What is surely to be the first in a long series of bad decisions. (Open!)

[sofresh]

Who| Superboy (sofresh) and anyone!
What| Testing his powers (or lack thereof).
Where| Observation deck.
When| Afternoon.
Warnings/Notes| N/A!

Looking for Superboy? Probably not. But if someone happened to glance up over on the observation deck, that'd be where they'd find him, floating in the air a few feet above ground (not terribly high—eight to ten feet at most), arms crossed, with a contemplative look on his face. In retrospect, he probably should have done things differently—namely, he probably should have questioned his situation more when he woke up here. He didn't.

Look, even Superman made mistakes sometimes.

But that was in the not-so-distant past, and now, Superboy was trying to figure things out for himself. That'd be the reason why Superboy, casually floating a few feet in the air, slipped off his flight ring, just to see what'd happen. Needless to say, it went about as well as expected.

In other words, he landed, with a thud and a wince, on the ground, in a pretty ungraceful (and totally uncool) position.

"I'm startin' to think I might be defective or somethin'."

There was all this talk of gaining superpowers, except Superboy already had them, so he'd just tuned the rest out. No one ever said anything about losing powers (or, at least, not that he'd heard of), and honestly, he was not happy about it.

Comments

[leverageintceo]

"Oooh, you could blow things up?" A large, fairly terrifying grin spread across the woman's face and her feet hit the floor. "That one sounds fun, let's see if you have that, how do you usually blow things up?"

[sofresh]

"I'm not too sure how it works, to be honest," he said, scratching his head. "Alright, so get this: there's this guy, and he's like, half-cyborg and half-human, right?"

...well, probably human. He didn't know much about the Cyborg Superman, really. Anyway—

"Dude captures and imprisons me with these weird, mechanical restraints, but even though I got super strength, I couldn't break 'em. But eventually, I did break 'em, without even tryin'. I think I might've done it with my mind."

[leverageintceo]

"...Aren't cyborgs already half-human?" Parker asked with a frown. "I thought that was a thing. But breaking things with your brain is cool. We could find things you can break with your brain. There's stuff that won't suck us into the vacuum of space."

[sofresh]

"Hey, he could've been part alien for all I know," he shrugged. Totally unlikely, and totally not the point, but it'd take more than that to stop Superboy. "But I'm always up for breaking things. Where should we start?"

He wasn't thinking about it, but it was probably for the best if she led the way. With his luck, he would break something that'd suck them into the vacuum of space.

[leverageintceo]

"I guess that's true," Parker agreed. "We don't have aliens where I'm from."

She thought for a moment, then brightened. "We could ask Brainy if he needs anything exploded. Or has anything that he doesn't want that can be exploded. He seems like the type of person who might."

[sofresh]

"Not a bad idea. We could be destructive and helpful. I like the way you think."

If he knew anything about Brainy or what he thought of him, he would realize that this was probably the opposite of a good idea, at least where Superboy himself was concerned. Alas.

"What's your name, by the way?"

[leverageintceo]

"Being destructive and helpful is totally my thing!" she agreed happily as she rose high enough in the air that she wasn't likely to kick anyone in the head as she lead the way through the halls to Brainy's lab.

She didn't have any better of an idea of what they were flying into than he did.

"I'm Parker," she answered. "Just Parker. Or Payback. What's your name?"

[sofresh]

"I don't really have one, so I guess you can call me whatever you want," he said with a shrug as he followed after her in the air. (This ability wasn't his, and that was annoying, but it still felt 'right.') "But officially, they call me Superman."

Officially, he said, although very few people actually called him that... People were usually more inclined to call him Superboy, but he wasn't about to give anyone any ideas.

[leverageintceo]

"You don't have a name?" Parker asked, wheedling around in midair to stare at him (while flying backward. Because why not?) "Wow, that sucks. Do you want one of mine? They're all girl names back where I'm from, but this is the vegan spacefuture. You can be a Kelly-Beth if you want."

[sofresh]

"Yikes," he said as he made a face. "I mean, no offense, but I don't think even vegan spacefuture babes would dig a name like that. I'd gotta have somethin' cooler, ya know?"

As usual, his priorities were totally in order.

[leverageintceo]

"Yeah, Kelly-Beth was weird," Parker agreed. "Lots of hair product, stole souls."

She continued, as if what she'd said was a completely normal thing to object to about someone. "What about Rose, or Nancy? I like Alice a bit too much to give her up."

[sofresh]

"Stole souls?" He couldn't tell if that was a joke or not. He had no reason to think that wasn't a thing that could actually happen. "At least she did it in style, I guess."

That was always something he could appreciate. Even supervillains should take care to handle things stylishly.

"You can keep Alice, but I'm not sure Nancy works, either. I feel like Rose would be settling."

[leverageintceo]

"I guess she was probably stylish," Parker said, wrinkling her nose. "I mostly don't pick the outfits when I'm grifting. Everyone else on my team is better at it than I am. But the important thing was that the corrupt mine supervisor and the corrupt politician protecting him lost everything and went to jail, so she wasn't all bad."

She chewed on her lower lip. "You can't have Special Agent Hagen either. There's an FBI agent who'd notice if she turned into a teenage boy."

[sofresh]

"Okay, but being a special agent sounds pretty sweet. You sure we can't work somethin' out?"

Being a special agent would be awesome (especially if he didn't have to work for it). But his next question was probably a little more serious.

"So, like, what did you used to do, exactly?"

[leverageintceo]

"Nope," Parker said with a shake of her head. "I need her. Not to mention that my hacker would be annoyed with me if he had to invent another FBI agent alias for me."

She smiled. "I'm a thief. Used to be art, but now it's mostly justice." She sobered, her tone turning more professional. "See, there are people and corporations out there that...well, they have all the money, they have all the power, and they use it to make people they've hurt -- normal people, people who trust in the system of law and justice -- go away. When those people are suffering under that enormous weight, my team provides...leverage."

There was a certain cadence to the speech, like she'd made it, or something very much like it, multiple times before.