Content Warnings:

  Spoileraccidental misgendering, dysphoria, suicidal ideation, self-harm

  [colpse]Professor Panic

  October 15th, 2020.

  This year has been an absolute shitshow, ever since the aliens (literal space aliens, not the kind of "aliens" that Damien Bckheart railed against for most of the election, to say nothing of his current term as president) first began to show their faces. To be abundantly clear, when I say "show their faces", I do mean that quite literally; the first thing the invaders did was hijack every video broadcast on the pnet simultaneously to announce themselves, and their intention to conquer our pnet. I very much doubt that there could be a single human alive who hasn't seen that face — enrged bulbous head, gray pockmarked skin, massive bloodshot eyes, toothy mouth twisted into a wicked grin — and had it burned into their psyche for the remainder of their living memory. Not is anyone liable to forget their name — "We are the Graem", they told us — at any point in the foreseeable future.

  I find it interesting that they were so intent on us knowing their name and faces, especially considering that their attacks on Earth thus far have shown no apparent tactical purpose. Our pnet is no threat to them, and any resources to be found here would surely be far more efficiently obtained through other methods. Water? Any species capable of traversing the vacuum of space with such ease should be more than capable of harvesting ice from comets, moons, and other frozen celestial bodies. Food? I find it difficult to believe that these Graem are incapable of building simple hydroponics. Raw materials? The asteroid belt is literally right over there!

  No, the only logical (and I do use that word loosely in this instance) expnation would be shock value. For instance, one of the first things they did after their now infamous announcement was to hollow out the Empire State Building with an orbital beam weapon that puts my Doom Laser to shame. (This is not to say that I am incapable of building such a weapon, but to be entirely honest, what would I accomplish by doing so? My objective is to take over the world, not destroy it. I'm a vilin, not a monster.) Everything else they've done — from the complete and utter destruction of Phoenix, Arizona, to unleashing giant monsters on Japan, to... whatever could possibly be happening underneath the force field currently enveloping China — in the end, it all amounts to nothing more than acts of terror on the pnetary scale.

  Putting aside my own specution, the world is very much in danger, despite the best efforts of those nominally in charge of its defense — first and foremost of which is the so-called "Man of the Future", my old nemesis, Captain Liberty. According to my instruments, he is currently ying face down in a crater on the pavement of Times Square (or at least what little remains of Times Square), having been shot down by some kind of scything beam weapon while attempting to breach the outer hull of the invaders' Mothership. Well then. If our pnet's supposed "heroes" are unable to get the job done, it appears that I must step in to resolve this personally.

  So be it. I stand up from my control panel, and activate my portal device.

  Captain Liberty

  Dear god, that hurt. I'd heard that the Graem's agonizer weapons could drain energy from their victims, but this is the first time I've ever felt it the way that other heroes had described it. I guess it makes sense that they'd need a starship scale version to hurt me; I don't really like to think of myself as more powerful than my peers, but objectively it can be hard to argue against when I've literally survived a direct nuclear bst on multiple separate occasions. The fact that the alien warships' weapons can match that level of power is... kind of terrifying.

  Not that I really care about my own safety. Truth be told, I stopped caring about myself a while ago. No, the only thing that matters is all the people I can save... and all the people that will die if I can't find a way to bring down the Mothership. Already, I can hear the high-pitched whine of the warship charging up its main cannon once again, probably getting ready to finish me off. As the sky fills with a sickly red glow, I brace myself for impact...

  "DOOM LASER!!" Only to hear an all-too-familiar voice call out as the red glow is overpowered by a bright green light. I roll over just in time to see Professor Panic's signature attack nce from above, tearing through the warship's shields and splitting the hull into fragments which rain down onto the ground. In the periphery of my super-senses, I can hear the Professor tapping his foot impatiently. "Well, what are you waiting for? Get up!"

  Pushing through the pain, I will myself to float up into the air, and turn around to face him. "...I don't know if you noticed, but this is kind of a bad time."

  "Of COURSE I noticed! NOTHING can escape MY notice!" He ughs maniacally from beneath his full face-covering mask, complete with a re-breather and glowing green goggles. (Professor Panic is many things, but stealthy is not one of them.) "For you see, all this time I have waited, biding my time, gathering my resources... and now, with the world at its lowest point in decades — no, CENTURIES! — when all of its self-procimed HEROES have FAILED UTTERLY... who is better to defend the Earth itself, than one willing to go to ANY extreme to ensure what is TRULY the best for humanity?!"

  Huh, so that's his angle. I can't help but ugh along with him this time, despite the immense danger that we're in. Call me old-fashioned, but a good vilin monologue cheers me right up every time, and none of my vilins monologue quite like Panic. "I'm surprised you didn't finish me off when you had the chance," I admit to him. As much sense as it makes for him to want to protect the Earth in this situation — I mean, he lives on this pnet, too — tely he's been more focused on trying to kill me, usually with some needlessly eborate deathtrap. Why did I py along with them all? Well...

  "As much as it would please me to be the one to FINALLY kill the Man of the Future-" I wince; fuck, I'm really starting to hate that nickname. "-I could not TRULY cim credit for your demise with you already in such a weakened state." He pauses, his gloved hand dusting some debris from his bcoat for dramatic effect. "Additionally, my dear Captain, you will find that the ongoing camity has made the acquisition of minions, a necessary step in the formution of a proper pn of attack, to be... somewhat difficult. Beggars can't be choosers, as the saying goes."

  "So what you're saying is, the enemy of my enemy is my friend?" I say, giving him a smirk.

  "BAH! The great Professor Panic does not REQUIRE friends! No, this is merely... an alliance of convenience." The mask would conceal the twitch of his mouth from most people, but not from my super-senses. He talks a big game about being an EVIL VILLAIN, but I can tell deep down that he's a total softie. If he wasn't, I'd have had him locked up with all the other vilins years ago.

  "If you say so. What's the pn, then?"

  Professor Panic

  I step through the portal, closely followed by Captain Liberty — whose nemesis status I have generously suspended, in light of the circumstances. The interior walls of the ship, much like the exterior, are made from a smooth bck metal, which nevertheless serves to refract the pale red light that emanates from bulbous fixtures built into the ceiling. It is as though the very architecture of this pce was expertly engineered to unsettle the human mind.

  "You're scared." Captain Liberty is looking right at me. He's looking right at me. My lizard brain fights against my higher faculties, begging me to retreat. I take a deep breath. Hah! Your struggles are meaningless, lizard brain. I am the master here!

  I sigh pointedly. "Professor Panic does NOT get 'scared'! No, you merely mistake my disgust, at the invaders' taste in interior decoration, for fear!" To sell the point, I give a hearty, maniacal ugh.

  "Intruders detected!" a voice bres out from unseen loudspeakers — deep, resonant, and decidedly inhuman. Much like everything else about the Graem. "Destroy them!" With an ominous hum and a shimmer of reddish light, two squads of the invaders appear from thin air, each blocking one side of the corridor. We're trapped... but not for long. Quickly turning a dial on the side of my Death Ray to widen the beam, I project a cone of quasiton radiation — visible as a brilliant yellowish-green, the best color — which quickly evaporates their personal shields and causes them to drop to the floor, motionless.

  Meanwhile, the Captain reacts to the invaders in his usual way, by rushing in for a normal punch. How predictable... and yet, undeniably effective. The invader's shields crumple under the blow, and it flies backwards, its unconscious body slumped against the wall. That's one down. The rest of the squad turns to open fire on him, to no effect. Two, three, four. With only one punch each, the invaders are dealt with, allowing us a moment to regroup. "Where to, Doc?"

  I reach up to adjust my goggles, checking the Mothership's schematics — based on what my secret ir's long-range sensor array was able to glean — against readings of the immediate area. "According to my sensors, the reactor is... that way." I point down the hall to a rge, sealed bst door. "If you can break open the door and keep the invaders off me, it should be a simple matter for a genius such as myself to trigger the ship's self-destruct sequence."

  The Captain stares at me, incredulously — no, judgingly. "Absolutely not. Have you seen what happens when the smaller ships self-destruct? They lower their shields to maximize the bst yield. If they do that with this ship..." He trails off.

  "Hm. You make a fair point... and yet, if we do nothing, the Graem will continue to wreak havoc upon the people of Earth unimpeded. What would you propose we do instead?"

  He looks down, staring at the floor in thought, before looking back up at me, his eyes narrowed in determination. "We aren't doing anything. You're porting to safety, and..." He hesitates, before shaking his head and visibly steeling himself. "...and I'm going to detonate the reactor before they have a chance to lower the shields."

  "And how do you pn to accomplish-"

  Captain Liberty

  He doesn't get to finish his sentence, because I activate my super-speed, willing my body and brain into overdrive. This specific use of my powers is a bit taxing, but it's also the only way for my pn to work. Reaching out towards his left glove, which I know contains his portal device, I enter the coordinates for... let's go with the middle of the Mojave Desert, and press the activation switch to generate a portal. Before he can react, I shove him through, and the portal closes behind him. He can make another portal, he'll be fine.

  Meanwhile, more Graem soldiers are transporting into the area. I ignore them, rushing past and tearing open the bst door with my bare hands. True to the Professor's word, the reactor core is right where he said it would be, a rge sphere of transparent metal, filled with the red glow of exotic radiation and connected to the rest of the ship by a series of tubes. A glowing red weak point, just waiting to be attacked.

  I'm probably not going to survive this. I've accepted that. Officially, my secret identity has been dead for decades, anyway. After a certain point, it was getting too hard to expin why "Steven Marcus" didn't look a day over twenty-one. Steven Marcus... a deadname in more ways than one. After I gave up on my human life, I thought maybe I could transition in my metahuman life... except, how do you perform surgery on someone with unbreakable skin? How do you take estrogen when your body naturally expels most chemicals?

  Before I can allow myself to be consumed by my regrets, I rush forward, smashing my way through the reactor core with the speed of a hyper-sonic fighter jet and the force of a rge boulder. My vision goes dark.

  Professor Panic

  "-that?" In the time it takes me to finish my sentence, three things happen: the Captain disappears in a blur of motion, my portal device activates seemingly on its own, and a sudden gust of wind carries me through the resulting portal. It takes me mere moments to realize what has been done. "...Oh, you motherfucker," I mutter, more to myself than to him; my sensors indicate that I'm halfway across the country from where the Mothership was st spotted. I open a return portal to my ir, cursing to myself all the while, and quickly unlock the control panel for the sensor array — note to self, install a biometric lock on the portal device to prevent this embarrassment from happening again — to track his location.

  Ah, there he is, tearing through the entrance to the reactor chamber... and now he's merely floating there, a series of conflicted expressions crossing his face. What, precisely, does he intend to accomplish? No... surely he can't be pnning on destroying the reactor; that level of quasiton detonation might kill even him. Perhaps he intends to use his Ray Vision to overcharge it and provoke a meltdown, but that would come with all of the same risks as with my pn, only with less control over the outcome.

  Before I can specute further, he surges forward, shattering the reactor's primary core as though it were a mere lightbulb. The reaction is immediate, a massive burst of unstable quasielectrons that immediately overwhelms my instruments. "No..." Are my eyes watering? How odd... not to mention irrelevant to the situation at hand. I re-calibrate the sensor array and search again for his lifesign. No match. "Impossible!" I scan the surrounding area for any lifesigns, any at all; it would seem that, with the explosion fully contained by its own shields, the Mothership has been quite thoroughly disintegrated. No survivors. A single tear rolls down my face.

  Captain Liberty is dead.

  And I didn't get to kill him!