The Vilification of Aqua Marine

By Megan Mackie

One parent is a superhero. One parent is a supervillain. Aqua Marine is a work in progress.

Despite Aqua Marine's super lineage, the wannabe superhero can only control a cup of water at a time-which is not very effective as far as superpowers go. She has no chance at stopping the new nefarious villain, the Over

• Language: English
• Publisher: 4 Horsemen Publications, Inc.
• Release date: Dec 26, 2023
• ISBN: 9798823201803

Megan Mackie

Beyond the smashing success of her inaugural, Amazon bestseller, The Finder of the Lucky Devil, Megan Mackie is the author of The Lucky Devil Series (urban fantasy/cyberpunk), the Dead World Series (Post Post Zombie Apocalypse), The Adventures of Pavlov's Dog and Schrodinger's Cat (Mid-grade science fiction) and the Working Mask series (wannabe superhero).Her other work can be found on the Yonder app, where she has published three web novels, Cookbooks and Demons (paranormal demon romance), Star Courier (speculative Firefly-like fiction), and Novantis (steampunk political intrigue with sky pirates-think Bridgerton meets Black Sails). Outside of her own series, she is a contributing writer for the RPGs Legendlore and Legendlore: Legacies by Onyx Path Publishing and Sirens: Battle of the Bards through Apotheosis Studios.When she isn't writing, she likes to play games-board games, puzzle boxes, RPGs, and video games. She lives in Chicago with her husband and children, two dogs, two cats, and her mother in the apartment upstairs. She also has a thing for iconic leather hats.

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Dedication

To John, the reason you should meet your heroes

Acknowledgements

Thank you to my husband Paul for believing in my dreams as much as I do.

Thank you to my children for warming my heart.

Thank you to my mother for your support and confidence.

Thank you to Jamie for your book making skills

Thank you to Aysha for finding every little mistake and fixing them beautifully.

Thank you to the artists at Miblart for creating a superb cover.

Thank you to Four Horsemen for bringing my stories to the world.

If you stand for nothing, Burr, what will you fall for?

Lin Manuel-Miranda

Prologue

Hero Memoriam

Sitting at the desk, Constance Strong pulled the back of her suit jacket down so she could sit on its edges. Wouldn’t do to have her shoulder pads riding up. She resisted the urge to check her lipstick one more time. She needed to focus. Relax her face. Don’t look severe, but don’t smi le either.

This would be the most important report of her life.

Are you ready, Constance? the new producer, Gary, asked.

Yeah, she lied.

She tapped the sheets of paper in front of her into a nice pile, though she wouldn’t look at them at all while she was live. It was one of her points of pride. What she needed to say was in the teleprompter. Still, the ritual steadied her all the same.

Gary took charge, speaking too loudly over his headset. Alright, let’s go people. Here we are now… The time has come. Constance is on in … three … two … He mouthed the one, then pointed. The green light went on over the oily eye of the camera.

Good evening, this is Constance Strong with PGN-TV News and it is my sad duty to report one of our city’s beloved superheroes, Reboot Man… She stopped her reading, unable to see the words for a moment. Blink, blink. Reboot Man, she said in a softer voice, not to the camera or her waiting audience, but to herself. I’m sorry folks. It’s Reboot. He was only known as Reboot Man in the ’70s… 1973–1975…

She could see Gary having a figurative heart attack, waving frantically while the camera operators exchanged glances.

Need to refocus. Got a job to do.

Reboot, the beloved superhero and reserve member of the Phoenix City Patrol, collapsed and died earlier this week while on duty apprehending a pair of shoplifters who had stolen several pairs of jeggings from a local department store.

She could see the small square appearing above her shoulder on the smaller screen to the left of the teleprompter. She had insisted that they use the image of him from ten years ago, when he still looked like the strong, dignified superhero of her childhood. It didn’t matter whose toes she stepped on, it was the right graphic to use.

Reboot, with his amazing ability to jump back seconds in time, came to be one of the more beloved superheroes of the new Heroic Age.

There would be a shot now of some footage from a special they did on his career a few months ago. The compilation reel would show CCTV footage of him capturing a bank robber, of the time he saved a woman from being crushed by a falling air conditioner, another of him putting some criminal in the back of a police vehicle before coming to stand side by side with the city’s greatest superhero, the Hyperion. Reboot was harder to see in his black coat and gray Lycra suit next to the tall silver-haired, silver-suited superhero, who had been much more marketable with his sculpted muscles and swishy cape.

The last clip was a cutting of the coverage Connie herself did of him stopping the evil supervillain Dr. Nuclear—who was actually a washed-out med student, not a doctor—in a short-lived, incompetently planned attempt to destroy the city. Unfortunately, her report only garnered mediocre media attention. At the time, it was overshadowed by Silver Hyperion, who didn’t even catch the bad guy in the end, but did save a bus full of schoolchildren.

Without Reboot, there were several times when our city would have fallen into the dark clutches of the Black Fox and her League of Extraordinary Evil.

She knew it was a strange thing to say, and Gary had pushed back at her about even mentioning the League since they were more of a Tri-Cities threat. Few people in Phoenix City knew of the League of Extraordinary Evil, and those that did didn’t really care. The supervillain group had very little activity in a city that boasted two superhero groups, the Pantheon and the Phoenix City Patrol. But with the current upheaval surrounding the Pantheon, and the struggle of the Phoenix City Patrol to pick up the slack in a population of 8.8 million, only a fool would not recognize the opportunity for the League or other villain groups to make inroads here.

It was a name Constance expected to say more often in the future. It stayed in the script.

I think I can speak for all of us here at PGN-TV when I say our city will shine a little bit dimmer in the days to come. There it was, the hitch in the back of her throat that broke on the last word. She promised herself she would get through this. She stared at the waiting black eye of the camera, knowing they were all waiting. She had to say it, even though her own heart was breaking, her own personal hero gone. And no one could know.

A single tear slipped down her cheek.

We will miss you, Reboot.

Chapter 1

Everyone Wants to Be a Hero

No, you are not hearing me. I can’t use this! Aqua Marine cried as she slammed the disk case onto the ground. This predictably shattered the flimsy plastic into a million pieces and cracked the disk it was supposed to be protecting.

The future superhero didn’t really care.

"No! My hero license says Aqua Marine. I wrote very legibly on the form… I don’t give a flying fuuu—"

The voice in her ear cut her off, calling her several more unprofessional names.

He then disappeared and she was put on hold. She took the opportunity to get herself under control. At least try to. She had been trying to communicate and work with this company, but after four reps and now two hours total on hold, all her patience, and her politeness, was gone.

The manager she had spoken to previously returned, insisting that there was nothing more they would be doing concerning her case. You told me that if anything happened to the data on that hard drive that I would be entitled to a full refund and what you sent me is not what was on that hard drive! It’s just mumbo-jumbo code—

The manager repeated her script over again.

No, I did not read the licensing agreement! It’s in Spanish and Japanese!

Aqua Marine paced her one-bedroom midtown apartment, giving a casual thought to the old adage, walking a groove into the floor. The service manager on the other end of the phone, calling himself Jim, repeated the written transcript answers he was obviously reading from.

You don’t seem to understand you are ruining my business, she insisted, nearing tears with frustration. She couldn’t fail at this. She just couldn’t. And it wasn’t like she had a lot of money to burn at the moment. At least, not money she was willing to touch.

She got another unhelpful response.

"It is a specialized practice!"

Then the manager made her an offer.

I don’t have another two hundred dollars to—

Then the rep manager started at the top of the pre-written transcript again.

You’re going to hear from my lawyer! the young woman lied. She chucked her secondhand smartphone, with its two black fox ears on the upper corners, against the wall. Of course it didn’t break, her mother’s custom-made phones never did, but it hit the wall and bounced just a foot away from her front door at the same moment that same door opened inward.

Rhainnon, honey, do you have change for a twenty? the older woman entering asked before staring down at the cell phone on the ground. She dropped her hands to her hips in practiced exasperation. Really?

The data recovery firm I used to get my footage off that crap hard drive… They made it worse and now it can’t be accessed at all and they sent me this! She plunged her hand into a box full of CDs in clear plastic cases.

Her mother cocked her head at them. What is it?

I have no idea! I stick them in an old CD drive and it’s just lines and lines of code or something! And they won’t refund me, Aqua Marine cried, shoving the box of useless disks away from her across the faux-wood floor as if that would teach them. All her gesture managed to do was knock over some badly stacked dishes on the other side of the box with a nice clatter.

Well, what did you expect when you used an overseas company? the older woman dismissed as she finished entering the room.

Ugh, Mom! Rhainnon groaned so loud it would have made a valley girl envious of her technique.

Flipping her copy of the apartment keys into the pocket of her leather coat, Aqua Marine’s mother leveled her gaze at her daughter, the kind that would make a drill sergeant shuffle his feet.

It deflated Rhainnon just as effectively. All that footage I got, just gone.

Footage of what? her mother asked, using the underside of one of the disks as a makeshift mirror to pick out something from her teeth.

It was footage of when I rescued that autistic kid from that gang of other kids. They were beating him up in an alley, and I stopped it and got him to the hospital. He had been recording at the time, and he sent me the footage as a thank you.

He was recording it?

Well, he was actually there doing ‘street art,’ and recording himself for TikTok. The kid got a fine, but if it wasn’t for me intervening, he would have gotten a lot worse. Aqua Marine laid her head back on the couch. Not that anyone will ever know because now the footage has been eaten by Linux, and the contact info I had for the kid was also on that computer. It sounded like a death knell the way she said it, with a long grave silence after.

Then Rhainnon lifted her head, remembering. What do you need change for?

It was to tip the cab driver, but never mind. He’ll figure it out, her mother replied, bending down to pick up the phone between two black-lacquered, perfectly manicured nails.

What are you doing here, Mom? the younger woman asked as she picked up some of the knocked-over dishes off the floor to belatedly add to the pile in her sink. She hated when her mother just came over, considering her place was never even close to company ready and the dishes had gotten out of hand.

"Well, you sounded like you were having a nervous breakdown, so I came over to see if I could help or something. I’m pretty sure that’s what mothers are supposed to do."

Rhainnon didn’t respond to that. Instead, she flung herself backwards onto her thirdhand couch, to cover her face with one arm in abject defeat.

She could hear her mother’s sigh of judgement at the state of her apartment, but for once she didn’t say anything about getting her a cleaner.

Why don’t you work with someone at the police department or something? I’m sure they could use the help, bless their poor idiotic souls.

I’m a Delta-class superhero, Mom, not a Beta- or Alpha-class who gets everything handed to them by the Pantheon or the army or something. At my level, you don’t get gigs like working with the police till you get an agent or they come to you. And now I will never get an agent without that footage!

The older woman scoffed. Agents. Really, girl. In my day, you went out and you did good, or bad, or whatever and got on with it.

Yeah, well in your day, Mom, there wasn’t exactly a lot of competition either!

And I can tell you, the Black Fox never waited around for someone’s permission, her mother sniffed.

"Yes, everybody knows. You were a supervillain! That does not even remotely relate to what I’m dealing with here. Of course you didn’t have to follow the rules, because when does the Black Fox have to be held accountable to anyone? But when you’re trying to be a professional, or not even that, just trying to be a basic, friendly, neighborhood Delta-class licensed superhero, there are these things called vigilante laws. You should know, you were the reason they wrote them!"

That is an extreme oversimplification of the situation, as you are well aware. Black Fox crossed her arms, tapping her nails against her elbow.

Well, heroes are governed by rules, laws, and mountains of paperwork, okay? If I want to legitimately do this, that footage would have been a good first step and now I’m screwed!

Aqua Marine flopped backwards onto her couch, her long aqua-colored hair pulling loose from the crown braid she had half-started before getting the package of now useless disks. I should just go back to school.

Moving further into the room, the Black Fox settled herself in the accompanying mismatched armchair next to the couch. Crossing her legs elegantly, she kicked a little at her daughter’s socked toe. You know I could give Joaquin a call—

Thank you, no! Mom, she said, cutting her off before she went on the same old spiel again. How many times could she say this clearly? I don’t want to work for the League of Extraordinary Evil. Besides, aren’t you retired?

Now it was Black Fox’s turn to shift in her seat uncomfortably. "Yes, officially retired, not dead. And anyway, retired or not, the Black Fox name will carry weight for as long as I’m breathing. I bet even after I’m dead."

Aqua Marine dropped her arm over her face again. Mom, don’t. Don’t call. Just … don’t.

It could simply be on a freelance basis. There are countless heroes who got their feet wet in villainy before ‘turning straight.’ The League is always looking for new blood, and female supervillain enrollment is down right now. I bet you could get a sweet deal on some semi-competent henchmen.

Scrubbing her hands across her face, Rhainnon resisted the urge to groan in anguish. This was hell.

"Mom, when I’m ready for semi-competent, I’ll call the evil cleaning service. And again, what part of the superhero motif says I’m interested in following in my mother’s footsteps?" Dramatically, she gestured down at her costume, then at her mother’s own less-than-subtle outfit.

The Black Fox, the greatest supervillainess in a generation, so successful she could actually retire, sat perched elegantly in the beat-up armchair as if upon a throne. The working-poor surroundings of the apartment did nothing to undercut her command of the space around her. She had dressed in a black sweater made of the softest cashmere that went down to midthigh and was slit up the sides, showcasing her still-round hips. Under that she wore black leggings that went into her shiny Italian leather boots at the knee. Her steel-blue hair swept up into a bun that flowered at the back of her head. When she had been at the height of her career, the Black Fox had never let anyone see her distinctly not-black hair. Retirement had lifted that personal restriction, but Aqua Marine was pretty sure the fading of her original aqua coloring into the steel blue was also part of it. All of it came together into the aura of a queen. A mojo her eldest daughter lacked in spades.

Aqua Marine, by major contrast, was everything her mother was not. Except the hippy, long-legged part. She definitely was that. And the hair, she had her mother’s aquamarine-colored hair. But where her mother’s frame had otherwise been slight and lithe, Aqua Marine took after her father, which made her stockier and tall. The sturdiness of a pro athlete, her father had said. One could imagine how well that went over when Aqua Marine had been a teenager in the throes of body image issues. Now she simply accepted it as part of who she was and was meant to be.

Her costume, which she designed herself, was geared toward the practical versus making a statement or playing on the sexy card.

First off, she wore heavy canvas, camo-print pants of black and very dark aqua with a properly matching armored vest that had none of that bare midriff crap that invited someone to slash at it with a knife. When on patrol, Aqua Marine wore her own aqua-colored leather boots that went up to her knees, but the soles were flat and built more like a running shoe. You know, so she could freaking flex her foot. Her one nod to tradition was the water emblem in the middle of her belt. It was a hand gripping what was supposed to be a globe of water with a splash wave pattern in it, but she wasn’t sure how well that telegraphed. There were smaller versions of the emblem on the edges of the eye holes on her otherwise black half mask. Every choice she made about her costume put practicality first with effectiveness a close second.

The difference between the two women could not have been more acute in that moment as they looked each other up and down in tortured silence.

So, what are you doing here…? Aqua Marine started to ask, but her mother spoke at the exact same time, bulldozing over her words.

Heard from your sister this morning.

Aqua Marine gave a dry laugh. And how are things with Dr. Fabulous?

Black Fox gave a delighted smile, one Aqua Marine always saw whenever her mother talked about her sister. He is so good for her. She has just blossomed.

That’s great, Aqua Marine said, unable, and unwilling, to hide her annoyance. Melody working with a third-rate superhero was fine, but Aqua Marine’s going solo was not, according to her mother. It was the mystery of the age, but Aqua Marine wasn’t going to open that can of biogenetically-modified worms any further.

That left them with another tense silence, this one long enough for Aqua Marine to regret snapping, but not quite long enough for her to start apologizing.

You know you should change your name. It’s too masculine, Black Fox abruptly said, examining one of her perfect nails for a flaw that wasn’t there.

Moooooooom, Aqua Marine moaned again.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, it does capture a certain idea, but I keep picturing an overly muscled dude with a mohawk and stretched tank top, Black Fox insisted as she stared off imagining this guy.

It’s a double entendre. I like it. It’s clever. Aqua Marine sat up.

It’s not feminine enough!

And the suffragettes are rolling over in their graves! Aqua Marine grabbed her clear glass mug from the coffee table. Writhing her fingers in the air, the amateur superhero created a small tornado in the liquid, remixing her partially separated before-work mocha with extra espresso shot on almost completely melted ice. "Besides my power is the manipulation of a cup of liquid. It’s not like that gives me a lot to work with. And everything else I thought of was already copyrighted," she said in a singsong voice.

Lady Aqua?

Copyrighted.

Aqua Wom—

Copyrighted and trademarked.

Water Girl?

Aqua Marine screeched, got up, and marched her watered-down coffee to the kitchen.

"You see, this is why I think you need to be a number two for a while. You need guidance on this sort of thing. And you certainly aren’t listening to me," Black Fox said, forcefully unperturbed.

Aqua Marine stared at the pile of dishes in her sink, counting her breaths. God, it stank. Her next place needed to have a dishwasher; this was getting out of hand.

Come on, what is so bad about being a henchwoman?

It’s called a sidekick, Aqua Marine corrected. And I don’t need a man to justify my existen—

"Excuse me, but I know for a fact that Silent But Deadly out in the Tri-Cities is looking for a good number two, and she is one of the most knowledgeable villainess’ out there still working."

Thankfully, that was the moment the alarm decided to go off.

Bursting forth from a space-agey console that looked like it had been built in the seventies