah! They’re like some new Pantheon or som-”

The doorbell rang.

Grumbling to herself, Anna stopped stirring and cleaned off the big spoon she was using. Setting it down and ignoring the doorbell that rang again, she headed towards her bedroom. Anna took a moment to enjoy the shelves of comic books she had lining the walls.

The doorbell rang.

Stomping over to her closet, Anna threw open the sliding doors and started sifting through the junk lying on the floor. “Where is it? Where is it?” She muttered while throwing old clothes and her suitcase she’d used while moving.

The doorbell rang.

Growling in annoyance, Anna cursed. "Where the fuck is it? It should be in here!" A few more seconds of searching followed before she finally found it and calmed some.

Pulling the gun out of the old nightstand sitting in the back of her closet, Anna smiled fondly at it. It was a MAW-50-WSE or Magnetic Assisted Weapon .50 Caliber Winston Standard Edition.

MAGs, or Magnetic Assisted Guns, have existed for a while. They operate on a fairly simple concept: make bullet go faster.

By installing coils along the length of the barrel and powering them to create a magnetic field, one can accelerate bullets to higher speeds than can be obtained using traditional smokeless powder alone. Enough so that a 9mm pistol could conceivably pierce through steel.

With a .50 Cal? Old tank armor wouldn’t stand a chance. Of course, modern stuff is a bit more sturdy, but against a regular unarmored human?

They would most likely be vaporized.

Why are these legal? Well, In many places they aren’t. Out of the 71 states in the USA, only 11 allows for the sale of MAG’s. Of those, only one allows the legal sale of the MAW-50-WSE.

You can probably guess which one.

Snorting, Anna started to reminisce. ‘Dad loved this gun. He’d go shooting with it and Uncle Larry every weekend. I remember when-’

The doorbell rang.

Anna gripped the gun hard as her bulging vein returned with a vengeance. Standing up, she made her way out of the closet, through her room, and into her living space. Stomping down the hallway that led to her front door, Anna stopped and tried to calm herself.

‘I am calm. I am the wind. I move, I adapt, I change form…’ repeating mantras she’d read in books, Anna slowly got control of her self. Taking a deep breath she reached out for the door handle and…

The doorbell rang.

Rearing back, her brief calm gone, Anna kicked the door open.

“WHAT?!” She bellowed as she shoved the gun’s barrel into the man’s face.

The figure stumbled back, falling on their butt. The hood shifted and revealed the features of one very nervous and disheveled doctor.

“Ah! M-Ms.Miller, Did I, uh, p-perhaps catch you at a bad time?” Jamie Fawks asked, dumbfounded, from the floor.

Anna felt a furious blush come across her face. “Ah, D-Dr. Fawks, um, no. I was just… uh, cooking.” She stuttered, frozen in place.

“W-well then…” he sent a glance at the gun in her hand, that was still pointed towards his face. “May I, uh, please come in?” he asked cautiously.

Face flushing even more, Anna pulled back the weapon and coughed lightly. “W-why yes, of course.” She responded, avoiding eye contact, face burning.

Jamie stood up, brushed himself off, and looked around nervously. He hastily made his way over to Anna, pausing as he tried to scooch his way past into the apartment.

Feeling incredibly awkward, Anna shuffled out of his way, allowing him access. He nodded gratefully with a weary smile and entered, Anna slowly closing the door behind him.