Interlude – Remembrance
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Elaine’s powers first manifested at age 16. Overnight she went from completely unremarkable, to the center of attention at her suburban high school. People she’d never even spoken to suddenly became interested in her, recruiters came out of the woodwork from guilds, from delta academies, from media organizations. Everyone was there to shoehorn her into the life they wanted for her. And for the first time in years, Elaine felt like she mattered. She was talk of the town, strutting through halls and streets head held high. 

Everywhere she went Elaine was told how special she was, how important she was. She quickly made use of her prestige in the exact way anyone might expect of a teenager. Elaine landed her first girlfriend in no time, prying eyes be damned, she was special. Special enough for everyone and their mother to scrutinize her when said girlfriend’s parents found out about their relationship, and forced their daughter to accuse Elaine of having some sort of secret mind-control power that corrupted their delicate flower. Special enough to be feared by everyone around her when rumor got out she could twist anyone to her whims with a thought.

Eventually her name was cleared, but the damage was done. People around her were reminded to fear those more powerful than themselves. And when Elaine fell, she fell hard. Isolation turned to anger, turned to resentment, turned to determination. She was better than all of them, they’d told her so. And now they hated her, for what? For being different in the wrong ways. 

Over months, she flip-flopped between self-aggrandizing disdain toward those around her, and an intense longing to just belong again. In the place of any social life, Elaine cast herself into the dream of becoming a beloved hero. She trained herself hard, built strength, endurance, learned to properly punch and kick, duck and weave. She built a moral compass she felt she could rely on.

At 17, Elaine found her opportunity, there was this girl getting harassed by some creepy guy. Elaine didn’t know them, it didn’t matter. With a few well placed portals she put that asshole into the wall and saved the day. At least, Elaine saw it that way. The school didn’t seem to think so, neither did the students, neither did the cops. She learned a valuable lesson that day: deltas weren’t supposed to attack non-deltas unless ordered to by someone actually important. 

It didn’t matter if she'd saved some poor girl from that creep, it didn’t matter that the guy turned out to be known through the school for playing fast and loose with the concept of consent. He wasn’t the kind of person the powers that be wanted heroes for. And sitting in her school principal’s office, surrounded by twitchy looking cops, Elaine understood for the first time that she shouldn't trust a word that any of those people who told her she was important had said. Elaine wanted to help people, they wanted to help themselves. She resolved to change things, she would be a different kind of hero.

Luckily for her, Elaine was still considered valuable. So like all young, delinquent detlas, instead of jail she was shipped off to super school early. And harsh lessons begot harsh lessons: Elaine realized very quickly that among special people, she was unremarkable. What good were short range portals against people who could freeze her in place with their minds? Against men so strong and so durable that her hardest kicks simply tickled? 

After four years of studying, training, and humbling herself before the unattainable demigods around her, Elaine Norton graduated with a bachelor’s degree: double majoring in political science and kicking low tier villain ass. At the very least she’d managed to avoid that third degree in bootlicking so many of her peers seemed to leave with. Which wasn’t to say none of that black and white morality bullshit she’d been spoonfed hadn’t rubbed off, if only slightly.

When she entered the real world to start professional heroing Elaine thought she had the world figured out. Sure things weren't entirely black and white,  but there were only a few shades of grey. There were heroes - righteous and just, if a bit priggish at times. There were falsely labeled villains - desperate people trying to get by, misguided, but not immoral, people who could be shown the error of their ways and helped. Then there were real villains - selfish criminals and terrorists seeking to use their powers to advance themselves at the expense of others. Lastly there were rules - antiquated guidelines that weren’t fundamentally out of place, but which were misguided and meant to be broken, within reason.

Despite her less-than-astonishing powerset, Elaine had no trouble finding work. There would always be demand for more heroes. In practically no time at all she was scouted by the enigmatic OS and his guild, colloquially referred to as “OS’ Guild,” due to his unwillingness to formally name it. There, Elaine’s colleagues regarded her with distant, professional courtesy, the sort she’d come to expect from her time living amongst those whose powers made her look like a child. But she was determined, she was a hard worker, she managed to earn some level of respect, even if it was accompanied by an asterisk.

Then, about a year into her tenure with OS’ Guild, Elaine learned the hard way just how bad her colleagues could be when there was no pretense of professional respect. On a night otherwise like any other, Elaine found herself lounging in the guild bar, a place deltas could go to relax and share drinks without the prying eyes of the public. That was when and where she met Tic.

At the time, Tic was even more of a nobody than she’d been. Under the right circumstances, Tic had excelled. Early in his career, he’d wracked up an impressive win streak against all sorts of Villains. It made sense, the man was an absolute powerhouse at times. Unfortunately, word started to get out about the downside of his power; sure Tic was an absolute monster every other second, but those in between seconds? He was just a regular guy then, worse, perhaps. It took a lot of brainpower to keep himself together when constantly shifting between bullet-time badass and wet noodle in combat. 

All it took was a few losses to well informed villains and his career started on a downward spiral. Tic quickly became something of a laughingstock, harassed by each and every one of those shithead heroes that felt they were better than everyone else. The kind that had been cordial to Elaine’s face while sniggering behind her back. On that particular night, Elaine bore witness to said harassment, and felt like doing something about it. She was, after all, a hero. 

Years later, Elaine would ruminate on that very moment and think about how poetic it would have been had the asshole hero in question been Siren or Kraken. Unfortunately it was just some guy. Some hotshot fresh out of his academy days who thought himself too cool to even pick a proper hero name. He’d been mocking Tic all night, for his part, Tic had kept his cool, that was until hands were laid upon him. See, loss after loss had caused some changes in the young hero. He didn’t like to be touched. And his powers activated not just in combat, but whenever his stress levels kicked up high enough.

That was how Tic wound up hyperventilating in the middle of the bar, alternating between speaking extra fast and at a more normal speed as he tried to get a grip on his powers while simultaneously fending off his assailant. That was how said assailant wound up drenched in Elaine’s drink. And surprisingly, when the assailant turned on her, Elaine found no qualms with striking a hero. Little bastard never even knew to expect it, that was a plus of being able to stomp the back of someone’s head while standing face to face with them.

In what came as a surprise to many, Elaine wound up facing no real consequence for her stunt. The slimy little asshole wound up stalking off to sulk in some corner, leaving Elaine and Tic be. The two became fast friends that evening. And as they shared a round, Elaine came to understand something new: some heroes really were just as bad as villains, and if that were the case, she wasn’t sure she really wanted to be a hero anymore.

 
Hello my lovely readers! Have a bonus chapter, so to speak. This one is shorter than the others, but I wanted to contextualize some of Elaine's actions and beliefs as a character, so, apologies for posting a new chapter between two others. I hope you enjoy!

If you wouldn't mind, feel free to check out my Patreon! There you can read the first three chapters of my scifi romance story Complications of Interstellar Dating, which follows Ves, a butch trans woman, and her relationship with her spunky, excitable alien girlfriend, Amaryllis. Perhaps more enticingly, there's a very delicious audio reading of Searching For Normal's full chapter sex scene performed by yours truly (as well as a free sample, if you want to get a feel for it without paying). And lastly, you'll get early access to everything I write. You can become a patron for all that, and soon more content here.

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