Villains wear Masks *sequel to Heroes Wear Capes

Chapter 4 - Tearing down walls

"We've all got both light and darkness inside of us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That's who we really are."

~ Sirius Black (Padfoot)

April was tired of reading the SNN articles on her phone every day on the supers in Kingdom City. Now more than ever their saves were seeming artificial. And it wasn't just White Knight, who she knew for sure made publicity stunts to improve his public appearance.

Wild Fire and Artic Frost never seemed to want to really hurt one another, just like White Knight and Black Knight. If he was a more competent hero who actually wanted to help the city, he would've apprehended the villain by now.

Momentum, the newest addition to their city, seemed to be a little underqualified for the role. He never trained under a better hero, choosing instead to try and start off his career without sidekick initiation. And, besides his speed, he didn't seem to have any technique.

Silver Streak was one April could stand, but she still wasn't meeting expectations. She was stopping crime in Oakland, but it was an endless cycle. No matter what Silver Streak tried to do, there would always be sickos who wanted to rape women and steal from innocent bystanders. She would never be able to make a real difference.

April didn't know why she was being so cynical, but it was true. Being away from Kingdom City and viewing the heroes from an outsider's point of view must've really been giving her a new outlook on supers.

Interviewing a villain like X probably wasn't helping. In the three months she'd been living in San Francisco, she found she was actually looking forward to her sessions and dreading going back home. At least when she talked with X he was being real to her, not putting on a façade of grandeur. He had no reason to lie to her. X would be stuck in Alcatraz for the rest of his life, lying to April would get him nothing.

Even the worst of villains would eventually want forgiveness, and X was finally at that point in his life.

Sitting at the staff cafeteria in Alcatraz looking at news articles on her phone was probably not the best use of her time though. She should've been back in the interview room, getting as much information as she could get out of X, not eating soggy mac and cheese that she picked up in the morning from the gas station down the street from her hotel.

She watched as a guard heated up a piece of pizza with heat vision. One of the only places in the entire place that wasn't lined in Merlonium.

Now, why would a place lined with a mineral that could hurt supers hire guards that were supers? Mostly it was just in case the prisoners tried to escape. There would be competent supers on hand to go outside and stop the villains from getting anywhere. The only downside was the fact that Merlonium hurt pretty bad. Some supers could take the pain and after long exposure to it only feel a dull throbbing. Brandon once told April that he survived being tied down with Merlonium infested ropes because he got the pain out of his mind by thinking about her. She assumed the guards got used to the dull pain and took a lot of break in here.

April ran a hand through her messy hair. At the beginning of the interviews she had made sure to look impeccable. Now? She was tired and losing sleep, and, quite frankly, didn't care about how she looked anymore. There were no cameras flashing at every turn to catch the city's favorite damsel and X didn't seem to care how his interviewer looked.

In fact, she had spent so much time in the presence of X without being turned crazy that Agent Argent of MASKED (Monitoring of Abnormal, Strange, and Kaleidoscopic Events Department) was thinking of making her his full time psychologist. It was why she had temporarily put a hold on her degree.