Possessive Behavior

The next few days flew past in an instant. Souto needed odd jobs from us here and there. Nothing elaborate. Small deliveries or passing along a message or two.

Jess spent more and more of her time at Velveteria to hang out with one of her villainous idols. The Odd Gentleman humored her but I was sure he was just being nice. Villains don't often get to be face-to-face with their fans, so it must've been a novel experience for him.

Despite my initial skepticism, the lure of the fortune was too strong not to at least attempt to solve it. Searching for Antonio Freeman on any basic search engine was a fruitless effort. There were far too many to glean any useable info from any of them.

Wikipedia gave me nothing of value too. There was a long-dead football player from the 21st century who shared this name, but even under intense scrutiny, I failed to connect any relevant dots. Both the Official Superhero Database and the International WANTED Registry came back with zero hits. Frustrated with the lack of success I threw in the towel after just a few days.

Having nothing much to do I refocused on preparing for the mission and taking time to relax a bit. And before I knew it the operation to retcon The One from the public record was just one day away.

As usual, Jess was away doing something or other for Souto while I was lying in bed with my eyes closed, trying to get a bit of sleep. Trying, but failing miserably.

On a whim, I pulled out my phone and with a few taps pulled up the IWR again. I had searched the name here already, but.....it's not like civilians had unlimited access to all files. I knew someone who did though.

I pressed on "Prof.-Hero Access", and was redirected to a simple log-in page. My thumb hesitantly hovered over the screen for a few seconds before I made up my mind and pushed on.

Alias: Honeybadger

Pass: _

What were the odds that Lu kept the same password all those years? We used to change ours together every couple of months. Never took it all that seriously. Most of the time we used in-jokes or stupid goofy nonsense phrases. Would she have kept that habit up after I....had to leave? Maybe. Probably. I would've, But hey, there was always a chance, right?

Without really expecting anything I moved my finger from letter to number, then to letter again......

Alias: Honeybadger

Pass: !Pr1Nc3Ss_T1R4m1SU!

and clicked Okay.

Welcome back, Honeybadger!

I stared at these three words for what felt like forever. I hadn't really thought this had any chance of actually working. Figures, though. Without me in the picture, Lu would be too busy being an insufferable gym bro to give a damn about her web security.

Usually, my esteemed ex would get an immediate notification that her account had been accessed from an unknown IP, and I would be locked out until it was verified. But BHF-OS took care of that. A true magical innovation: Perfect Anonymity. In this case, the system detected and spoofed the last safe IP whichever account you were trying to access was logged in from.

As most things BHF-related, this was achieved via magic so prohibitively expensive that only the at least moderately wealthy could comfortably afford it, provided for free by your favorite loving, devoted, always watching and judging villainous family for everyone that doesn't mind getting marked for life and being put on a hit-list should they ever even think to betray them. How nice.

I tried my best to curb these kinds of thoughts. Up til now, the BHF had been nothing but helpful to me. Still, being exposed to anti-BHF propaganda my whole life was hard to shake.

Once again I navigated my way to the advanced search menu. I had already entered Anto when I got an idea. While I'm at it, I might as well......

It took only a few seconds to find the profile I was looking for.

Civilian Id: Unknown

Known Aliases: Master Controller

Status: Active

Priority: D-3

Oh boy. Last time I checked I was on F-5. Seems I graduated from Treat as Usual, No Precautions and skipped 11 grades ahead. Luckily for me, D meant I was currently Low Priority, but that's still more heat than I was comfortable with.

I was tempted to open up the full file, but decided against it and went back to the matter at hand.

Hundreds of flamboyant, variably ridiculously dressed criminals flew past my field of vision as the search results narrowed further and further with every additional letter I put in, until, finally, to my surprise, there was a perfect match.

For the second time today, I found myself dumbfounded.

Did.....did this guy actually exist? Was the stupid fortune actually real?.....

I looked up at the ceiling and took a deep breath.

Even if a wanted criminal named Antonio Freeman did exist, that did not mean he was in any way relevant or of interest to me. The thing probably just spat out the names of random villains to.....I don't know....make them team up? Cement rivalries? The Odd Gentleman was a weirdo who chased people down at night to give them tarot readings and then took all the money they had on their person as "payment", so anything handed out by him was bound to be equally ridiculous.

But when I looked back down at the screen and took my first good look at the face of the man of my fortune I realized very quickly that this whole situation might be more complicated than it first appeared.

I don't think I would have recognized his face at any other time. It was exactly because I had just gotten past a stream of dramatically overdesigned costumes, wild and intricately styled and cut hair, and often heavily made-up or accessorized faces that his picture stood out so much to me.

Yes, the more I took the boy in front of me in the clearer the resemblance was. This photo must've been taken years ago, but this was clearly a much younger yet equally forgettably bland-looking Souto. Probably 13-15 years old. As is his wont he wore the same calm and serene smile that never left his face in the hideout.

I glanced down at the four pieces of data visible to me right now.

Civilian Id: Antonio Freeman

Known Aliases: None

Status: At Large

Priority: S-2

.

S-2? Really? Engage on sight, Capture if possible, Kill if not? Sure, his memory Power was pretty scary all things considered, but S-2 scary? There had to be more to that. With a tap, I opened up the full file.

His "Related People" section was pretty short. The only relative of his that was around was his mother. Her address was listed as well, another thing only done with high-priority targets. Usually, you had to put in a request to get your hands on the personal details of a villain's family for privacy reasons. And it had to be for a pretty good reason too, or you were sure to be denied. Very curious.

I moved on to History.

Freeman was taken into custody after his mother brought his Power to the attention of the Division of Empowered Affairs. According to her testimony, her son had demonstrated what he could do by making one of her bills disappear. Instead of using this Power to her advantage, she dutifully reported it and asked for help, feeling herself unable to properly teach him how to make use of his ability without being tempted to abuse it.

He was taken into custody at age 12. He managed to escape 3 years later, at age 15. So far, all attempts to locate him have failed.

I was a bit puzzled at what I had just read. Sure, people with Powers this invasive usually got a short stint in a government training facility. But that was a year, two tops.

When I reached Power, I stopped. I had expected to category to be Mental 2. Mental concerned Powers focused on the mind, including memory shenanigans. Type 2 specified Mental Powers with a direct, predictable influence. It seemed to be a perfect fit. But that wasn't what I read.

Power: Warp 1

Warp.....Warp Powers were those with the ability to rewrite reality. Type 1 just meant the user had active control over this effect.

An uneasy feeling pooled in my gut. Anxious, I read on.

Power was miscategorized as Mental. An update was deemed necessary after further testing.

I had heard of scenarios like those. Though I had never met them, I was aware that there were Empowered on the government's payroll that had resistance to reality-altering effects. These people were crucial in determining specific kinds of Warpers.

Freeman has the ability to make objects or people disappear at will.

People too, huh? I had hoped that this wasn't the case. Sure, he was going to make The One vanish, but I had thought that maybe a corpse would count as an object rather than a person. Did his friends know about that? I don't think I'd be comfortable working around someone who could erase me with a touch.

This effect was at first thought to remove all associated memories of the target, but this is a misconception. Further testing has revealed

My mouth was dry as a desert as I scrolled down.

that instead of removing memories of the affected object from the populace, reality is rewritten to remove the target from history.

My heart sank.

Freeman himself as well as anyone in direct contact with him at the time of erasure are partially immune to the subsequent restructuring of reality and keep their memories of the prior worldstate. However, any and all physical alterations will still be consistent with the new reality.

Freeman is fully aware of this phenomenon and has used it to escape from the facility he was held in. It is unknown how much of history has been altered due to his influence since his escape.

I turned off my phone. Didn't need to read any further.

What now?

I felt numb.

This was too much to process.

But I knew myself. The emotional onslaught was sure to follow soon. Best make use of this period of feeling nothing to sort through some shit.

Erasing Ray from collective memory was one thing. But just removing him completely? He had done a lot of good. Saved a lot of people. Light was versatile. It made him able to slip into any hideout or stronghold unnoticed and take care of things quietly without being seen. But it could also make him an overwhelming force going toe to toe with several top-tier powerhouse villains at once and emerging victorious. He had resolved so many incidents, incidents that seemed hopeless, lost causes, without a single casualty.

He had talked many a suicidal person down from making that last step they could never take back. Since he rebranded from Daylighter to The One he had donated 75% of his income to various charities.

He saved my parents. When I was a little tyke, staying overnight at my best friend's house while Ma and Pa were drinking it up at their tenth anniversary. A fire broke out. Half a dozen people were trapped. But Daylighter was nearby. He saved all of them. I still remember when Ma gave me his autograph. That wretched thing had become my most prized possession, even well into adulthood.

Where would I be without him? Would I have even become a hero?

Maybe.

Doubtful.

Maybe a pencil pusher, like Ma. Or something that made good use of my mind reading. A therapist? Conflict Resolution Associate? HR? Something boring like that.

Without my parents, who knows what kind of person I would have become growing up. Where I would have grown up. In an orphanage, or happily adopted. Unhappily adopted was an option too I suppose.

But no matter what life I would have lived, it was bound to be better than this one, right?.......

But that's the point. This life wasn't great. But it was true. Whoever the new Mallory would be, she'd be ignorant of reality. Looking up to heroes. Being blissfully unaware of the way the world really works. The thought of becoming her was nauseating. And even if I kept my memory, held on to Souto as he did his work, the Master Controller was done for. I would have to reintegrate back into normal civilian life. Assume the character of adult orphan Mallory going to work every day and parroting meaningless small talk to coworkers I had no possible way of ever even remotely relating to.

And it's not like I could break bad again. All I was able to do before focusing on training my Power for hero work was read minds. Thought was the result of pushing my limits as far as I could stretch them for years. And Possession.......Possession was something I unlocked during my time in the Powerbreaker's clutches......

No matter how I sliced it, I always came to the same conclusion. There were only three options open to me at this point.

1) Let my memory be rewritten and become a vapid, useless, uninformed civilian.

2) Keep my memory, let my Power regress to its infantile first stage, and lead a shallow, hollow but aware existence as a wage slave.

or 3) Stop Souto from finishing his masterpiece.

I checked the date on my phone.

29 hours left.

29 hours until it began.

What the hell was I supposed to do now?