Problem Child 5

“You’re here- ow!” Captain Marvel yelped. There was no other word for it. She snickered at him and the sort of helpless flailing he was doing. Why was he so upset? She smacked her victim’s head on the ground and then rolled away before he could grab at her. “Be careful!”

Well, duh. Aiko jabbed her terrible pointy elbow into someone’s gut. She knew this was risky. These clowns were totally untrained losers, but she was still tiny. She couldn’t let them get hands on her like they did on Marvel. She stole another look at him while she switched between opponents, frowning. What was he even doing? “You should try hitting them!” Aiko hollered helpfully. She illustrated with a mean kick to someone’s gut.

“They’re innocent! They’re being controlled!” Marvel gasped, before getting dragged down by dozens of grasping hands.

…Oh. “That sucks,” Aiko complained. She switched tactics, depressed but resigned to it. This was probably why Batman had filled her little pockets with zipties. She bounced around and got a couple people latched together, and then realized that Marvel was still struggling to extract himself from the crowd. Fair enough. She decided it was a good time for some property damage. 

She sprinted away to gain some ground. Her followers split off towards Marvel, which, sad for him, but it was good to see that they clearly had target priorities. It said something about whoever was deploying them. Aiko raced through hand signs that were slow and clumsy in her baby hands and then slapped the ground to open up a very selective pit underneath the bulk of the grasping victims.

They jolted and most of them fell over, even though the pit was only about two feet. After a millisecond for it to settle and the civilian victims to fall into safer impact positions,  Aiko deepened the pit to send them down about 5 more feet.

The drop off cleared a good twenty of the civilians and freed Marvel up enough that she could see him to help him through the six people grasping at him in desperation. 

Aiko approached carefully, expecting someone to turn on her. The people trying to smother him didn’t even look at her or their trapped brethren. It was seriously creepy. It was like their world narrowed down to hurting Marvel as soon as he was within arm’s reach.

“Yikes,” Aiko said to herself. But that made it easy to come up from behind and start slapping zipties around peoples’ ankles. She wasn’t strong enough to physically drag them away from Marvel but when he saw what she was doing he elbowed his way free enough to start picking off one civilian at a time and holding their hands together for her to secure. 

One by one, they dealt with the civilians left upside. They all ended up on the ground bunched up, worming around on the cement with their hands behind their backs. 

Marvel got up, brushed himself off, and peered over into the The Pit. He recoiled when he saw that every face was pointed unerringly at him. Aiko hid a laugh in her hands.

“Captain Marvel,” the people inside said in unison. “Your time will come.” Then they all started like… screaming in frustration and writhing around. Some of them dropped to the dirt for maximum patheticness.

“...Are they rending their clothes like sad people in a historical drama?” Aiko asked.

Marvel frowned. A funny line formed on his head when he did. “I think so.” He squinted at them. “I guess it’s to express frustration.”

“Whoa,” Aiko breathed. “That’s so messed up.” She watched this long-distance temper tantrum in wide-eyed admiration for a moment. “Who is responsible for this? What are we going to do?” She bounced on her heels.

Captain Marvel looked at her and then back at the screaming mass of humanity in a harmless 7 foot pit in the middle of the road. He put his hands on his hips and made a strained expression. A single lock of hair was out of place on his forehead, curling in the center. “...We can let the cops help them up.”

Aiko nodded. It was only practical. They were clearly focused on him in particular. Besides, she had just done a lot of property damage.

“Let’s cheese it.”

Aiko had to fistbump him for that one.

They called for the cops from a couple blocks over, close enough to Marvel to hover and see that nothing terrible happened to the victims, and to report to her that the tied up ones actually got pretty far inch worming away towards a park. When police cars arrived they waved goodbye and split it back to the Justice League secret friendship office building to talk about it.

“His name is Mister Mind,” Marvel said, easing his hilariously big body into a chair with a gingerness that said even he wasn’t used to navigating his hugeness around normal sized furniture. Aiko put both hands on the table and climbed up the chair. 

“Are you in the way of whatever goal he has?” Aiko prompted for information. It was obvious that this had been a hit on Marvel in particular, and while the civilians he’d used had been weak, they were also obviously one of Marvel’s weaknesses.

She frowned. Hmm. How would he have gotten away without her? He hadn’t known how to fight them without harming them.

‘That’s a good tactic to use on Marvel.’

Marvel made a so-so gesture with a wobbly hand. “He’s actually a wormlike being from space, he knows my true identity and he wants to kill me because of what I represent to him, not like, anything I’ve done in particular or what he wants to do.”

A space worm?

“That’s cool.” Aiko made her chair spin. Her ponytail flew behind her. “And that explains why the captives did so well moving around. I thought that was an impressive show of core strength you wouldn’t expect from a random selection of the working population.”

Captain Marvel looked at her with blank incomprehension for a very long moment. “...What?”

“The people who we zip tied up,” she prompted helpfully. She stopped the chair with a heel. Jeeze, this guy was a big silly puppy. She was starting to worry about him. “Your secret identity?”

He clearly kept that private. It would have been a lot more convenient for them to meet somewhere in Fawcett City for debriefs. Instead, they were all the way in the justice clubhouse. How had some space worm found that information no one else seemed to have? Was he an old friend? Was Marvel from space?

“Yeah, he knows it,” Marvel said. He seemed to not recognize her real question. “So does this other evil guy, Sivana.” His eyes went a bit hollow as he slipped into some unhappy memory.

“I understand.” Aiko nodded slowly and bit the inside of her cheek, trying not to let her thoughts show on the outside. She didn’t want to be overbearing and tell people how to live their lives. But if it was important to keep a secret identity and an enemy knew it, well. There was an obvious solution? 

Aiko fidgeted, swinging her legs. She felt sort of bad for Marvel. He was just a big nice guy. Two of his villains were, what, black mailing him? That was untenable. 

‘Maybe I should just take care of that for him.’

“So, this Sivana…” Aiko prompted.

“Oh, he’s a really rich guy with a big company.” Captain Marvel was obviously still in his own head about it. Aiko frowned, noting how he seemed a little smaller. “He’s a scientist. And Mister Mind made a society of villains who he works with. Wanna go read about them? You should probably know my villains, come to think about it.” He blinked, seemingly to clear his mind. “It could be really bad if you met one of them unknowingly.”

“Can we do it here?” Aiko pointed at the big screen. There were a couple of hours until her parents expected her home. She could probably do the planning for a couple of assassinations in that time frame without letting on to Marvel.

“Yeah, lemme grab the hookup for the tv thing. Wanna get snacks while I set up?” He started opening drawers and untangling cords, immediately overwhelmed by the technology. “This stuff is so old school,” he mumbled to himself. “Batman is so old.” His whole face scrunched up.

She slid down off the chair and did not consider helping for a millisecond. She didn’t know about VHS players either. “Yeah, I need juice.”