Sapphyra [Adult Superhero Progression]

Barbie

Wyatt? Here? Now?! 

Why do things never go my way?

“Barbie.” Hearing him say my name made me want to vomit. “Didn’t expect to see you here. You on Rupert’s hit list too?”

“Is that what you really want to talk about right now?” I reached into my back pocket to bait him, expecting him to teleport around me and pull some bullshit. His eye twitched, but he didn’t move, not yet anyway.

“Well, it has been a century since I last saw you. I figured I would try to do the small talk thing.”

“Bullshit!” How could he be so casual about my suffering? Suffering that he caused!

“Excuse me?” He blinked and tilted his head. 

Oh. Oh, don’t tell me he forgot. Either he forgot, or he’s the world's best actor.

“Did you forget what you did to me? How you locked me up in your little playroom underwater?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he paused, “but if I did do something to you, it was in retaliation for you stealing my son’s corpse. Or did you think I forgot?”

Laughter broke free from my chapped lips.

“What kind of sick fuck do you think I am?! Why would I do something like that? I’m not you.” I spat out the word as if it were poison. I have never hated someone as much as I hated Wyatt Hart.

I especially hated how the look in his eyes changed from cautious to concerned.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“You don’t know, do you? You haven’t caught on at all?”

Shit. Did he know about me being a robot? 

“I have no clue what you’re—”

“Now is really a bad time to lie to me, Barbara.” A fierce roar shook the building. “As you can see, time is not on our side. My wife has been taken over by her dragon side again, and you know what that means, don’t you?”

Fuck! No, not now! I was so close. The answer I was looking for, I was told it would be in the archives somewhere. I can’t look for them now, not with him here.

“Remind me…it’s been a hundred years.”

He sighed. “This must be what it feels like talking to me. I used to hate being called diet Wyatt, but now I get it.”

Diet Wyatt? 

“Barbie, how many times have you dumped your mind since I last saw you?” Dumped my mind? I hadn’t…

“I can see it in your eyes; you’re thinking you haven’t, but that’s not true. Tell me, what was the last memory you had before being held captive?” He took a step closer, yet it did not make me nervous.

“The last memory I have is of you…” 

“Me? What am I doing in this memory? What am I wearing? Is my voice any different? How was the weather that day?” His barrage of questions only served to piss me off more.

I couldn’t remember any of it. I don’t even remember how he got me, just that he got me.

I growled and pushed over a bookcase. “What the fuck does the weather have to do with anything?! You kidnapped me in retaliation for something I didn’t do!”

“Something you didn’t do, or something you have no memory of doing because it was never you who took Barnaby all those years ago.” He scratched his chin, face a mask of emotion. The only thing I could tell about him was that his amber eyes had never been so intensely trained on anyone, let alone me.

I gulped, pushing my fear down. But was I afraid of him or the truth?

He stepped over the bookshelf.

“I’ve had a sinking suspicion this entire time that something wasn’t right with this. Rupert is an annoying prick, but not one but two spies have followed us. At first, I thought it was Rhea, but now…”

The ground beneath us shook hard enough to make my knees quiver.

“My grandnephew was released, but when I asked if it was Rupert, there was no recognition in his eyes, like the name had no meaning to him. Yet Rupert is keeping a wolf by his side, even now, isn’t he?”

“How the hell should I know?”

He’s distracting me. But from what?

“I wasn’t talking to you. You’re just half of a piece of memory, lodged into a silicone interface. An android with a singular emotional focus and pre-programmed pathing. Only a fool would take you for a real person.”

Did he just call me an NPC?

He clicked his tongue,scratching the top of his head. “Guess that makes me a fool then. I grabbed the wrong Barbie all those years ago.”

My eyes darted around the room, but the only ones there were the two of us. I hate this, hate he always has the answer. It’s not fair!

“You’re insane. We’re the only ones here and you’re grandstanding like you always do!”

“Yeah. And I know you can’t stand that, which is why I’ve talked for way too long so I could draw your ass out.” He raised his hands above his head.

At first, I thought he was trying something, but then I watched a woman step out of the shadows. She held something against his back. A gun maybe. She was dressed in regal wear, similar to Tethys, but with normal porcelain skin and long raven hair tied into a french braid over her shoulder. She was beautiful, but her eyes…her eyes were familiar.

They were my eyes.

“Valeria,” he said, “or should I say Barbie.”

“What?” I whispered.

Valeria clicked her tongue. “It certainly took you long enough to figure it out. You were right, by the way; you grabbed the wrong one. You took my decoy, one of many by the way, the one I had set up while you locked me away in that loony bin.”

Her laugh sounded like wind chimes, deadly and whimsical all at once.

“I’m almost offended that you didn’t clock that thing the first time. You really were blinded by love, eh?”

“You’re one to talk. You stole my son’s corpse to get back at me.” He grunts, chuckling as she digs the object deeper into his back. “I knew I was good, but damn.”

“No,” Valeria narrowed her eyes, annoyed.

“It stopped being about you a long time ago, Wyatt. From the moment you abandoned me on our wedding day, I asked myself, why? For a creature with the mental capacity of a five-year-old. Sapphyra never really grew up mentally, you and I both know that, yet here you were slobbering over her every chance you got.” 

Her voice dropped to a softer tone, and her eyes softened. “I started feeling sorry for her. But then, on that day she lost her shit the first time?”

Valeria shivered, her pupils dilated for just a second.

“Raw, terrifyingly beautiful power. I understood it all. I understood why you guard her so closely, treat her as a pet—”

“I love her! I protect her—” he interrupted, but there was a slight catch to his voice, like he was doubting himself.

“Where’s that protection now? She’s unleashed, and she’s all the better for it. You kept her in a cage, even before the world ended. You two barely left the tower unless the city was in peril.”

“No! You’re lying. We stayed in our quarters because,” He gulped before continuing on, “we were constantly handling her heat, I would never forbid her from going outside.”

“Forbid her. Do you hear yourself? You’re not her father! You’re her husband, but that might as well mean jailer to her.” Valeria forced Wyatt to move forward, pressing his back until his nose hit the wall.

Another roar, this one right outside the building. Wyatt's eyes widened as he used the commotion to his advantage. He dropped just enough to grab the gun out of Valeria’s hands and sweep her legs out from under her, dropping her on her ass.

“New body, same problems.” He clicked his tongue, aiming it at her head. “Now tell me while you still can.”

The roof started peeling back, taken completely off within seconds. The blood-orange night’s sky was blocked out by Sapphyra’s massive pink form; it darkened the room.

“Barbie…what did you do with our son?!” he growled, pressing the barrel into her temples.

She smirked, looking towards Sapphyra. “He’s closer than you think.”

I gasped as pink scales began raining all around us. The scale storm clouded my vision; I had to cover my eyes. When I opened them again after things had finally calmed down, I noticed two things.

One: the room was full of people I didn’t recognize, including three more males behind Sapphyra and one behind Valeria. 

And two? Sapphyra was choking the life out of Valeria, but I was feeling it too.

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