"God DAMN, Dairon, this shit's hotter than a mofo!" A voice behind me said. "How the hell you wearing jeans in the middle of a park on the hottest day of the summer?"
"When you see a fit opportunity, you take it," I looked behind me and held up my hands in mock surrender. "Plus, how you gonna say 'God' and 'mofo' right after each other? Just soundin' dumb." The voice belonged to Fatty Simmons, my best friend since the third grade. We had met back in music class, when we both almost fought over the metal triangle. It started out as harmless pushing, but then got to harassing and name-calling before the poor teacher came to separate us. Everyone else calls him Trey, but to me, he'll always be Fatty—mostly because he was really annoying on that fateful day, but also as a running joke. He stood at a modest 5'10"—a few inches shorter than my 6'1" frame, much to his annoyance—with skin as smooth and deep as cocoa powder. This delicate feature was only off-put by his above-average ears, both of which seemed to be good for nothing but decoration.
"Bruh, that's barely it," Fatty replied. "You're the one cooking like a griddle, not me." He walked over and dapped me up in a handshake we'd been perfecting ever since we came up with it in grade 5 recess. "Wassup man, how you been?"
"Like you said, cooking. I shoulda never wore jeans," I sighed and shook my head. "How 'bout you, man? You look…comfortable."
He was wearing bright green shorts, high enough that you could see the middle of his milk chocolate-colored thighs, and a wrinkled tank top I knew he got the year before from the school store. Sunglasses were perched up on his head, silver lined spectacle-looking things that contrasted sharply with his twisted black hair and definitely hurt to look at. "Could you, like, not bend towards me? Or wear those glasses? I don't want to go blind for the rest of my teenage years."
"You mean like this?" Fatty took off his shock-inducing lenses and angled them towards me. "You know, maybe if I do this enough you'll melt into a puddle of idiotic youngblood-ness." He paused the eye attack for a second and squinted at me. "Is it working yet?"
"Bro, the only thing working is your dumbass—lemme stop before I cook you." I moved my hands from my eyes after he put the glasses down. I looked down at my sweat-soaked shirt.
"I fixed up an old industrial fan yesterday and bought a spray bottle, if you wanna come to my house and cool off," Fatty offered, almost reading my mind. "I might have some shorts, too."
"Bet, you got bottles of water?" I asked. "I'm thirsty all of a sudden."
"Yeah, we just bought the rest of the packs from the supermarket." He grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me. "Wait 'til you see what else I found. We'll be pros after you see this." He started running across the park, ducking under monkey bars and jumping over see-saws.
"Wait up!" I sprinted after him, doing the same parkour he was doing, and caught up. "Wanna race? Winner gets the fan first."
"You're going down, Jeans," he said, smirking. "I'm literally captain of the track team."
"And did you forget who's co-captain of the track team?" I shot back. We both bent into starting position, two hands on the ground with one knee down.
"Ready…" I raised my hips up and I put my left hand at my side. "Set…Go!" We both zoomed toward the street.
***
"Hey, can this fan go any faster?" I spritzed the spray bottle above my shirtless body and watched as the vapor floated down gently. "I mean, I'm cooled down, but I wanna do the sick robot voice."
"Get up outta the fan, bro." Fatty snatched the bottle out of my hands and pushed me out of the way. "You already had your turn, and I'm over here sweatin' buckets."
"It's not my fault you run the 200 meter dash," I shook my head. "People just don't give enough respect to the mile and the 800."
"Y'all get plenty of respect, we the ones who run our asses—" Fatty paused and craned his neck around to look behind me. "Dude. Look at the TV." I turned around and stared, jaw slack with what I saw.
"New wave of rats plague city streets, bringing destruction and disease wherever they go." The screen flickered to show pictures of giant rats storming from sewer drains, a barely-seen haze following their frantic scurrying. "Citizens are advised to stay inside their homes until further notice—" Fatty clicked the screen off mid-sentence and shook his head.
"Damn villains," he sighed. "They did it now, it must be the twins."
"Shit, them again?" I shook my head, surprised. "Didn't they get their spotlight already? Villains just never learn."
"Yeah, their Limelight is over for the month, now it's breakin rules." Fatty bit his nails in mock fear, shifting his eyes from side to side. "Yikes…wonder what'll happen? Probably stripped of their License."
A sudden pang hit my heart, then subsided. Going out of Limelight protocols meant the supervillain twin duo DoubleVizion would lose their PVLs, or Public Villain Licenses. PVLs were ironically known as one of the top honors you could get as a villain. Nobody knew who came up with the system, and although it left many uneasy that criminals would be allowed by the government to practice, they shrugged it off as PR for heroes, who had their PHLs, or Publcic Hero Licenses.
"Don't joke about that, it probably is scary for them," I said, shoving him away from the fan. "Remember, they worked hard to get their second Star."
In order to gain notoriety as a villain or hero, one must rise through the ranks of Stars. These Stars went up to Nine, where the pinnacles of villainy and heroism lay. The ways of rising through the ranks of villains weren't well-known, but if it was anything like the wide-spread methods of heroes, they had to commit certain types of crimes and get noticed for them.
"I hope that's you and not your empath-Farce talking. I don't wanna see you get too connected to the Duplets of all people." Now a surge of anger flowed through me.
"Don't call it a Farce, you already know that's what everyone calls bad Sooths." Sooths were the powers that people like me had, named so because they started out as fundamental truths: Fire, Earth, Water, Air, Thought, Life, and Death. All exhibited powers, or Manifestations, are derived from those Attributes, usually from three or more. The word "Farce" is a derogatory term used to describe lesser Manifestations or ones that did nothing beneficial for the owner. "We still have to figure out what mine is. Probably a Quad or a Quint, to be f'real."
"Come on, man, I keep telling you it's a Doble. Thought and Air. Anyways, that's the thing I found, something to tell us just what it is." He turned around and started rummaging in a drawer behind him. "I looked it up online, it's an old SoothSayer."
"What's that?" I asked, curious about his find. "Sounds old as hell."
"Bro, it is, it is," Fatty replied. "It basically tells you how many Sooth Attributes you have and what they are. You wanna try?"
"Sure, let's do it." I paused for a second, puzzled. It was a rounded cube shape, except for one side, which had a small button interface. "How does it work?"
"Hold on, hold on, let me get it working." He pressed two of the buttons at the same time, and the SoothSayer gave off a faint glow and a steady hum. "There, now we just put it near you…" He slowly moved the device towards me. Suddenly, stubby mechanical legs shot out from the Sayer and it jumped free from Fatty's hand and onto my arm.
"Aaaaah! Bro, help!" He watched with his jaw on the floor as it began to crawl across my shoulders and into the center of my chest. "Get it off get it off get it off get it-" It plunged its legs into my skin and everything began to fade. I wobbled, turning around once, twice, thrice before…
THUD
I lost consciousness to the sounds of Fatty yelling my name.
***
CRIMINAL PROFILE: DOUBLEVIZION
Real Names: Unknown
Aliases: The Duplets, Dupe 1 and Dupe 2
Dupe 1 Attributes: Earth, Air, Thought, Life
Dupe 2 Attributes: Earth, Air, Thought, Death
Dupe 1 Powers: Power to emit spore-like particles into the air. These particles are inhaled by the subject and used to grow them to double proportions.
Drawback: Her ability shrinks her to half her size. Fortunately, she entered villainy with a suit that expanded and shrunk with her, or else people would have a hard time telling why a kid was swimming in clothes where there was once a villain.
Dupe 2 Powers: Power to emit spore-like particles into the air. These particles are inhaled by the subject, but unlike her sister's, hers are used to make something carrying diseases twice as deadly. More specifically, her spores allow for enhanced immunity for the subject but catalyzes the growth of viruses and other pathogens to extreme amounts.
Drawback: Her ability makes her twice as susceptible to allergies. And she's the type to sneeze multiple times in a row. in a fight. I shudder thinking about it.
Background: These two duplets grew up in [—INFORMATION REDACTED—]
These two duplets grew up in an abusive household with drinking and drugs. They decided to pursue a life of crime after being influenced by the criminal mastermind known as [—NAME REDACTED—]
***
"That's odd. I don't remember this information being redacted…"
"Good. It means he's working, finally. Move forward with DoubleVizion's Re-Write."
"Yes, sir."