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chapter five:

⤵︎ ⤹
⤷ IN THEIR PRIME ⤶
( an original chapter )

❝ WHAT DO YOU WANT ? ❞

❝ NOTHING ❞

WARNINGS ━━━━ swearing, blood, gore and violence, psychotic break ?, insanity, arguing, warnings, power imbalance, guns, brainwashing ??

❏❐❑

PHOTOSHOOTS WERE never Valerie's thing. She hated them. It was just another excuse to get her in either a skimpy outfit or her hero suit and take pictures of her without a reason. However, when they were group photoshoots, it was just automatically ten times worse.

The twins kept on fucking blinking and Crimson was too busy worrying about her hair and how close she could get to Ben as she was to be positioned on his right. So this was also just an excuse to get close to her favourite member of said group.

Everyone else was doing their own thing to piss off the brunette. The only person ( besides Ben, of course ) that wasn't getting on her nerves was Noir. As mentioned previously, he was usually one of the most tolerable out of all of them. And that was saying something.

I mean, how long did they need to take one godamnn photo. They'd been here for hours, and if that was bad enough, then it would be the fact that Gunpowder kept on snickering. As this was supposed to be a serious photo, laughing wasn't allowed. Valerie had proposed that he be taken out but of course Stan fucking Edgar had something to say.

"He's a part of the group, Valerie, and you know that." Was his reply.

"Not a very big part." She muttered under her breath, more so to the man next to her who grinned coyly at her comment.

"Okay, and three! Two! One!" The cameraman called, and with a flash, the photo was finally done.

The group all distanced themselves away from each other, sticking to their usual groups. Unfortunately, that meant Gunpowder was tailing them again. Did he never learn?

Annoyed, Valerie turned around to face the younger member. "What do you want?"

"Nothing." He replied with a strong face, Valerie assumed it was his attempt at appearing brave in front of the pair.

"Then why are you always following us around?" She questioned with a hard glare and arms tightly crossed.

The brunette scoffed before grabbing her boyfriend's hand and dragging him away once more. Annoyingly, a different voice stopped them this time.

Already incredibly frustrated, Valerie huffed and turned around to face the woman. "What? What do you want?"

The red ━━ head looked shocked slightly before she reigned herself in and gave the supe her answer. "Well, I just wanted to make sure you knew about later today. Everyone's expecting you and all."

The brunette sighed but said nothing on the matter. She took this a good sign and hurriedly walked away back in the direction she came from.

"What's today?" Ben questioned, curious. He hadn't heard about anything happening later on. Nor had she told him.

Valerie groaned in response. "It's this stupid speech thing I have to do because of what happened the other night. Like it's my fault, an asshole with a gun walked in." She sneered with a disgusted look on her face. "I mean, they should be thanking me that I got rid of him not dumping all their lesser problems on me. It's ridiculous."

This whole thing was ridiculous. The photoshoots, the speeches, and live TV appearances and interviews. God, she hated it all. Smiling and pretending like everything was okay when it very clearly wasn't. People were speaking up all over the country about their 'bad experiences' with different supes. Like, get over yourselves. There's worse things going on right now than a supe not giving you their autograph or not giving you the time of day when they walk past.

Electress was not looking forward to later on. 

━━━━━

"OKAY, THAT'S enough! Do you want me to go on looking like I've just seen a fucking ghost?"

The younger woman who was doing the supe's makeup recoiled slightly in fear. Word got around about what Electress had done to her last two managers. And so she did not want to end up like them.

It was said that Ted couldn't take the life that he was living and took the easy way out. When in reality, Valerie had tracked him down while Ben bludgeoned his skull in with the sharp end of his shield ( ouch ). It was a bloody sight, and his family sure did seem to think so, too. Though they were, of course, sworn to secrecy about the whole incident.

The makeup artist stepped back hesitantly before rushing aside entirely. Knowing that it was almost time to go on, Valerie stood up and made her way to the side stage, awaiting to be announced.

This was yet another thing that Valerie did not want to do, but she didn't entirely have a choice in the matter much to her displeasure.

Once all the cheers and applause started, Valerie knew it was time. With a deep breath, the brunette put on as big of a smile as she could and walked on. As she did so, she gave a wave to the bustling crowd with an outstretched arm that went high to the sky.

The podium stood tall and proud, smack dab in the middle of the stage with a small adjustable microphone accompanying it. The supe walked over to the stand and placed her hands firmly flat on top.

"Hello America! How are we all doing today?" In response, cheers and loud cries of adoration were let out from the majority of the gathered crowd. Except for them . . .

They were stood directly in the middle and looked as angry as she ft almost all the time. It was a mix of women and men but mainly consisted of the latter. However, one thing they all had in common was that they all looked just about ready to fucking decimate her. As if they could do that, though. She'd like to see them try and kill her. And then, the brunette would probably kill them later, slowly and painfully.

"Well, I'm sure you all know why I'm here right now. In light of recent events that spurred just the other night, I'm here to reassure you all that everything will all be alright and that us supes have got it all handled."

"Bullshit!" A voice yelled out.

Immediately, all eyes fell upon thay one person brave enough to call out not only a supe but Electres herself in front of all her fans.

"I'm sorry? I didn't quite get that." Electress spoke through a small smile, knowing she couldn't let her act slip or all hell would break lose.

"You heard what I said!" The random man yelled back, his own eyes glistening with fury. Fury for his cause. And wanted revenge for a friend. "You all know what's happening. You're all secretly losing it because we're all starting to speak out! Connor was an avid member of our group, and you killed him!" He continued with gritted teeth and clenched fists.

Valerie scoffed while still trying her hardest to remain composure. After all, supes didn't lash out. They weren't violent. They were calm and collected in situations like this to diffuse the offender. In this case, an anti supe activist hell bent on revenge. "I didn't kill anyone."

"You might as well have! Connor is going to be rotting in a jail cell for the rest of his life because of the likes of you!" At the end of his sentence, he pointed a finger out at her. The way the black haired man spoke unsettled not only her but everyone else too. He was simply seething. Absolutely ardent on getting payback on her and the likes of her.

Valerie leaned forward to grab the microphone attached to the stand in one hand while the other clenched the wooden material beneath. Those close enough were unfortunate to hear the low groaning it made in response to the leather coated glove she was wearing. "Connor was an anti ━━ supe terrorist dedicated to the wrong cause." She replied, anger slowly bubbling up inside her stomach while her eyes slowly tinged to a light purple.

"The people deserve to know!" By now, the whole crowd had parted so that the clearlg deranged man could be seen very clearly. The rest of his group surrounded him just a mere few feet away. "They deserve to know what monsters you so called
heroes are! What a monster you are!"

Alright, that was it.

It was like a chain snapped in the woman's brain that made it all go to hell. One minute, the group were all standing there, and then they weren't . . .

All that remained of them were singular body parts. Some of them were just a torso, while others were just mere heads or arms. All in all, they were fucking dead. And Electress had killed them on live fucking TV.

Deep red blood was splattered everywhere in foot deep puddles and the bodies appeared endless as they were stacked upon each other. It was a gory sight indeed. Though it definitely wasn't her first show of blood, that was for sure.

Amanda's ( her new new manager ) eyes widened. "Oh shit! Cut to commercial! Cut to godamnn commercial!" She shrieked, what the fuck were they going to do?

The camera crew did their best to comply with her request but it wasn't fast enough. This was most likely the end of one of their favoured heroes. All because she'd lost her cool in front of a crowd of fans.

That was until someone had cheered. Someone had fucking cheered. Who the hell would do that?

It seemed the crowd thought the same. However, it didn't matter as the infectious attitude spread like wildfire, and soon enough, everybody was cheering and chanting her name like she was some goddess sent down from the heavens to save them all from eternal damnatuon.

Valerie had just killed a huge number of people. And now they were cheering? Blood was smeared all over her face, hands, hair and clothes and yet they fucking love her? What was wrong with these people?

Electress turned to face the crowd, pushing her hair back from her face and let it sit back in it's natural position. They loved her. She chuckled slightly at that, a wide grin forming on her face until a full on laugh spilled from her blood covered lips. These people were just as fucked up as her.

The chanting and music echoed in her ears slowly, but surely until it all became muffled, and then eventually stilled altogether. The sound of her name was called out before everything came back into focus.

Looking back into the crowd, the woman realised that what she had fantasised hadn't actually happened much to her dismay. However, the group had been escorted out from the venue entirely.

Another grin was pulled upon her face.

━━━━━

"AND HOW did you know what to do? How to react? I imagine it would have been a heat of the moment kind of thing, even for a powerful hero such as yourself."

"Well, he was a danger to not just me and the rest of us but also the humans in the room. After all, a gun could do more damage to them to any of us combined. I just saw a threat that needed to be taken out." Valerie spoke to the interviewer before turning to the camera. "Though, not literally, of course. I have never and would never kill anybody. That's just not the kind of person I am, Natalie."

The interviewer, Natalie, nodded with a wide smile. "You sure are a hero for us all. Isn't she amazing? Electress everybody!" And with that, the brunette stood up and made her way backstage, waving to all the fans in the audience who cheered her on.

As soon as she was out of sight, though, the smile fell off her face and was replaced with a scowl. Every member of crew that she walked past knew not to say a word to woman at risk of being fried to the bone, alive.

This carried on until she was in her dressing room. The door slammed shut behind her, and everyone around took note to stay away from the hero's room for the time being.

━━━━━━

"WELL, WHAT happened to your last two managers? Why do they keep changing?" A reporter asked, holding a microphone right to her face, angering the brunette immensely.

"My last two managers couldn't hack the life of fame, alright? So they quit." Valerie stated rather simply. "Now, are there any more questions?"

"Do you still keep in touch with them?" Another asked. It was a middle ━━ aged woman who appeared to be in her late thirties in a rather skimpy outfit for her age. Ignoring this, Electress moved on to reply to her question.

"Oh, absolutely." This fake happy go lucky attitude was making her sick. "I am happy to announce that both of them are very happy with their lives and are living far, far away from here."

"I can't believe you're still watching all this crap." A voice broke Hughie out of his deep immersion on the small laptop screen. It was a short video clip from 1980, not long after the whole are supes really morally corrupt? debacle.

The man turned around, not surprised to see MM behind him with a deep scowl on his face. Electress may not have directly killed his family like Soldier Boy did, but she was with him at the time and was most likely there and didn't do a single thing to stop him. And that made her just as bad or if not worse.

━━━━━

ODI SPEAKS ━━━━ ONCE AGAIN, tysm for the lovely @-ginnjensen for these amazing ideas ! I'm sorry I didn't get to use your other one, but trust me. I definitely will in another chapter as it's an amazing one. It'll be kind of like the whole plane incident.

©️coast_by_coast