Careless Words by GeekSeven Chapter One: Morning News "Good Morning to the City! I'm Janette Van Dorick..." "...And I'm Peter O'Hannigan." "You're watching the morning news on Channel 6. It's 8:02 and normally we would be going to Gavin at the traffic desk for an update on the roads, but instead we have a very special guest in the studio today: Selene! Selene, welcome to the show!" "Thank you Janette, it's an honor for you to have me here." "Of course it is. You're looking fabulous as always! That's a new look for you; is that latex?" "In part. It's a new material that I've had some people working on. It's a latex base, with a mesh of Kevlar and bonded polycarbide. It looks and feels like latex, but it's extremely durable and more than bulletproof. I did some field tests with it a couple of weeks ago and it stood up to field artillery with no tearing." "That's great! I love the boots." "Thank you. One of the advantages of being able to fly is that I can walk in any kind of heel without losing my balance. These heels taper to diamond-tipped points that can punch through armor plating." "That's amazing!" "I know. Here, let me demonstrate with Peter. I can push the heel right through his foot with hardly any force. If I just push it in an inch or so, the wound is very small; you can see that there's very little blood. As I push down, the wider part of the heel enters and the wound gets bigger. Peter, can you stop screaming? That would be great. If I twist my foot, then you can hear the bones in Peter's foot snapping. I'm putting tremendous shear force on the heel, but it doesn't bend or break." "Well, I just think the whole look is adorable. It's tough, yet feminine." "Thank you. I have a number of different outfits made out of this stuff, I just love it so much. The Lycra costumes that I wore when I was first starting out looked great when they were new, but they would just get torn to pieces during a fight. A bullet in the wrong place and I was looking at a public indecency charge!" "Back then, you were a superhero: Amazing Girl." "That was such a dorky name. Yeah, back then I was all about protecting the weak, fighting the good fight and all that jazz. It's embarrassing, really." "So what happened?" "To be honest, Janette, you did." "Excuse me?" "Well, people like you: the media. It was infuriating. Nobody was interested in the criminals I caught, or the lives I saved. All they cared about was: Who is she seeing? Does that outfit make her look fat? Is she a lesbian? Is she a slut? Is this the kind of role model we want for our children? Is she pregnant? Are those things real? "The paparazzi were merciless. If there was a photograph of me in a magazine, nine times out of ten it was an up-skirt shot. And god forbid if my costume got torn and I showed a little more flesh than usual. That was the final straw. I stopped a runaway train from killing hundreds of people, and all they could talk about was my right tit popping out because my top got shredded in the process. Some blowhard senator actually stood up and said that I should be fined!" "He was the first person you killed, isn't that right?" "Yes, that's right. I snapped his brittle old neck like a twig. It was very cathartic. What I realized is that these people only had power over me if I let them. As long as I cared what people thought and as long as people weren't afraid of me, they would have a measure of control over me. So I made them afraid and I stopped caring what they thought." "Some people have said that the pressure of celebrity caused you to undergo a psychotic break." "People have said that in the past, but I killed them and now they don't say that so much." "So you're no longer a superhero and I know you don't like the word 'supervillain'." "That's right. I don't think it really does me justice." "What term do you prefer?" "I've thought about this a lot and I really think that 'Goddess' is the only word that really captures the full extent of my power. We're in a position now where the world, and all of the people in it are nothing more than my playthings. Wielding that kind of power really goes beyond the merely mortal." "But you're not interested in ruling the world?" "Of course not. Who needs that kind of hassle? As long as you people continue to be interesting to me, I'll let you live and have my fun." "Ahem, right. So what brings you to the city today? I know you're a big fan of our clubs and restaurants. I saw you the other week at the opening of Club Noir." "Oh yes, that was a good night. I went home with a couple of very sweet guys and raped the crap out of them. No, I'm afraid that this is a more serious visit. It's more of a vengeance thing." "Vengeance? How so." "Well, I'm afraid it's the Mayor. As you know, he's running for President and yesterday he made a speech in Iowa and said some quite hurtful things about me." "I think we have a clip of that speech." ***** "How long are we going to let our country, the greatest country in the world, be pushed around by a bimbo terrorist who dresses like a porn star? As President, I would confront this so-called 'Selene' and teach her a lesson!" ***** "You were upset by what he said?" "Very much. I think it also shows that he has a poor grasp of the realities of the situation. Even as President, what could he hope to do about me? While I was killing every superhero and supervillain on the planet and destroying the army, navy and air force, nothing they tried could hurt me even a little bit." "I remember seeing the footage from Detroit." "Exactly. They dropped five nukes on me and it just made me stronger. I remember walking out of the blast zone, completely naked, feeling fabulous. I just felt so alive with power. I went on a rampage and didn't stop for weeks. Ten million people were killed. Does the mayor want that kind of thing to happen again?" "So, you think that it was wrong of him to say that he would confront you?" "Wrong and stupid. I don't think it's right of him to give people false hope that they could somehow stop me from doing whatever the hell I want. I want him to apologize to me. In person." "In person?" "That's right. At 9am, I'm going to be outside City Hall and I want the Major to come out and meet me and apologize to my face." "Are you going to kill him?" "Oh yes." "What if he refuses to meet you?" "I will wait one minute for him to appear, and then I will spend fifty- nine minutes killing people. I'm going to take it out on the city that elected this gasbag in the first place. Then I'll go back to City Hall and see if he's ready to apologize. Every hour that he avoids meeting me, more people will die." "Do you think that's fair?" "Of course not! In fact, it's downright cruel and pointless. You see, fairness doesn't really enter into it. It's what I want to do, it's what I'm going to do and it doesn't matter if it's fair or not. That's what being a goddess is all about." "I mean, look at Peter there. He's writhing around in pain just because I wanted to show off my new boots. Taken from a human perspective, that's incredibly petty and unfair, but I'm not human. I'm a goddess and you can't judge me on the basis of human morality. I make my own morality through my actions." "I can see that. How many people do you think you'll kill?" "It's hard to say. I can kill an awful lot of people in an hour if I want to. When I'm moving at full speed, anyone I hit will explode into a fine mist of flesh and bone, and I can cover a lot of ground. I don't know if you saw any pictures, but I wiped out the whole of Moscow in forty minutes. I won't be doing any of that 'Human Blender' stuff today, though. I'm going to take it slow at the start. Get up close and personal with my kills. That should cause a lot more fear and panic than just shredding people before they even know I'm there." "I see. You think that the personal touch is important." "Exactly. OK, I have to fly over to City Hall now. If the Mayor isn't there, then you might want to get some cameras over to Liberty Square. That's where I'm going to start the slaughter." "Thank you for taking the time to talk to us, Goddess Selene. Next we go to Gavin who is going to let us know how the panic now gripping the city is affecting traffic. But first, these messages."