“So, SwordBright,” she started mildly, coming back into the living room with two cups of coffee on a tray.
“Oasis,” they corrected her, taking the cup with a nod of thanks.
Karry didn’t much like the idea of calling her Nemesis by their given name, as already just having them over for coffee was a violation of the Super Villain code. But that was the second time that Oasis had asked her to do so, and she disliked mis-naming people. For creatures of her kind, names were everything.
“Oasis, then,” she said. “I heard there was some mayhem going on last night?”
The girl Alice hadn’t answered when she’d asked about coffee, so she hadn’t made her one. She glared at Karry when she noticed that, and Karry smirked back.
“Yeah, but it wasn’t that bad,” they said. “All I had to do was show up, flash my sword a bit, and speak sternly. Pretty standard night out. Most magical delinquents don’t really take much more convincing than that. The convenience store is trashed, though.”
“There was a girl on tv talking about how she was trapped under rubble and you saved her,” said Karry with a smirk. She sank on the sofa next to them, seeing as Alice had taken her chair. She curled her leg up on the seat, making sure that her dress rode up her pale tight just the right amount to be suggestive without being crass. Alice shot them a suspicious look and Karry smirked at her before leaning towards Oasis and practically purring in their ear. “She seemed to think you were very cool.”
She thought her teasing would make the hero blush, but they just shrugged and sipped their cup. “She’s just a teen. I was pretty easily impressed too, at that age.”
Alice raised her eyebrows. She was still tense, but seemed willing to reluctantly join the conversation anyhow, if it meant mocking her cousin. “Oh, come on. I saw that interview too. You’re not much older than her.”
Oasis stared at her incredulously. “I’m fifty!”
Alice blinked, seemingly taken aback, as if the thought that her cousin was much, much older now hadn’t occurred to her. They both looked at each other in mounting dismay, as if an unbridgeable rift was opening between them, and Karry decided that this was enough small chat for the day. Not to mention that Oasis hadn’t even seemed to register her teasing, which was just boring. She rose from the couch and walked to her fancy writing desk in the corner.
“I’ve printed some things off the Internet,” she said, coming back with a pile of papers. “Floor plans, opening hours, a description of the current exhibits, that sort of thing.”
She placed the papers on the coffee table, and the two humans immediately made interested noises and started pawing through them. “I’ve come to the conclusion,” she continued, “That we should just torch the place.”
Alice looked at her like she was insane, but it was Oasis’ reaction that Karry was waiting for. They sighed and shook their head. “I fucking knew you were going to suggest that. How about, hear me out, how about we don’t do that?”
Karry put her hands on her hips. “Is that what I did in the future-past?”
They frowned at her, their eyebrows pulling down over their eyes and their lips curling in distaste. “No, you went in at night and killed a bunch of guards. They caught you on camera in your full super villain disguise and then the pressure for me to stop playing around and actually arrest or kill you got sky high. The cops were on my case about it literally every day.”
She shrugged. “If you’re the one who catches the heat, then I don’t see a downside.”
Alice snarled at them both, butting in into their banter. “Are we just glossing over the fact that she killed a bunch of people?”
“Another version of her did, in another time line. I definitely won’t let her do that now, so it’s irrelevant,” retorted Oasis in the same aggravated tone.
“It’s irrelevant? She’d a killer! She’d murder us all in an instant if it served her goals! And you still want to work with her? When did you lose your morals?”
“At the same time you died, along with five hundred million people!” they snapped back. “You need to get your head in the game, Alice, this is serious! It’s not about a museum robbery or drownings or whatever else you’re worried about, this is about adverting the end of the world, and I need Karry to help me do that, otherwise we’re all doomed. Don’t you understand that?”
Tears were gathering in their eyes, a shocking display of emotions considering the calm and poise that they’d displayed since first gracing Karry’s door. Their hands were curled into fists in their lap, their spine ramrod-straight, their shoulders shaking.
To Karry’s eyes, it was as if an hurricane had just exploded inside of her living room, a dizzying storm of dread and despair and rage escaping from Oasis’ aura and battering her own psychic shields.
Their cousin stared at them for several minutes, her mouth opening and closing. Finally, she gathered herself, but instead of backing down or apologizing, like any sane person would have, she doubled back down. “And how is she going to help, huh?,” she snarled in Korean, likely in an attempt to prevent Katarina from understanding what she was saying. “You’ll both end up in prison or worse, she’ll stab you the moment you have your back turned!”
“No she won’t,” grit out the hero, also in Korean and obviously using all of their will-power not to yell at their cousin. “She needs me just as much as I need her.”
“But you don’t need her!” Alice was on her feet, gesturing wildly at Katarina.
“Oh, I beg to differ,” she interjected in the same language with absolute relish. “Didn’t they tell you that part of the plan yet? They need me to —”
“Katarina, this is a private conversation, so stay the fuck out of it” snapped Oasis in english, so brusquely and surprisingly that Karry stopped dead right in the middle of her sentence.
She blinked at Oasis while they and Alice continued arguing with each other, too flabbergasted to even be insulted. Finally, Alice thew her hands up and hollered at Oasis that they were insane and that she wouldn’t be a part of their schemes, and stormed off.
Oasis watched her go, their aura radiating exhaustion but not surprise. Karry sipped the coffee that she had almost forgotten existed in the shock of the last few minutes, letting the moment stretch out.
“You don’t want to tell her about the murder,” she pointed out, somewhat dumbly.
They tensed, but their aura was already receding back into their body, an artificial calm after the storm.
“Possible murder. We’ll exhaust all other options first. And obviously not. She wouldn’t understand.”
Katarina took another sip of her coffee, taking the time to gather her thoughts. Watching Oasis wrestle back their emotions under control, locking them behind tight mental walls, was fascinating and immensely illuminating.
“No hero has ever talked to me like that before,” she remarked casually. That was so hot, she didn’t add, because flirting with her nemesis was one thing, but meaning it was quite another.
A sudden feeling unfurled in the air, a small shockwave of emotion that she could almost taste on her tongue, vibrating like cymbals and tasting of blood and defeat. Oasis’s shoulders hunched down.
“I won’t be a hero for much longer. If we have to kill the kid, then I’ll turn myself in.”
She raised her eyebrows, but kept any comment to herself. Typical hero, she didn’t know why she was surprised. She didn’t really see the point of coming back in time to save the world if you weren’t planning on enjoying if after it’d been saved, but it made sense in a sick, twisted sort of way. From the moment they’d showed up on her doorstep, Oasis had had the determined and faintly fatalistic attitude of a man on a one-way mission. Now she knew why.
“I’ll cause a right scandal for the CSL,” they mused, almost as if they were talking to themselves. “I’ll have to remember to turn in my resignation beforehand. Wonder if they’ll let me use their lawyer… Oh, Richard will have my head for sure.”
Finally, Oasis sighed one last time. “Right.” They leaned forward to examine the maps again. They were simple floor plans of the exhibitions, and nothing on them could be used to glean any insight on how to actually rob the museum, but Karry let them have the dignity of pretending anyway.
“So walk me through this,” they said, holding up a printout of Google Earth that showed the museum and it’s surrounding area. “Why did you suggest burning the museum down?”
She placed down her empty mug on the table and stretched her arms. “I don’t want to have to deal with cameras or guards, and I don’t have the patience to case the joint or what have you. My necklace can’t melt or be burnt. We’d all save a lot of time picking it out of rubble and ash than trying to pull off a heist.”
They drummed their fingers on their knee. “You’re right, we really don’t know anything about robbing a museum. But I don’t think arson’s the answer, either. How about we concentrate on our pre-existing skills, then?”
She tilted her head at them. “What do you mean?”
They aimed at her what she expected they thought was an enigmatic smile, but there was just a touch too much exhausted manic energy in it to really pull it off.
“Magic.”
Comments (0)
See all