Diaphanes finally made himself known, although they were all aware that he had been standing there since before Mack gave his little spiel. This time he was wearing a new, blue and cyan, spandex costume, likely to look more traditionally heroic since he agreed to give Valor a hand. He even had the Greek letter Delta embroidered on his chest since it was the first letter of his new name.
“Oh, I’ve been watching you. You’re really fast, and pretty cute, too.”
“Um… are you coming onto me? I’m sorry, I don’t play for that team.”
Mack looked down at himself and started laughing since he forgot.
“Don’t worry, I usually don’t either. Though I do have a weakness for the fairer sex from time to time. Speaking of, where is my new plaything? Ah, there you are!”
With a grin, Mack ran to Luna ready to have his fun. She readied her sword again, but before she could try to defend herself Valor popped up between them and kicked him into the night sky. Before he could turn around, the young lady swung at him. Valor rolled swiftly and she only cleaved his cape. It grew back as he stood there and reassessed the situation. The girl was confused and ready to attack anyone for her own safety and Mack was going to be returning to the ground any moment.
“Diaphanes, you handle the girl and I’ll send Mack home.”
“Got it!”
“Actually,” Valor retracted his idea after remembering why he met Robert in the first place, “I changed my mind. You distract Mack and I’ll take care of her.”
“Party pooper. Fine.”
As Mack landed, Diaphanes grabbed him by his jacket collar and took off at Mach 40. They were out of town in seconds flat. Meanwhile, Valor found himself narrowly evading swing after swing from Luna’s hard light khopesh. Anger steamed out of each slash as if he could hear internal screaming.
“Why are you so upset?”
“I’m not,” she grunted in the midst of her attacks, “I’m fine!”
Valor stopped evading and grabbed the blade. She tried moving it, but he didn’t budge a millimeter while giving her an unimpressed look. She dissolved her khopesh and fell back a bit. Recomposing herself, Luna formed two small daggers and dove back in.
“I just.. hate... bullies,” Luna uttered after each motion. “A boy your age wouldn’t understand.”
“A boy my age? You’re like two years younger than me!”
“What?” She was caught off guard, tripping and landing face-first on the pavement. “How… how did you find out?”
“Oh c’mon, Mack likes to play pretend, too. It’s not hard for someone with my powers to see you for who you really are.”
Luna sat there stunned. She thought her form was flawless, yet she was still apparent to those two. She can’t even touch the guy if he didn’t want her to and with that, all her hopes of holding her own in the fight were gone. She hadn’t even been helping for long at all; not even but few weeks had she been out here each night. Now Luna feared it was all over. With her disguise blown anyway and her concentration on the persona fading, she couldn’t help but start crying.
“Listen, I’m not a bully. Unlike my counterpart Mack, I didn’t strike back realizing the difference in our abilities. You don’t have to fight me.”
“It’s not that. I was bad and made a mess of things. Now yer gonna put me somewhere I can’t leave and I’ll never be able to help people again.”
“Shh,” Valor uttered softly as he moved and held her around the shoulder, “No, it’s alright. This is Mack’s fault. You were just trying to stop him. It was a stupid idea, I’ll you give that much, but not your fault.”
“I only started doing this because I saw y'all's fight on TV. I figured if there was someone as strong as you out there that more heroes were needed. I just wanted to be tough, like everyone else.”
“You don’t have to be tough.”
“What?”
“You don’t have to be tough. Mack and I aren’t tough, we just don’t feel emotions in the same way other people do. Makes it easier for us, I guess. You just gotta be you. Doing the right thing helps, too. Wish Mack would understand that.”
“I think I can be me… once I figure out what that is.”
“Yeah, not even sure I know myself yet. Bit of advice though: stay positive. Crying on the battlefield or lashing out in frustration can lead to mistakes you don’t want to make.”
“And we wouldn’t want to be making mistakes, now would we,” Diaphanes snarked returning just in time to hear that last part.”
“Mack got bored that fast?”
“Yes… and I feel violated.”
“Sorry about that. Hey, do you have any more of those phones?”
“A bunch. Girly here joining the side of awesome?”
“That is if she wants.”
Still wiping the tears off her face, Luna shook her head rapidly.
“Okay, but they’re all back at my place.”
“That’s fine, I’ll run back with you. How long could it possibly take at our speed?”
“Like two and a half minutes. I found a nice loft in the Big Apple.”
“Stay right here, Luna. We’ll be back in five.”
The two took off like they were racing again, covering the expanse of the United States in the time it would take to brush your teeth. Robert’s new apartment was set up like a live-in lab. The only spot that wasn’t a total mess was his workstation that housed chemicals with names Valor wasn’t sure he could even pronounce. Without his sort of vision, he was surprised Diaphanes could find anything in that dump, yet he got to the phones first.
“Got ‘em. Now let’s get back to that lovely little lady.”
“Ew. First off, she’s like seven.”
“Huh?” Diaphanes questioned in complete disbelief.
“And secondly, don’t get too attached to her.”
“Are you holding out on me, Valor? Because if I’m going to assist you against mystical beings that could kill me, like Mack, I’m going to need you to be upfront with me.”
“She’s not real… well, not in the sense that you or I are.”
“I don’t follow.”
“She’s a projection. The personification of a young girl’s subconscious, or at least part of it. As far as I could tell by looking at her soul, the girl is like me or Mack but doesn’t know it. Luna is the part of her that wants to overcome her troubles brought to life.”
“Wait a second. Are you saying you can look at people’s souls because as a man of science I find it unsettling at the thought that they even exist.”
“Oh yeah, and the real kicker is that not everyone even has one. What I’m getting at though is at anytime Luna could be gone. If the projection is put under too much stress and destroyed or if the girl stops needing her, she ceases to be.”
“Yikes.”
“So, let’s not let her know this info and keep our emotions distant enough. Until that time, she’s just part of the team.”
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