Problem Child 6

“Buh bye.” Aiko hung up the receiver and felt only a little bad for ditching her patrol partner. The poor guy was obviously sad that he had to go out alone. It was like kicking a puppy. “It’s for your good, little buddy,” she muttered to herself. He’d feel better when his enemies had been crushed into paste. Then he could help with traffic and lost pets in peace and quiet.

She got her patrol gear together, ate her after school snack, and let Mom drive her to the spot where she normally met Captain Marvel. 

‘What if he comes anyway? If Mom knows I impersonated her she is going to specifically forbid that going forward.’

Aiko bit her tongue and concentrated as her bunshin came around the corner, bumbling and grinning just like the good Captain himself. “Good morning, Aiko’s mom!”

Mom twitched. “It’s Kushina,” she said. “Please feel free to use my name.”

The Captain Marvel clone grinned nervously. He did not repeat that, because Aiko was confident he would not feel comfortable referring to an adult by their first name. He was somehow a big magic child. She wasn’t interested in the details, but it was obvious. 

And with that, Aiko was alone in her new hunting grounds. The clone went docile now that its orders had been carried out, waiting woodenly for some type of suggestion. It was just a water clone. She couldn’t afford the chakra expenditure for shadow clones now.

She looked up at it wistfully. She really had fallen in this new world. Aiko bitterly missed the intellectual rigor you could expect from a shadow clone. It was nearly painful to tear her gaze away and rub her hands over her face as she muttered. “When I’m big enough to use solid clones again, it’ll almost be like having a peer.” 

Fuck. This place was lonely. As far as she could tell she was the only shinobi in the world.

Her Captain Marvel clone couldn’t fly like the real thing, unfortunately, so it didn’t provide her any tactical benefit to outweigh the risk of Marvel hearing about an imposter. So she used transformation on the both of them to be a little more inconspicuous. Aiko aged herself up to a young brunette and had Marvel turn into a street casual version of the man. 

Her transformation took a lot more energy, because she wanted to be solid. Aiko took the proportions that felt like hers. She rolled her neck and grinned, wild. That was more like it. The world was her oyster from her new vantage point of 5 entire feet tall. She was going to topple the pathetic gods of this plastic age. Aiko flexed her hands, delighting in her new capacity for violence. 

If her first plan of getting back to the universe and timeline didn’t pan out, she was going to become their President and then their eternal god-king. Fuck, it felt good to be an adult!

Then she looked over at her rather thoughtless disguise for her clone. Essentially, it was Captain Marvel without his dimples, wearing jeans and a t- shirt.

Hmm. That didn’t do enough to conceal his identity.

Out of professional courtesy, Aiko had her clone alter his features to be less like Captain Marvel’s. 

They linked arms and went off. 

Her destination was obvious: the personal residence of Dr. Sivana. She needed information that would lead to the rest of his little association. It was possible that he’d be arrogant enough to keep it at his company, but home seemed more likely. It would have been much more intelligent to have a secret black site unassociated with his public identity that he kept all evidence at, but Aiko wasn’t holding her breath for competency from any of these losers.

“‘Monster society of evil,” Aiko scoffed to herself under her breath as the residence came into view. “That’s the kind of name my brother would come up with. So uncool.” Dr. Sivana had a wrought metal fence and tall gates to hide behind. They wouldn’t help him. She and her clone ghosted disdainfully inside and split to search the premises. 

The doctor wasn’t that bright, in her opinion. He had a home office set up with a laboratory. She ignored his silly science in favor of rifling through his papers. What she found was enough to take her breath away. 

“…They have a newsletter?”

With numb fingers, Aiko turned through glossy pages detailing the meeting highlights, important quarterly goals, and progress photos from the Monster Society of Evil. 

Her initial gut reaction was to laugh. It was hysterical! They were comfortable enough to put their names on paper? Crime was still illegal. She could just take this to the police. Granted, it would be conclusive evidence, but they shouldn’t be comfortable enough to do this. Was it cockiness or a heavy hand influencing the justice system?

‘The name is an in-joke, they think it’s funny that they’re villains.’

Her second reaction was that there were a lot of people in this group. There were a lot more villains than Marvel had even mentioned to her. Granted, a few of them were probably nobody flunkies that he barely took notice of, but Aiko felt a scowl coming on regardless. 

Pop.

Her back went pin straight at the distant bubble burst of pressure as her water clone failed. It was a fucking water clone, so that would mean there was an extremely noticeable puddle somewhere in this mansion. Subtlety was now out of the window.

Option one: it did that on purpose to let her know that there was a situation that needed her alert.

Option two: someone had gotten the drop on her and killed the clone.

Either one of those was pretty fucking concerning. Aiko took a moment to stash the newsletter, flip through a few clumsy hand signs, and then absolutely destroyed the office with a localized tornado. She beat feet while it roared behind her, banging the doors and sending paper in a dangerous swirl. 

She had found the office in an underground level, 6 flights down. She took the staircase up two steps at a time, which was an impressive feat for someone her size. 

A door opened in the stairwell above.

Aiko leapt from the stair to the wall itself and grunted with the effort it took to pull off a chameleon jutsu. Fuck, everything was so hard here, like working through sludge. She raced up the wall, eyes peeled to see who had opened the door. Some kind of security? 

‘The oldest son,’ Aiko remembered. She squinted at Magnificus barreling out of sight towards the tornado. He looked really athletic, in the way that said he was either a taijutsu specialist or a massive poser who spent his time building aesthetic muscles. 

Hmm. Probably the second thing. 

‘There’s supposed to be two smart kids and two pretty kids, definitely all involved in the family business. Magnificus is one of the pretty ones. Head-empty way to divide your family, but if that’s how he does it, I guess we are just pretending that’s not some extremely specific childhood mistreatment they’ll all be in therapy for if they ever stop being patsies for his criminality. If all four of them are here, that’s six probable adults in the household. The wife is supposedly uninvolved, but hard to say...’

As she slipped out of the stairwell she heard the distant sounds of male shouting. That was probably wherever her clone had been. 

‘…May as well see what she saw.’

She followed the sounds up another floor and to some kind of gymnasium with an evil obstacle course. Aiko pressed her lips together really hard not to laugh. 

These people were obsessed with Marvel. 

The two daughters, Beautia and Georgia, were both doing some kind of range training. They had ear protection on and were taking shots at life size dummies of Captain Marvel that somehow moved, swinging and dodging and leaping around. They weren’t bad, actually. Hit after hit connected. Granted, this wasn’t as fast as the real thing could go. But Aiko was willing to bet that increasing the speed of the dummy’s dodge was the next step. 

Dr. Sivana himself was furiously mopping a huge puddle underneath an exposed pipe. He was arguing with his son, Thaddeus Jr. over who had left the valve loose. Aiko felt her grin become almost ghoulish, mouth stretched wide. 

Her clone was right. She did want to see this. Firstly because it was funny. Mostly because it formed her resolve that these people were an intolerable threat to her coworker.

Well. They had active plans to harass him. That changed things a bit. Aiko licked her lips. 

Sivana and Jr first. Then the girls, who probably wouldn’t even notice a fight with their hearing muffled. Magnificus, when he came back to tell his family about the intrusion. 

She scanned the area for materials to work with. There seemed to be plenty. The gymnasium was designed like a park, with real turf and dirt below and packed into gentle hills. There were trees, though they were metal and cardboard skeletons there for the shape. 

‘This is prep for a specific battle,’ Aiko analyzed. But it could work for her purposes, too.

Aiko decided to fall back upon a classic. There was lots of perfectly good dirt right there, after all. She dropped to the ground unheard, dug her fingers in to contact soil, and dropped her concentration on the chameleon jutsu. 

“Doton: headhunter!” Aiko snapped out under her breath. Because she was six and needed the verbal focus, boooo.

Both men yelped. The girls shrieked in surprise a millisecond after, shots going wild and high as they were yanked downwards. As soon as it settled Aiko sprinted to Beautia and Georgia, intent on disarming them before Magnificus could come back. 

“Intruder!” Dr. Sivana squawked. “Hit it!” He managed to point at her with a hand that hadn’t gotten caught. The ground wasn’t that deep. But he and his son were both secured to their chests. The girls had a little more freedom, caught around the hips.

“It?” Aiko asked, indignant. Beautia twisted with a surprising amount of grace and flexibility to get Aiko in her sights. Her pretty face was serious and cold, her blue eyes empty of sympathy. She lined up the gun for a kill shot.

Boring. Aiko waited for the micro-movement of Beautia’s trigger finger and snapped forward with a classic thrown hiraishin. She caught the little lightning bolt blade in the same instant that she gave Beautia a truly mean double kick to the back and then rode her down with knees on Beautia’s shoulders. The girl grunted and fell fully over, face on the dirt. Aiko didn’t weigh much but it was enough. Beautia’s gun clattered against the ground, but she didn’t lose her grip until Aiko grabbed the barrel and twisted it away. She immediately used it to smack Georgia in the face, which was convenient because the other girl was trying to aim at her and Aiko was so close it would be difficult to miss. 

There was a loud crack as her glasses broke where Aiko had hit her temple. Spit and blood flew out of Georgia’s mouth. 

“That’s gonna bruise,” Aiko commented idly. She grabbed Georgia’s gun and ripped it from her unresisting grip. Georgia sort of gurgled, clutching at her face and her lopsided glasses.

An alarm went off. 

“You won’t get away with this!” Dr. Sivana was struggling in place, red faced. He scrabbled at the dirt like he was going to dig himself out. 

Aiko snorted. “Whatever, loser.” She looked upwards, at the distant sounds of machinery. “Home defense robots,” she diagnosed scathingly. “You’re such a Saturday morning cartoon motherfucker.” 

‘Hey, I sound like my Mom,’ Aiko realized when the word “motherfucker” came out, pleasantly surprised. Neat. Mom was cool. Even this civilian version of her was cool. 

Sivana sputtered.

A metal plate slid to the side and released a small swarm of flying robots from high above.

Aiko bit her tongue in concentration even though it was a terrible habit. She drew out a single chakra chain and lashed it through the cloud of machinery. Metal shrieked and sparked. There was foul smoke and a thump as part of the robots immediately turned to shrapnel and started falling. She did it again and again, brutalizing Dr. Sivana’s home security with a few mean lashes. Aiko kept an arm up over her head to protect her face from any debris, but nothing even came close to her. This was child’s play. Any shinobi fight would have moved at triple this speed.

The alarm was still ringing. 

“That’s annoying,” Aiko said conversationally. She let the chakra chain disappear and turned to Dr. Sivana. “Things are going to go better for you if you’re less annoying.”

Footsteps were pounding up the stairwell. Magnificus was on his way back, obviously. Aiko didn’t turn to look. 

“Whoever you are, you’ll regret this,” Dr. Sivana snarled, glasses askew. “I’m going to put you in a hole so deep that you’ll never crawl out.”

Jeeze, this guy was boring. No wonder he kept trying to copy Captain Marvel’s powers and transform his kids to fight him. He’d never had a thought in his life.

“You’ve got no original material.” Aiko squatted and indicated the pit she’d put him in with a hand. “Try again?” Then she rolled to the side so that Magnificus’ kick missed her and connected squarely with his dad’s face. There was an audible crack of a tooth breaking. Maybe his jaw, even.

“Orthodontist billlll,” Aiko intoned, popping up and grabbing Magnificus’ still extended foot. She looked up, deliberately made eye contact with a shitty smile, and twisted. His leg popped at the knee. It settled at what was obviously an intolerable angle.

He howled. 

Aiko bellowed like a wrestling announcer. “Physical therapy and reconstructive surgeryyyy!” She let go to follow up with a mean gut punch that sent the silly motherfucker falling over onto his back. He rolled with the motion and clutched his knee to his chest. 

“Come over here and fight me like a man!” snarled Sivana Jr. 

…Aiko turned to look at him. “You should just be happy you’re the only one uninjured, dummy,” she pointed out. Then she paused. “Is your mother home? I suppose she’s uninjured.” 

‘Should I go beat up their mom?’

“You leave her out of this!”

Aiko blew a raspberry at him. Then she remembered DNA was a thing in this universe, sighed, and blasted him with a decent amount of suiton to ruin the DNA sample with water. Jr. screamed and sputtered. 

“Man, this is a mess,” Aiko sighed. She wasn’t really upset about it, but she had to rethink a few things. She pulled up her sleeve to check her watch. She had about an hour and a half to sort this out before she had to go back to meet her mom.

“…Is that a Paw Patrol watch?” Georgia asked through what sounded like a stuffy nose. She squinted. Only one of her glasses lenses was at a height to see through. The other was hanging down. 

“Fuck yeah it is.” Aiko knelt to show her. It was a cool watch. 

“This is like Marvel’s transformation from a child, isn’t it?” Beautia sighed. Huh. Smarter than Sivana gave her credit for.

“Something like that.” Aiko rolled her neck and pursed her lips as she thought. Nice to have confirmation that these people knew way too much. Also, that they were knowingly training to fight a baby. That was super unimpressive. 

These people couldn’t be rehabilitated. Not the adults, at least.

‘Well. Be fair. Magnificus is 18, Beautia is 19. They’re not that old either. They’ve all been groomed. There’s only one real adult here I’m not interested in giving a chance to.’

She reached out and snapped Dr. Sivana’s neck, a hand on either side of his head. 

That was when the screaming really started. “Shut up,” Aiko said, irritated. “You self identify as villains. You’re training to murder a child. Shut up.” Dr. Sivana’s head lolled to the ground when she let go. Magnificus was trying to crawl away. She grabbed his uninjured foot and dug her thumb in mercilessly to a pressure point on his ankle. “Nominal adults, Magnificus and Beautia. Any regrets?” 

“No!” Magnificus snarled. He gave a mighty kick that would have broken bones if it connected. Yeah, okay, she was done. She dodged it effortlessly and flung her little novelty lightning bolt blade into his throat. 

That probably hadn’t been what Batman had in mind when he had cutesy Marvel-themed tools gifted to her, but it worked just the same. 

The three siblings remaining went silent. They all stared wide eyed as their brother choked to death on his blood.

“Beautia?” 

“I’m willing to reconsider my commitment to evil,” the older girl said quickly. 

Georgia wailed. “You bitch!” She flailed, trying to hit her sister with the hand that wasn’t covering her face. Magnificus gargled on his own blood. “You had everything, you’re everyone’s favorite, and you’d give up just like that?” 

Oof. Aiko felt a twinge of sympathy for the 14 year old twin. It had to be rough coming after kids your parents had named shit like that. How could you ever compete?

“It’s not my fault I’m beautiful!” Beautia dodged her little sister. “There’s nothing wrong with your face!” 

Sivana Jr sort of scoffed, dripping wet as he was. “We’re ugly,” he said meanly. Water sluiced down his face and neck. He sniffled. “Cope with it. No ones going to make a face like yours the Empress of Venus.”

Georgia sobbed angrily and renewed her efforts to tear out Beautia’s hair. The older girl yelled and leaned as far away as she could. 

At least she was unwilling to hit her little sister.

“Therapy,” Aiko muttered. “I called it.” She stalked over to wrap her fingers around Georgia’s hair and tilt her away so that she couldn’t reach her older sister. “Well, we are going on a trip.”