What is a hero supposed to do when her only healthy relationship is with her villian?
For Galaxy Girl and Toxic, their entire lives mirrored in the grandiose rivalry of their fathers. Both playing their parts of arch enemies as the world expected of...
"Galaxy, what's the matter?!" Called out Toxic, shoving open the bathroom door and barging inside. While packing up several of his inventions he had heard a shriek cry out from behind this very door. Dropping what he was doing, he had rushed for it.
"Toxic!" She jumped at his unannounced entrance. "What are you doing in here?!" Immediately a strange flow of blood rushed to his pale cheeks when he saw she was wearing only a towel. "I heard you shout..." He replied, forcing his eyes to remain fixed on hers. She sighed, looking quite flustered.
"I'm.... Fine. Can't say the same for this thing though." She hesitantly answered, holding up what looked like a broken handle of the bathtub faucet. "You broke it off?" he asked, starting to laugh.
"It's not funny! I didn't realize it wasn't made of titanium!" She pouted, half yelling at him. Today, Galaxy Girl had been hit with the realization that unlike in her home, or at the Peace League headquarters, quite a lot of things in the real world, were made of aluminum, or steel. Weaker metals that fall helpless victims to her unbridled strength!
"Sheesh, no need to get upset. I can fix it" he said, still chuckling. Walking back to his side of the suite, he grappled the case with her handheld welding torch and within minutes had the handle expertly, and flawlessly welded back onto the cream colored porcelain bathtub. "There you go." He said, turning on the water for her, rather gracefully.
"Thank you, I just..." She stood up from leaning against the wall. "Stop." he ordered, cutting her off mid-sentence. "Look, if there's one person in the whole world who understands the difficulty of your powers, it's me okay. You don't need to explain yourself, because, even though I may laugh at you, I 100% get it. Okay?" Her gaze softened with each word he spoke, clearly from his heart. Toxic shut down the running faucet and turned for the door.
"Toxic?" She called after him. "Yes?" he answered, turning on his heel; only to be splashed in the face with warm water. Galaxy was leaning over the tub, hand cupped in the water, laughing insanely. "Oh you are so lucky I'm not wearing eyeliner right now..." he threatened playfully. “Or what?" She challenged slyly. "Or this!" He cried, reaching into the tub, he cupped both hands full of water and aimed straight for her face. It hit her with a quiet splash, soaking her hair and face completely. Tendrils of wet blonde hair clung to her cheeks and collar bone. "Ok Nemesis, prepare for the battle of your life." She announced, wiping the water from her eyes with back of her hand.
For the next several minutes they waged all out "war", chasing each other around the bathtub, tossing handfuls of water at the other until they were both completely soaked, as was the floor of the bathroom. "Enjoy your bath." Toxic said as he stepped out, satisfied that they had called it a draw.
The Villain found that the two maidbots he had brought along with him had finished packing for him, and in turn had loaded themselves up into the remaining empty large silver suitcase. He smiled at the genius of his own creations. "Daddy loves you." he patted the suitcase gently.
Toxic changed out of the sopping wet white suit he was still wearing, and into the black silk PJ's he had folded neatly beside the bed. The bad guy fell face first into it, falling asleep before his nemesis even made it out of the tub.
The next morning, feeling remarkably rested and refreshed from sleeping on the top of the line Italian hotel beds, Toxic and Galaxy boarded the jet, and off to Paris France they flew.
"No way, no way am I going to let you mess with my brain." She argued, crossing her hands across her chest. Toxic had spent the entire limo ride back to the airport trying to explain to her that last round of the Tour De Dance they had managed to barely slip by on a technicality, and that their dancing was probably the worst in competition history. The villain had repeated twice already that the Paris leg of the tour was four days long, and that with over 300 people still in the competition, his Hero's chances of running into the speeders as soon as they landed were slim to none.
Toxic felt certain that they needed to know enough to get by without being eliminated one minute after they had set foot on another dance floor. Learning ballroom dancing often took years, certainly not hours. It was impossible, but as the mega genius that he was, Toxic had combined several of his previous mind alteration inventions earlier that morning, as Galaxy Girl had slept.
"The last time you put that thing on my head, I nearly robbed Fort Knox. No, not happening!" She argued, pointing to the white, halo shaped 'Altificator's' in both of his hands, but this wasn't the same mind control device he had implanted on her when she was 14, that time he had made a bet with Replico that he could have Fort Knox successfully robbed within 24 hours. To his success he had managed to get her in a headlock long enough to place it on her head, but his plan faulted when her crash through the gates knocked it off.
Luckily Toxic had a backup plan; the next morning, when the night shift guards finally awoke from the knock out gas, they were dumbstruck to find every single bar of federal gold stacked high just outside the gates of the compound. All that he left was a note signed in green ink: "Regards, Toxic." and the world wondering how on earth he did it.
"This is not the same thing." said the Villain. "I just scrapped pieces of it to make this." He explained. It was an information transfer device, he was planning to hook them both up to it, and transfer the basics of ballroom dancing from his subconscious to hers. "Any superhero with half a brain knows better than to willingly let their Villain mess with their mind! No, just no!" She shouted, standing up and putting her hands on her hips.
“Half a brain?" he smirked. "That's quite a lot of credit to give yourself." He joked, unable to pass up an opportunity to tease her despite his argument. As usual she only rolled her eyes at him. "It's completely safe. Remember I'm hooking myself up to it as well, look I’ll even give you the emergency stop button." He pressed the white tube with a bright red button on the top, cables at its base were wired directly between both headpieces. The plane took off and it took him another 20 minutes of psychologically triggered convincing to get her to agree. He agreed with her about some of her concerns; as a matter of fact, if this procedure was performed wrongly it could kill them both, or worse fry their minds and leave them as comatose vegetables. That and she kept reminding him of the whole "All the times you've tried to kill me..." thing, that didn't help his case much either.
They sat down across each other at the small white table between two large leather recliners. He handed her one of the halo shaped headgears and placed the other atop his own head. Using the app on his handheld device, he finished up the programming.
"How do I let myself get talked into these crazy things by you?" She mumbled, shaking her head. Hitting the start button, they both closed their eyes and leaned back against the headrest.
_____________
A/N: Happy New Year's everyone!
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
