Chapter 2-Nyx

Nyx’s powers, as she told Pam the next week, were not limited to stealing memories, though she would not discover this until nearly a year after joining the team. At it’s conception, the group consisted of six metahumans of varying powers. There was Matthew with his telepathy, of course, and Steven, self-appointed team leader. Another man, who answered to the name Slayer alone, carried a pair of vicious knives and had self-healing powers so potent it seemed he could not die. There was a girl who ran too fast and punched too hard. A purply creature of a woman who could disappear with a puff of smoke and reappear behind you. Then you had June. Nineteen, beautiful, with telepathy to match Matthew’s own and a pair of psionic hands that were strong enough to lift a truck yet precise enough to carry out delicate experiments while her material body was safe behind a shield of lead. 

It was easy to be resentful, seeing these six young people with their incredible powers when Nyx’s own were merely a dangerous inconvenience. It came easier still when she was denied full membership, and made a junior member instead. They insisted it was because of her age, but she knew they wouldn’t have much use for her anyway. 

The best memory she had of that first year was the choosing of the names. They were going to be superheroes, after all, and a superhero needed a superhero name. Something flashy for the media. Slayer had his already, of course--God how the man had scared her back then!--but the others had to come up with something. So Matthew became Psychic, Steven selected Lazerman, and June, with a wink at “Lazerman”, chose Telegirl. Nyx had taken note of the way the two of them would blush at the slightest eye contact. Their attraction had been immediate and powerful, and within three years, the team would be celebrating the marriage of a certain Lazerman and Telegirl.

Ecstasy became the fast girl’s name, and Shadow was the purple one’s. Nyx would never know them by anything else. Then, the team selected their own name, settling on “The Guardians” after much debate.

Her own decision had been easy. Sixteen years old, and she gave up her surname forever. Her name, Nyx, had been given for the Greek goddess of night. Now, she took it as her superhero name. Nyx, a mutant of darkness and mystery. It matched her black hair, at least.

For awhile, she worked with Matthew to try to control her powers. They practiced with animals, trying to see if she could learn to touch them without absorbing their memories. Nothing they did ever seemed to work, and in the end, she just decided to wear gloves. 

~

They discovered what Nyx was truly capable of in a practice sparring match with Ecstasy.   The goal of the exercise, at least on Nyx’s end, was to learn to fight someone much, much stronger than herself. The both knew the risks of fighting, with Nyx’s powers activating at any skin to skin contact, but they were being cautious: wearing gloves and avoiding any exposed areas. But when Ecstasy’s gloves split, neither one of them noticed. 

At least, not until she struck Nyx across the face. 

Nyx was knocked to ground. She should have laid there, dazed.

Instead, she felt stronger. Reinvigorated.

Nyx had not stolen Ecstasy’s memories with her touch. She had stolen her powers, and this time, nothing Matthew did could give them back.

~

The month that followed was unbearable. Anger, accusations, and arguments that came from all sides fell upon her. They debated what to do, with Ecstasy powerless and Nyx, well, Nyx was benching cars and running two minute miles. Everyone seemed to know it was an accident, but they feared she may become a liability to the team.

In the end, Ecstasy retired to a normal life, and Nyx, now eighteen, took her place. For two years, Nyx had her chance at being a true super heroine. For two years, Nyx was as close to happy as she had ever been. For two years, she fought alongside the Guardians, defending humans and metahumans alike.

She stayed with the team as they took on supervillains of strange and frightening power. She stayed with them through all of their battles with the Society of Darkness, a group fighting for metahuman supremacy. She stayed with them as they began to expand, taking in young metahumans and training them to control their powers. Teenagers who could walk through walls or turn the air to ice or unfurl wings and fly became the new junior members. There was even a girl who, at a mere twelve years, could manipulate electricity with frightening ferocity.

It didn’t last. There was a singular battle, one with an eccentric, power-hungry inventor who managed to steal the Guardians’ powers. He stored the powers in a sort of synthetic gemstone, glowing and green. But when Slayer smashed it, his lack of regeneration in no way encumbering his natural ability with his knives, all of the powers went back to their original owners. 

Their original owners.

At the very moment the crystal shattered, a woman on the other side of the country felt a power grow within her. Ecstasy (although no one called her that anymore) was a meta once again. However, just because she was superhuman did not mean she was a superhero, as she told Lazerman when he came to offer her a place on the team again. She’d had her fun, but she was settled now. Retired.

Ecstasy did not need to return, however, to tell Nyx she had no place in the Guardians, not anymore. The mutant powerhouse’s gain had been her loss. What good did Nyx’s own powers do in a fight? She was the liability again, the one they had no need of and really didn't want around either. No one said it to her face, but she knew she had just expended her usefulness. 

She couldn't bring herself to retire, though. Not completely. In the end, these were then only friends she had in the world.

So Nyx became a teacher. She trained the junior members to control their powers as she never could.

Though that wouldn't even last as long as her superhero stint. 

"That's all the time we have for today, Natalie." 

Nyx looked at Pam as if she had forgotten she was there, which she had. Then she smiled.

"I'm probably boring you with all these details. I'll speed it up for next time."

"No," Pam said, shaking her head. Her face seemed almost awestruck. "It's the details that make it a good story."

~   

“Psychic, I have something.”

There was a time when Matthew would jump out his seat when Shadow teleported to him out of nowhere, but by now he didn’t even flinch. 

“Shadow, you know I hate it when you teleport to me like that. Couldn’t you just appear outside the door? And knock?”

He said it with a grin, but the girl’s expression remained serious. “This is important Psychic, I didn’t want to waste time.”

“Alright, take me,” he said, extending his arm. Her purple fingers wrapped around his sleeve, and they disappeared into nothing.

Shadow’s office was small. Housing her supercomputer was really the sole purpose of the room, and though the massive machine barely seemed to fit, it was enough for Shadow’s needs. Though when she and Matthew teleported in, she was reminded of the drawbacks.

“Jesus, Shadow. We need to get you a bigger room,” Matthew said after nearly tripping over her chair. 

She smirked at him. “I prefer it this way.”

“You would. Now what did you find?”

“Her,”  Shadow said, pausing to see Matthew’s reaction.

He narrowed his eyes with suspicion. “Are you being serious?”

Shadow gestured at her computer. “I’ve been trying to track any payments that come out of that account we found, but she keeps sending them through a bunch of banks and such so they’re almost impossible to trace in any reasonable amount of time. But I noticed this substantial withdrawal from three years ago and I figured, maybe she bought a house or something? So I’ve been working on tracing that payment for the last three months, whenever I had the time, and--”

“And you tracked it?”

“The money was used to buy a bookshop in Virginia. The name on the deed belongs to a Miss Natalie Jones.”

Matthew leaned towards the computer screen, which displayed a digital copy of said deed, and couldn’t help but twist his lips into a grin.

“Found you.”