DEAR DIARY,
Tonight's assignment says I'm going to tell you the story about how justice prevailed and put an end to my wicked, lawless ways. It's kind of appropriate, because I just saw a thing on CNN about how the FBI and local police agencies and the Justice Force are dealing with mutant-on-mutant crime and the latest vigilante trend. CNN gave almost a full thirty seconds of that report to the stars of this story, or at least the antagonists of it, thanks to their latest victory in the war against evil: blasting the engine out of some Mexican mobster guy's car, beating his mutant bodyguard into unconsciousness, and literally dropping the whole bloody, smoking, charred mess in a LAPD parking lot.
This is how I know that I'm not really over it, because just seeing those ASSHOLES (pardon my language, dear diary, but that's what they are) gloating and waving to the news helicopter makes me wish I'd taken them more seriously when I ran into them, or maybe that I'd run into someone else instead. Probably that I'd run into someone else, considering how everything worked out.
It was LA, I was eighteen, and the city was big enough and spread out enough and rich enough that I wasn't in any real hurry to keep moving. I was picking out nice homes and nice cars and taking them for a few days or a week at a time. I'd just decided on a nice place up in the hills and was letting myself in when suddenly there they were, swooping in right in front of me: Valkyrie and her sidekick...I mean, partner-in-crimefighting, Crusader.
I'm sure in their version of this, Crusader swooped in to take a proud stance atop the roof and announced that they were here to stop me, or something like that, while Valkyrie reacted swiftly when I snarled defiantly at them. Actually, it was more like me starting to undo the window latch when Crusader hit me out of nowhere with whatever that energy thing he throws is, and then Valkyrie smacked me in the chest and knocked me into the swimming pool.
And then maybe they said something like "we're here to stop you," while I was still trying to pull myself out of the water, but honestly, it sounded a lot more like Crusader yelping "What the fuck IS that thing?" and Valkyrie saying "Just some ugly bitch who won't be breaking into any more houses," and then he was blasting away at me again while she moved in for another attack with that big sword of hers.
I suppose I wouldn't have surrendered anyway, but you sort of expect to be asked, at least. I coughed out the last bit of chlorinated water just in time to rip a chunk of the fence around the pool off and shove it into Valkyrie to keep her away from me while I got myself out of that yard. In the meantime, I'd lost my hold on the homeowner (a record exec with an expensive Ferrari and an even more expensive coke habit), and he was already dialing 911.
They chased me all over that neighborhood, laughing and making little jokes to each other the whole time. Meanwhile, people were coming out of their houses to see what was going on. A lot of them were pointing video cameras and taking pictures, stuff like that, except for the people who owned the places I'd been chased through...those people were looking at the big holes that had been torn, blasted, or punched through their property, and they were pissed.
I was mostly scared and wondering how I was going to get away since they were both so much faster than me and since the cops were starting to show up and block off the neighborhood. But I was also angry, and I wanted to get back at them. So I figured once Valkyrie and Crusader got distracted by the cameras and concentrated on putting on a good show for the crowd, I could take a moment to catch my breath and try to work out some kind of plan, mostly by taking a quick look into their minds to see what they were thinking about doing next.
I guess no one caught this next part on camera, or later on they went and found all the people who did and bullied or bought them off, because it would've looked really bad on the evening news. I mean, here's Valkyrie, all lovely blonde hair and skin-tight clothes, sword held at the ready, flying like some kind of spandex centerfold over the crowd (and believe me, that's exactly why she does that) and all of a sudden she's sandwiched between two SUVs that came flying up off adjacent driveways, and she's screaming and bleeding and totally surprised. Then the SUV-Valkyrie sandwich gets shoved down through the roof of someone's carport, and then the rest of the carport gets pulled down on top of that.
Meanwhile Crusader, her daring and noble partner, zooms in to rescue her but seems to forget where he's going before he's halfway there, and instead he takes a quick detour to pick up one small, hideous, soggy little girl and carry her away as fast as he can go.
Excuse me for enjoying that part, I figure I paid enough for it later on.
A lot of it was just me being stupid, I think. I was so angry at them, I was still hurting from being blasted and beaten, and I didn't even really know who these people were. So while I was making Crusader do things for me, I was also studying as much as I could about him. And oh my god, I can't believe anyone calls that guy a hero. The kinds of things he thinks about...
Anyway, while I was off getting a little payback on Crusader, I guess Valkyrie had managed to pull herself out of the debris (with a little help from the fire department), and was tracking us both down. Which she did, eventually, and that's how all that stuff got wrecked in downtown LA when I was captured.
At first, things were going okay for me, though I was beginning to realize that I was way out of my depth again. I could hit her with things, but having to keep a hold on Crusader and make him help me at the same time really made me clumsy, and she obviously knew a lot about what he could do so she wasn't having any trouble dealing with him. And like I said, I was being stupid, and taunting her about some stuff I'd found out when I was spending some time with her partner, acting a lot tougher than I really was.
Then she threw something, I didn't even see what it was because it came in so fast, and that pretty much ended it for me. I couldn't hang on to Crusader anymore, so he spun around and blasted me back through a sporting goods store. I sort of figured they were going to come in and finish me off right away. Crusader really wanted to because he was so mad about what I'd been doing with him, but I guess the taunting did help a little bit, because they actually STOPPED right there and starting ARGUING about the things I'd been saying. More luck than I deserved, really, and it gave me time to catch my breath.
I'd broken my leg on a big treadmill machine when Crusader blasted me into the store, so I was just trying to carry myself quietly out the back and get away. But I guess Valkyrie and Crusader had finally agreed that what they wanted right now wasn't to fight each other but to fight me, so she came flying in, grabbed me by my hair, and flung me right back out the store the way I'd come in. Then Crusader shot me as I passed by, and I slammed into a wall hard enough to knock most of it down on top of me.
That's about when the Justice Force showed up, and I'm pretty sure if they hadn't that I would've died there, because Valkyrie had just picked me up one-handed again, and her sword came down on my head maybe a second or two before the drainer cannons switched on.
I was in the hospital for about a week, which for me is a really long time, and obviously, none of it healed properly, either.
So that's basically most of what happened. A big, nasty, violent, bad ending to two bad years of my life. And like I said, I just realized that I'm not really over it. But I know that part of the deal is getting over that kind of thing: the same deal that has me writing this diary and doing whatever else the government asks me to do means that I shouldn't hold grudges or lose my temper or do something stupid that will put me back in prison. And I want to live up to that, I really do.
So while I won't say that I've forgotten about it or forgiven them or made peace with all of it, I will say that as far as I'm concerned I'm happy to just stay out of their way and let them do whatever they want.