There was a stark difference between the teenager standing before him and the one he’d seen almost exactly a week before. Back then, the bra girl had been an afterthought. A teenager in over her head and far easier to deal with than anyone else present. Of course, Jumpspark had been wrong to assume that, but the girl standing before him now was different.

It was all in the voice. Gone was the wonder and the stutter. All that was left was a raw tone that almost made her every word sound like she was complaining. Jumpspark needed to do a double take every time she spoke though. Bra girl, now properly clothed, was definitely not complaining.

He held up his hands placatingly and moved backwards half a step. “I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.” The hero said honestly. “I’ve passed people passed out around here before. Not all of them were responsive. A lot were in bad states.” He shrugged. “I’m a hero. Can you blame me?”

“Yes.”

Jumpspark paused. He hadn’t been expecting that answer so soon. “So before I go away, or do anything else at all, how are you?” He saw hesitation in the girl and pressed further. “I’ve got a secret identity, you know. And we haven’t met outside of our extracurriculars-” She didn’t laugh at his bad joke. “So if you want to get anything off your chest right here right now, it’ll stay between us. Unless it, y’know, endangers the lives of others, but those are fringe cases.”

“I-” Bra girl grasped her crowbar with both hands and twisted. She was looking away into the night sky. “...n wanting to… so long…”

“Sorry?” She had been muttering, so Jumpspark hadn’t caught all of that.

The teenage girl turned her dead stare back on the hero. “I said what you wanted me to say. Now go away.”

“Sorry, I can’t do that.” Jumpspark said.

“Go away.”

“I like to think I’m softer on people than most cops. See myself as one of the people saying ‘we need to rehabilitate them’ rather than the alternative.” Jumpspark took a breath. “But you still broke into a place and did some damage. With that very crowbar no less. Actions have consequences.”

Jumpspark felt horrible when he saw the faint glimmer of a tear running down the girl’s cheek, but it had to be done. He’d do his best to make the officers go lightly on her, she’d clearly been pushed to do it by some badly picked friends. It was that or desperation.

“I- I can’t-”

“You had to know that this could happen when you decided to do it.” Jumpspark said. “And the way you did it too…” He trailed off. There was nothing good he could say following that line of thought. Fortunately there would be consolation in how the consequences this girl was facing were probably limited to extensive fines and community service, and maybe a visit to the therapist. “Come quietly, please?”

Suddenly Jumpspark felt on edge. The hairs on the back of his neck rose, and the itch to move began echoing in his legs. His eyes darted around, but aside from the teenager before him suddenly shifting her posture to something more aggressive, nothing had changed.

“The first time I don’t want friends…” The girl muttered as she stepped towards Jumpspark. “And you won’t go away…”

“I can be friendly.” Jumpspark backed away enough to stay out of range of the crowbar. “But only after you right your wrongs. It’s a hero thing.”

“Shut up.” The girl lunged closer. Jumpspark couldn’t back away fast enough, and he was about done doing that anyway. “Go away!” The crowbar swung, and Jumpspark let his body explode into energy moments before contact. His form was sucked into the metal, and he released himself as the girl finished the swing.

Jumpspark appeared with one hand holding the crowbar in place and the other on the girl’s back. “I really didn’t want to do this.” With a thought he released a portion of the control keeping his body in its physical form. The skin all over his body shone white as his hand became energy and flowed from him into the girl, and then finally back into him. He released the crowbar the instant before to not hurt himself, and crouched slightly to catch the girl when she fell.

Only she didn’t fall.

Instead she turned around and stared at him with her dead eyes. “What did you just do to me?” The question was more curious than anything. She hadn’t been affected at all.

Jumpspark couldn’t help but swallow nervously.

~~~

Lucy was hurting. At the same time she was in the most tranquil state she’d ever known. It was her mind that felt pain while her body forgot what it was to feel. The cold steel of the crowbar in her hand was long gone. The feel of her clothes on her skin was also gone. Even the weight of the bag on her shoulders.

All she felt, from the tips of her fingers all the way to her very core, was a deep and unimaginable cold. She wasn’t a fighter, but she did her best to keep up with Jumpspark all the same. It was insulting, to have to fend off a superhero less than an hour after having the option of being one denied to her.

The bitter irony of forced company when she wanted to be alone for the first time in years refused to be forgotten as well. It was part of why Lucy was hurting so much.

The hero refused to commit to an attack like Lucy had seen in the cage matches, but also refused to leave her alone. So the girl saw herself as forced to escalate her attacks, but not the ones with her crowbar. Jumpspark kept riding it to avoid being hit by it. It was Lucy’s punches and kicks that became more vicious as time went on.

But Lucy wasn't that strong, and Jumpspark was good at protecting his groin.

Jumpspark kept dodging Lucy’s futile attacks and grappling her from unexpected angles. Each time though, he let go without doing much. It wasn’t until the hero unleashed his power from in front of Lucy, vanishing and reappearing while holding her wrist while in front of her that it finally made sense.

Lucy had stopped feeling Jumpspark’s attacks along with the rest. It didn’t matter to her. Her state had been moved by anger, and she was screaming with every punch and kick and swing.

It served to make her feel better.

Just a little bit better.

Why do you struggle so?

Lucy stopped fighting. Jumpspark backed away in the lull, flickering white.

“You didn’t feel any of that, did you?” The hero asked.

But Lucy wasn’t paying him any mind. She was looking around… for something. In the end her gaze landed back on the hero. “Something…” Words failed her.

Speak not with description, but intent.

“What?” Lucy looked at her hands. At the fresh handprint on her wrist. “That isn’t supposed to- It got smashed.”

“What got smashed? You mean the glass door?”

You lack base intent. You are bent and wrought. Unfit to cleave even the most minor of obstacles.

This can be amended, oh vessel mine.

Lucy stared at Jumpspark helplessly. Then she looked down at the mark Jumpspark had left on her arm. There would be another three of them on her back, at least. She felt like her head was in the clouds. “Why is this happening?”

“What, you mean me trying to arrest you?” Jumpspark asked lightly. “Probably because of the windows you smashed.”

Why do you struggle so?

Lucy moaned, clutching her head. “I just wanted friends.”

“Well, you made the wrong life choices for that.” Jumpspark quipped. He still remained at a distance however.

“Shut up!” Lucy screamed at him.

Why do you hate?

“Things would have been so much better if you never showed up!” Lucy staggered towards the hero drunkenly. “I could’ve gone home that day and drunk chocolate milk! Instead I had to cover up your… fucking hicky on my neck! For days!”

“There are very good reasons why I did what I did.” Jumpspark said seriously.

“But what! About! Me!” Lucy swung her crowbar at the hero, but she wasn’t as coordinated as before. All she accomplished was tripping and sprawling herself on the road.

Jumpspark crouched nearby. “Hey, listen lady, you got issues.”

He condescends.

“Did you happen to take a Genius pill that lets you ignore severe electric shock? I know some of those damn adepts have started circulating those things around here. They have side effects you know.”

Lucy reached towards the hero with one hand furiously, but he was frustratingly out of reach. The space around her fingers seemed to warp, but Lucy didn’t care. She just kept trying to reach the insufferable hero so she could inflict some of the pain she was feeling on him.

Jumpspark’s light demeanour suddenly vanished. “Oh shit, your eyes.” His hand gripped Lucy’s wrist again, but this time he didn’t try to shock her. “Okay, this is going to be weird, but I need you to calm down.”

“Fuck. You.”

“I’m serious.” Jumpspark insisted, moving to his knees. “Your eyes just lit up like a christmas tree. I’ll forgive anything you’ve done, but you’ll need to listen to me right now. You’re manifesting. You’re getting a power. But it’s a crazy fucking ride, and if what you’re going through is anything like what I went through, then some real lovecraftian shit will be happening right now. Try focusing on my voice.”

His concern makes him vulnerable.

“Never. Stopped.” Lucy snarled, trying and failing to grab a hold of the hero.

“You don’t have a pulse.” Jumpspark observed. “Uh. I don’t know how you’re alive but you are? Forget I said that. This is going to last five, maybe ten minutes. You didn’t happen to drink a power vial did you?”

“It broke.” Lucy’s anger vanished, replaced by the insane, desperate laughter of a hopeless girl. “It was broken. Went up in smoke. Inside itself. Why did I even try!?”

You will be crippled, oh vessel mine, if you do not focus.

The laughter stopped. Nothing was said for several moments.

“Are you okay now?” Jumpspark tentatively asked.

Lucy responded by screaming and trying to hit him. The hero caught her still free arm with his own and sighed.

“Should’ve called for backup.” Jumpspark lamented as Lucy tried to claw at the hero’s wrists. She couldn’t get a good angle to hurt him with the crowbar either, and wasn’t able to stop it when the hero twisted her arm to make her drop it. “Let me tell you about how I manifested. I drank a vial, so it was probably less intense than what you’re going through, but man did that day scar me for life.”

Lucy sobbed. She didn’t want to hear this. She couldn’t get away. The hero didn’t want to leave her alone.

“It was a red vial, the one I drank. The Bloody Waterfall, it’s called. Everyone makes period jokes whenever it comes up, it’s in really bad taste.” Jumpspark paused. “I regret thinking that, but the point is that before I gained the power to turn myself into something resembling lightning I felt my insides melt and evaporate. Words stopped making sense to me as well, which was really, really fucking scary. Someone found me when it was happening, and they thought I was having a stroke. Wasn’t that far off, to be honest.

“Then there was the feeling like something was watching me. I asked about it after it was done, but there was nothing that could have been watching me. Unless there was some secret organisation watching me, but I found the vial in an abandoned factory. That would’ve needed some real contrived foresight power to make me happen.”

Lucy couldn’t help it, she started laughing.

“Yeah. Funny story, right?”

Attack him now.

Lucy leaned her head back, then threw it forward. She sat up at the same time for greater speed, and somehow managed to strike on target. The top of her skull hit Jumpspark’s chin, stunning the hero. The manifesting girl scrambled to her feet as quickly as she could, making sure to not let go of Jumpspark lest he use his power to get away.

The hero had tormented her at the end of a bad day. Lucy was just about done with today and really needed to vent, so Jumpspark became the one she took her aggression out on. Lucy pushed the hero to the ground and straddled him before he could recover from his daze. She put one hand on his shoulder, drew back the other, and punched Jumpspark in his masked face repeatedly.

Your blows are meek, oh scrapper mine.

Jumpspark covered his face with both arms. Lucy had seen some of the fighters on the weekend do that same move. After a few fruitless glancing strikes against the hero’s defence, Lucy tried punching his chest instead. Somehow, that felt like it did even less.

“Look, I don’t want to fight you while you’re manifesting!” Jumpspark shouted when Lucy stopped punching him for a moment. “It could mess up your power!”

“Then you should’ve walked away.” Lucy told him as the crowbar she had just picked up again rattled on the concrete. It had only fallen so far away, but the girl needed to lean to reach it.

“I’m sorry!” Jumpspark flashed with power and appeared with both hands on Lucy’s shoulders, grimacing in pain. “Fuck. I’m so sorry.”

Lucy didn’t much care and swung her crowbar blindly behind herself. It caught on something that didn’t dematerialise into energy and recoiled in Lucy’s grasp. The groan that she heard immediately after told the girl what she had struck, and when she turned, Lucy beheld Jumpspark resting on one knee, clutching his side in pain.

“You’re…” The hero panted. “Green?”

“I don’t know.” Lucy said as she approached and gripped the hero on his shoulder. “All I know is that this isn’t blue.”

“Yeah, no shi-” Jumpspark stopped talking when Lucy struck him in the head. He was enhanced, like Mercury was, and that hero had survived, so it stood to reason that Jumpspark would too.

As Lucy stood over the unmoving body of the hero she was overcome by a sudden wave of lethargy. She staggered to the side and leaned over the concrete wall of the park before emptying her stomach of its contents, not that there had been much inside to begin with. Lucy threw up until she was dry heaving and kept going, until she eventually turned around, let her slide down against the fence, and watched the night sky above. The night was silent in the wake of her misery.

You have yet to claim victory. Seize it, oh vessel mine, and know power.

Lucy slowly pushed herself to a sitting position and looked at the hero splayed out beside her. Something… had been clouding her judgement. The girl put that to the terrible night she’d had leading up to this, but that did little for the business still left unfinished. Moving sluggishly, and now able to distantly feel the sensations in her body, Lucy moved closer to the hero in the white bodysuit, and pushed him over.

There were lines of red in his white costume, marking where she had struck him. Lucy cringed, thinking about the consequences. Jumpspark had been talking about consequences before, but Lucy couldn’t remember the context for the life of her. She poked the hero with the hooked end of the crowbar, now afraid to touch him with her hands.

The hero didn’t rouse.

Lucy let the crowbar clatter on the road between them.

“I don’t know what the fuck is going on.” She said honestly, a little more alive than ten minutes before. “I- I was supposed to get a power today, but not like this. There was this whole heist planned. The heroes were trying to inflate their numbers, I think? But we attacked the courier with the vials and stole them for ourselves.

“I was the last one to pick a vial, but the last one was blue. I should have drunken it right then, but the Tyr walked in- Tyr of all people! He walked right up to me, wrapped his hand around my one that was holding the vial, and squeezed. Then pop! No more Twisting Sky! Bye bye powers! Then the rest of them just filed out without even saying sorry. It was my chance to be a part of something and he ruined it! Just because blue powers might be able to take over his filthy wolf pack!

“I did the research! I know that blue powers don’t even do that kind of thing ten percent of the time!” Suddenly Lucy was drained of energy all over again. She looked down at her hands, and at the lightning marks on her wrists. “Now I have whatever this is and I don’t know what to feel.”

The night was silent.

“H-hey, did you mean what you said?” Lucy asked tentatively. “When I was freaking out, you said you’d forgive me if I listened to you. I didn’t really do it at the time, but I think I remember what you said. Please, Jumpspark. I’m freaking out. I don’t normally talk this much. Everything in me feels like it’s miles away. I think the whole manifesting thing is over, but…”

I don’t know how to use it.

“But?” Jumpspark coughed as the single word played havoc on his throat. He pushed himself up and fell into something like a sitting position across from Lucy. “You pack one helluva punch, girl.”

“I’m-” Lucy cut herself off. “Did you mean what you said?”

“Yeah, I meant what I said.” Jumpspark said, raising Lucy’s spirits. “But there is a catch.” Lucy’s spirits died like her hopes had just an hour ago. “You don’t need to look at me like that, it’s just something any reasonable person would do. Consider joining the Sentry.”

Whatever Lucy had been expecting, it wasn’t that. “Not… money, or… t-touch-”

“Not that.” Jumpspark said quickly. “Never that. But think about the Sentry. It makes sense. You have a power now. We’re hilariously understaffed.” He paused, considering. “They might press gang you into it if they learn what you’ve done. And I will need to report on… this.” He gingerly touched where his head had been struck.

Lucy wondered how susceptible enhanced people were to concussion. The thought was perhaps the clearest she had since Jumpspark had first approached her.

“Fuck me, you nearly put me six feet under.”

There.

Lucy winced. “Sorry.”

Jumpspark flopped back down on the road in an exhausted motion. “Beat up by another girl. Tip Top’s never gonna let me live it down.”

Again.

“I’m really sorry.” Lucy stressed.

Jumpspark held up a hand. “Listen girl, and I’ll want you to introduce yourself to me soon, I’m the one who should be sorry. I should’ve kept my distance when I realised what was happening, just… my bleeding flipping heart interfered. Otherwise I wouldn’t have underestimated you, and we would’ve reached this point far more amicably.”

“Still…”

“Don’t apologise for decking me out.” Jumpspark told her impatiently. “I know I’m a dick. I had it coming.”

Three times and you let your chances slip by.

No more.

Something unblocked deep within Lucy, but it was hard to tell when her body still felt like it was so far away. At the same time something much more noticeable started happening to Jumpspark, and it started with him exhaling one last breath.

Lucy startled when she noticed what was happening. “Jumpspark!”

The hero’s outline started flickering with the white energy of his power. The phenomenon spread quickly through the body of the hero, but much slower than when he used his power normally. Furthermore, he wasn’t conducting himself into anything. There wasn’t even anything around that he would normally conduct himself into.

You have been wondering, oh vessel mine, just what kind of power you have been granted. The answer lies before you.

The roiling light that was Jumpspark started getting smaller. It didn’t float off of the ground or anything, it just reduced in size until it was half of what Jumpspark used to be and kept going.

The power you now exercise can be described in a single term, both ambiguously and unmistakably. It takes many forms. It is also indisputable.

It is simply… Victory.

The orb of light reached a size that Lucy could have wrapped her arms around it and kept going. From there though, rather than shrink from all sides it began to refine itself into a shape. What that shape was became clear as the last vestiges of light from Jumpspark’s power vanished into the crossbow left behind. It was the one Jumpspark used to move around the city. Everything else had vanished.

The crossbow sat before Lucy, who once more had no clue what it was she was supposed to do. Flickers of white energy ran up and down the weapon’s bowstring, promising it to be more than mundane. But there weren’t any bolts around. Not even the blunt one that Jumpspark constantly reused.

Now, oh conqueror mine, you claim the spoils of your victory.

It will carry you through adversity, to the many more victories to come.