I was two hours into day three of waiting on a jury verdict when a wannabe supervillain crashed the DC Superior Courthouse.
Oh, it was a lovely day — skies threatening to rain, too warm for a jacket but too cold to not have one, and dry enough to make my eyes itch. I was seated on the third floor of the courthouse and passed the time by drafting an appeal on my laptop, all the while anticipating a jury verdict in a case that I was absolutely certain we were going to lose because the client was a stubborn shithead who wouldn’t accept a settlement when it was right in front of her.
So clearly the universe decided that this would be made all the better by a metal mole man crashing through the Court’s floor-to-3rd-floor-ceiling windows.
The small marble stairway he landed on cracked underneath him with the unmistakable din of stone on metal, followed by the whine of industrial hydraulics picking the intruder up. I hurriedly put my laptop away and overturned both the table I’d been using and another chair to block line of sight, but thanks to a gap between them, I managed to catch a glimpse of the supervillain du jour from my position on the indoor balcony.
He was an ugly sort, maybe five foot two, pushing two hundred pounds, covered in dirt and grime and engine grease and God only knew what else. But I would guarantee that the average onlooker wasn’t paying any attention to that, not even the ones looking down from up here on the third floor. No, their eyes were most certainly fixed to the exoskeleton he was strapped into, a kludged-together monstrosity of scrapped construction equipment and other assorted heavy machinery that made a horrible racket every time it moved. Interestingly, the suit didn’t seem to fit its wearer very well. The belts were strapped up with holes that didn’t match the rest, for example, and—
“WHERE IS HE!?”
The man’s yell was far, far louder than any unamplified voice should have been capable of yelling at, and I couldn’t help but wince at the sheer volume. Dear lord, how was he that loud? The shoddy exo-suit didn’t have the high-pitched whine that I’d long since come to associate with low-end speakers, and the same people who kitbashed this rusted and awkward thing definitely didn’t have the money for good speakers, so how did he do that?
“WHERE IS JERRY RIG!?”
The man punctuated his yell by slamming the pile driver that was his exo-suit’s left arm into the marble with another horrific crunch of metal on stone, right into the blank space in the map of DC engraved on the courthouse floor. Miraculously, the engraving of the court’s motto (the first duty of society is justice) was untouched.
“WHERE! IS! MY! HUSBAND!?”
“Where’s his husband!? Screw that, where the hell is security!?” a voice said from under either the chairs or the table near me.
“Securing the judges and any defendants who’ve been jailed awaiting trial,” I snapped back, wincing as the man smashed the stairway that wound along the wall back around and over the entrance. The broken glass his entry left on the walkway joined the debris on the ground with a painful shriek of shredded rivets and fraying steel cord.
“What about the police? Secret Service?” The man clearly wasn’t done with his ranting and just seemed to be running down a list at this point. “Or the NMR? Shouldn’t a Moonie be on the way already?”
“Average superhero response time is longer than other emergency services,” I supplied, watching the ongoing dramatics. Security had appeared and encircled the District’s fourth wannabe supervillain of the year, but their stun guns weren’t having any effect. Which seemed odd to me, because the man had bare skin to rusty and corroded metal, but superpowers made things weird.
One of the security guards threw away the stun gun and pulled out the real deal, to which I immediately ducked down, folded my ears low, and put my hands over them to block out the sound. It didn’t work well enough, nor was I able to suppress the pained whimper at the sound. Ow…
“Why is a Loonie even here!?”
This time, I had to resist the urge to punch the man for the slur and just blame the wound on some falling debris. But alas, discretion was the better part of valor, and I was still trying to block out the sound of gunshots, which — seriously!? The man was covered in massive hunks of metal! Bullets ricochet off metal all the time!
“What part of ‘defendants awaiting trial’ was not plain English?” I half-said half-yelled, sagging in relief when the gunshots stopped. Wait, why did they stop?
A quick glance over the railing showed me that courthouse security had stopped trying to shoot the villain-of-the-month and were instead pepper spraying the living daylights out of his relative area. Yes, good, that was the smart option! The number of Moonshot who could shrug off a bullet was much higher than the number who could ignore pepper spray!
“TELL ME WHERE HE IS!”
Of course, the moment I thought the volume might go down, the supervillain screamed again, loud enough to shake the inch-and-a-half-thick glass railing. Which, incidentally, explained things: the ‘hyper voice’ was his superpower. Whatever tech wizardry that let the ramshackle machinery he was piloting run, though, definitely belonged to the ‘husband’ that this villain was looking for. Which would also explain why it was apparently easy enough to just lock the guy up, compared to—
A hand closed on my shoulder and shook me. I pulled my hands away from my ears and turned to glare at the man who I’d been trying to calmly walk through this whole ‘villain attack’ shebang, who had apparently decided it was okay to just lay his hands on a woman he didn’t know. He was an older man, probably late fifties to early sixties by the receding line of graying hair, dressed in a too-large pinstripe suit. I could swear I’d seen him arguing in court at some time or other, but the only distinguishing feature he had was a particularly thick pair of coke-bottle glasses, and that wasn’t the kind of thing you could see from the gallery of a courtroom while waiting for your case to be called.
“What are you doing?” he asked, tension in his voice and anger on his face.This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
“Hiding?” I asked, incredulous. “Same as you?”
His face twisted in confusion, then the anger came back stronger. Oh, he was not going suggest what I thought he would—
“You’re a Moonie!” The man jabbed a finger at me, then down at the supervillain below. “You have powers! You’re supposed to be using those to stop villains! Stop him!”
“For the love of God, shut! Up!” I whisper-yelled at the man. “Just because I have powers, that doesn’t—“
“He’s right!” Another civilian huddled nearby, who hadn’t said a damn thing until now, decided that now was the absolute perfect time to speak up. “You gotta do something!”
I rounded on the woman who’d spoken, motioning for her to keep her voice down and desperately hoping she would be the last of them.
She was not.
“You’ve got to use your powers!”
“Please, you have to help us!”
“Do something! That’s what you Moonies are for!”
“Please, I’m scared!”
Ooh, this was not good, please God let these people not be louder than whatever security was doing please let the villain du jour not have heard—
“MOONIE!? HERO!!”
I winced at the scream, my ears going flat atop my head in pain and surprise. Then there was a great crashing and tearing of shattered glass and twisted metal, and moments later, I was eye to eye (and nose to stench) with the absurdly loud mecha-mole man.
“HERO! WHERE IS MY HUSBAND!? TELL ME WHERE HE IS!”
If the volume was painful when he was three stories below, it was much worse up close. Even with my ears folded flat and my hands covering them, I was still left whimpering in pain with my tail quite literally between my legs. God, any damage might not have been permanent, but it still hurt. I screwed my eyes shut and reached deep into the part of myself where my powers were tucked away, ready to get out of real harm’s way — but only as a last resort, because people react badly when you put fire in their face, and there were civilians behind me.
Except — nothing happened?
I opened my eyes to see the villain in front of me. He was still angry, still somewhere between goofy and spooky, but he was just… waiting?
“Um,” I began, raising one hand hesitantly while the other reached for my purse. Oh lord, this was gonna be a gamble. God, I hoped I wouldn’t need to get through another improper power use hearing… screw it, worth a shot. “I’m not a hero? Uh, who are you looking for, exactly?”
The villain opened his mouth, and I immediately folded my ears back down and brought my hands over them. But nothing happened, and the villain actually flinched a bit. Which was… um?
I brought my hands away from my ears, letting the tall, furry triangles stand back up atop my head.
“My husband,” he said, tone and expression almost pleading. “Andrej Antoniewicz? His trial is today, I — I need him.”
Okay, well, this wasn’t the first time I’d seen a villain go from hostile to not, but it was the first time I’d seen it happen so quickly. Was that seriously all he was here for? Just looking for his hubby? Plus he knew where to look, but not where to look, and decided that the best course of action was to…
… a plan was starting to form in my head. It was stupid. It was so absurdly, incredibly stupid, but it was entirely possible that this villain was actually dumb enough for this to work.
I took a calm, deep breath to prepare myself. Okay, Naomi. You’d told enough bald-faced lies in your life.
What was one more?
“So uh, I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but sir? You’re, um, at the wrong courthouse.”
The other Moonshot’s expression went from pleading to poleaxed. It was a very particular kind of disbelief, that — it wasn’t the refusal to believe what he’d heard so much as it was the mental equivalent of a bluescreen.
“Your husband, does he have powers too?”
“Uh-huh?”
“Okay,” I said slowly, getting ready to bluff my tail off. “So, I’m not a hero. I’m just a normal lawyer, and normal boring lawyer stuff happens here, at DC Superior Court. But hero and villain stuff?” I held up my hands placatingly and gently shrugged. “That, um, happens at the Court of Federal Claims. That’s, well. Not here.”
“But,” the villain said, sounding so lost I almost felt bad for him. “But, what? Where?”
“Ooookay, so,” I said, pointing over his left shoulder out at the street. “That’s D Street right there, yes?”
“Uh-huh?” The villain turned to follow my finger.
“Go to the sidewalk, and turn left,” I told him. “At the next street, turn left, that’ll be 6th Street. Then you want the next right turn, that’s Pennsylvania. Follow that alllll the way until you hit the White House fence, then turn right, and when you get to H Street, the Court will be on your left. Okay?”
“Uh… left, left, right, to the fence, right, on my left?”
“There you go,” I said, offering him a smile as I nodded. “Good luck, sir. Your husband is waiting for you.”
“He is?” The villain blinked, but then smiled, and I had to hold my face and ears very steady so I didn’t react to how badly he needed a toothbrush. “He is! I’m coming, Andrej!”
A moment later, he disappeared from view, and I heard the crunch of metal on stone again. The sound of tensing metal springs followed, and then the villain was off, soaring right back out through the hole he’d made on the way in and cruising off towards the intersection of D and 6th.
“But, but aren’t you supposed… supposed to—”
Oh, for Christ’s sake.
“I am not a fucking superhero!” I yelled at the assembled civilians, all of whom had just sat there and done absolutely nothing. “Did none of you call the police? The NMR hotline? Anyone at all? No? Ugh.” I got up with a huff, groaning slightly when I saw that my hose had a run in them, probably from a piece of broken glass or other debris. Then I started walking away from the whole mess.
“H-hey!” I rolled my eyes and turned, my gaze falling on the man who’d been nudging me earlier. “What do you think you’re doing!? The villain is still out there!”
“... I directed him towards the White House,” I said. Dear lord, how did idiots like this pass the Bar Exam? “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have my actual job to go do.”
With that, I turned back around, letting my footfalls land a bit more heavily than normal to hopefully drown out any response with the sound of my heels on marble. Hopefully, security hadn’t fully evacuated the judges and just put them in lockdown, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to motion for a mistrial. Juries never ruled in favor of a Moonshot after villain attacks, and I highly doubted my case’s jury would somehow be the exception.
Unfortunately, I didn’t get to the judge before the police finally arrived. Instead, I had to give my statement. And suffer the police demanding why I didn’t use my powers. And give them all the same explanations I’d offered the bystanders near me.
It was infuriating.
It was insulting.
It wasn’t my fucking job.
I didn’t ask to have superpowers. I didn’t want to be a superhero ever again. I just wanted to live my life.
Was that too much to ask?