[b][u][center]The Lightning Rod of Fuckery
Part 1
For Dreixes
By Draconicon[/center][/u][/b]








Rachel sat in the lobby of the power plant people called ‘Old Steamer.’ The floor reflected its recent renovations and repairs to retain its viability for the people of San Francisco and the rest of the Bay Area, and the smell of a janitor’s recent scrubbing with aggressive cleaners made the cheetah’s nose itch. She resisted the urge to rub her face, tapping her shoes as she looked down at her phone again. 

4:45. It was getting late for the working day and she still hadn’t heard a fucking thing from the management. She was supposed to get an interview today and she’d been here since 3. 

[i]If this is some sort of power-play, I swear –[/i]

Rachel rubbed her forehead, shaking her head. No, no, she had to keep that pissy feeling down for now. She could indulge that when she got home, later, out of sight of the general public. The last thing she needed right now was for some asshole to start sending more reports to the government about a stray – 

Well, better not to even think about it. Fucking telepaths. 

She put her phone back in her pocket, rubbing her hands until the static-y feelings in her palms faded away. Not quite time for the rubber gloves in her pockets, but getting there. Probably in the next ten minutes if she didn’t see someone soon. 

Her phone buzzed. She pulled it out, half-hoping that it was someone calling to explain the delay – 

Nope. It was just another push-alert about another super-event in San Francisco. She rolled her eyes, putting it away before seeing more than the vaguest burst of black and gold. Probably the Eye of Ra pulling some sort of ultra rescue again near the Golden Gate Bridge. Fucking lion was pulling all kinds of publicity stunts to keep all eyes on him these days. Then again, so were all the other heroes that weren’t wearing the government’s collar or getting tugged by a corporation’s leash. 

[i]If I can get this job, I won’t have to worry about that. No waiting for some ass to tell me to put on a spandex outfit and show off for their public image…[/i]

She rolled her eyes, crossing and uncrossing her legs in impatience. She’d busted her limited funds to find a half-decent outfit for the interview. No skirt or soft blouse for her; she’d picked proper pants, the useful shit, the kind that held up to harder wear and tear, and a shirt that pulled tight and a belt that actually had space for shit. She wasn’t here to look pretty. She was here to show that she had a grasp on the fucking subject. 

Now she just had to hope that the manager would show up and give her the interview that she’d been pushing for over the last six months. First one had been denied due to the lack of accreditation as an engineer. The second had been shot down because they had ‘no openings,’ despite just firing twenty people. The third through sixth time had been canceled because of various raids on the power plant, either from the government on some secret mission bullshit or from some of the Arching assholes that kept trying to stir up trouble. 

This was the seventh try. She had been promised a meeting. Fingers crossed management actually kept to that. 

She was just about ready to get up and start pacing to bleed off the nervous energy when the door into the rest of the building finally opened. Rachel sat up a little straighter, looking at the badger that stepped out and the lemur that followed him. 

“I’m telling you, just shut it down,” the badger said, shaking his head. “Better that we get a brown-out than something explodes and shuts down the whole thing. We can take the hit if we really – Oh.”

He stopped dead in his tracks as he finally turned and saw her. Rachel thought that he looked rather out of place in a suit; on a badger, that black and white look felt particularly strange, almost like fur and clothing were blending into each other. He even wore fancy white gloves. 

As he stood up a little straighter, clearing his throat, the lemur behind him leaned over his shoulder. She had secretary glasses, wide and innocent-looking, but unlike most of her species, she looked so drawn and severe that it added two decades to her face. She wore a tight white blouse and a long black skirt, one that reached all the way down to her ankles. Rachel looked at her nametag, read ‘Braun,’ and nodded to herself. German; that made a certain sort of sense, she guessed. 

“Ahem. And you are?” the badger said. 

“The three o’clock candidate that’s been waiting for her interview,” Rachel said. 

“Three? It’s nearly five.”

“I [i]know.[/i]”

“You are quite late, then.”

“Oh, no you fucking don’t,” Rachel muttered, getting to her feet and taking a step toward the badger. “If you fucking think I’m gonna let you –”

In the space of half a second, the lemur went from behind the badger to in front of him. A faint squeak accompanied the movement, just loud enough to leave the cheetah’s ears folding down from the sound. The lemur held out one hand, shaking her head. 

“Do not threaten Mr. Steiner.”

“…Steiner…” Rachel groaned, thumping her palm against her forehead. “Fuck…you’re the owner.”

“Indeed. And you would be…Ms. Hood, if I recall the schedule correctly?” the badger asked. 

She nodded. 

“I see. And you have not been seen?”

Rachel shook her head. 

“Hmm. Unfortunate.”

“Sir, we have had a meltdown in the plant,” the lemur said, looking over her shoulder. “I doubt that you need to be apologizing for –”

“A meltdown that did not damage anything, Danica. And one that did not need all hands on deck to such a degree that we missed something like this. An apology for not notifying her, at the very least, is due.”

Rachel blinked. She hadn’t quite recovered from shoving her foot in her mouth for treating the owner as an asshole manager before the badger stepped around his secretary and offered her his hand. 

“I am Everard Steiner, the owner and director of this power plant. And on behalf of the management staff, I apologize that you were left alone for nearly two hours. It is not acceptable.”

“…I accept the apology, yeah. Thanks. Uh…” Rachel shook his hand and her head. “So, if there’s a meltdown, should I –”

“No,” the badger said, releasing her hand. “The meltdown is contained. And mostly metaphorical; it was a series of machines giving up rather than anything having that level of catastrophic failure.”

“…Which is why you’re worried about brownouts; you’re not producing as much power, so you can’t be sure that you can meet needs, which…with all the lights coming on and nightlife hours kicking in –”

“An issue for after your interview.”

“I – what?” Rachel blinked. “Interview? That’s – wait, you’re –”

“Come. We will be quick, but efficient.”

#

Rachel was still a little off-balance as they reached the office. It was a perfectly normal trip there, up an elevator and across a catwalk, but it still felt strange to be whisked away from the front waiting room and into the boss’s office. The sight of several turbines in the distance did not make it any easier to deal with, either. She kept staring out the window, trying to gather herself as the badger sat down behind the big wooden desk in front of it. 

“Ms. Hood. Are you with us?” he asked. 

“Fuck. Yes. Yes, I am,” she said, shaking her head. “Sorry. Just…bad luck over the last few months.”

“You should be attending to him right now; Mr. Steiner is giving you a chance that few others would.”

“Danica. Please.”

The lemur took a step back, shaking her head. Despite her rudeness, though, Rachel was almost thankful for the way that the lemur treated her. That sort of condescension hit just the right button to piss her off and focus her through everything else. She sat up a little straighter and pulled her resume out of her pocket. As she unfolded it, Danica sniffed. 

“That is hardly the proper way to go about things.”

“Hey, you carry it where you can,” Rachel said, shaking her head. “I’m not here to wear skirts and file paperwork. I’m here to work on the turbines and the machinery. I’m an engineer, not an office worker.”

“You –”

“Danica. If you will not be polite, I will ask you to wait outside,” Everard said. 

“…Yes, Mr. Steiner.”

Rachel shook her head as she passed the badger the resume. It wasn’t much – she hadn’t had much experience since graduating high school three years ago, and she’d put most of that into her accreditation – but it was something. And something had to be better than nothing. 

“I’m new, but I got some experience. Enough to make sure that I’m not dead weight with anyone out there on the floor. Being blunt about it, I’m hoping to start as soon as fucking possible, because right now, I have people breathing down my neck to get paid.”

The badger didn’t respond. Instead, he ran her resume up and down the side of his desk, smoothing out the lines before resting it in front of him. The way that he stayed completely silent as he read her rough-written sales pitch for herself left her on-edge. It took everything she had to keep quiet, and she gripped the arms of the chair tighter to keep from throwing herself to her feet and saying something stupid. 

“You are young for an engineer,” he said after ten minutes. 

“Doesn’t mean much,” she said. “Just means I’m good.”

“Good forger, perhaps,” Danica muttered.

“Danica. Out.”

[i]…Holy shit, he’s actually following through…[/i]

The lemur opened her mouth, then closed it again. With a narrow-eyed glare, she stalked out of the room and shut the door behind her. Rachel watched her go with a disbelieving stare, shaking her head as she turned back around. 

“And here I thought that people like you would be bastards. Turns out its only the assistant.”

“I will not ask you to forgive Danica, but she is under a great deal of tension. And we have had a number of issues with the plant of late. Various Arching villains, supers that believe that we support them, etc. They have been…problematic, of late, and she is quite protective of me as a result.”

“Yeah, I can see that.” She shook her head. “Anyway. You saw my paperwork. I got the certificates. Got trained in vocational school. Ain’t a master or anything, but I know what I’m doing around the shop.”

She wanted him to be impressed. Instead, he gave the papers the same quiet stare that he’d given everything since he first walked into the waiting room. There were no signs of what he was feeling on his face. If anything, he looked completely uninterested in…well, everything. And Rachel knew what that felt like. It was how she felt every time she wasn’t pushing herself into a job like this. 

The cheetah rested her hands on her lap, fighting the urge to ball them into fists. There were other things she could do, one more thing she could tell him that would all but guarantee that she got the job, but she didn’t want to do that. She wanted a [i]normal[/i] life, not the kind that supers had. If she got it from that – 

“Ms. Hood. I can see you have quite a bit of experience, but no practical work. Is that correct?” Everard asked, setting her papers to the side. 

“…Yeah. It is.”

“Why is that?”

“I spent the last three years studying anything I could get my hands on.”

“Most people would have learned on the job. Or taken an apprenticeship. You have nothing like that on your resume.”

“Why’s it matter?”

“Because it is an unexplained gap. And I am not keen on things that are unexplained.”

“…”

“I am inclined to hire you, Ms. Hood. I would like to have some new blood in the plant, and I believe that you do have the skills you claim. However. I do not believe that you learned it purely in vocational school or in theoretical training.” 

As the badger folded his hands and leaned over the desk, Rachel fought the snarl pulling at the corner of her mouth. Not here, not yet, not now. Be smart, be cool, like her friends had been back on high school. Don’t mouth off. Don’t say something stupid. Don’t – 

“I believe that you are hiding something. So, I will ask directly. Are you a super?”

Rachel gritted her teeth, her hands clenching tighter. A stray spark shot from one of her fingers, dancing off the metal at the edge of the desk. It was impossible to hide, and Everard nodded as he saw it arc away again. 

“Your body answers for itself, it seems.”

“Fucking – yeah, I got powers. Okay? I got powers.”

“Electro-kinesis?” he asked. 

“And generation.”

“But not transformation?” 

“Never learned how if I fucking do.”

“I see.” 

Rachel could feel the lightning surging up and down her arms, barely contained within her fur. Already, her coat was prickling, each strand starting to stand on end and point outward. Here and there along her shoulders the lightning arced from one strand to another. If it had been anyone else, fires would have started already. She was immune to it, immune to any sort of electrical discharge, or she would have died before hitting her teenage years. 

She had to stand up. Shoving herself up from her seat, she briefly lost control. Lightning shot from her heels, blowing out the backs of her shoes and hitting the metal struts on the chair. It leaped across the room, thumping into the floor. 

Danica came back. Course she did. The lemur opened her mouth – 

“Out, Danica,” Everard said. 

“Sir –”

“I said. Out.”

He never raised his voice. Rachel didn’t know how he managed that. Better than any of her supporters or friends had ever been. Danica stared at her for a moment, then slowly shut the door again. 

“It seems that you have a minor control issue, but that is hardly uncommon,” Everard said, folding his hands on his desk. “The fact that you can emit electricity on this level, even by accident, would have been enough to secure you this job without this interview. I assume that you have reasons not to share such information?”

“I…do,” Rachel muttered, gritting her teeth.

“I believe I have the right to ask what those reasons are.”

“Heh…You think I don’t know what happens to people that flaunt their powers?” the cheetah muttered, shaking her head as she paced back and forth, back and forth. “You get strong enough, either the government sends a happy little black-ops squad to your door with an ‘invitation,’ or one of the corporations sends you a check for a few million dollars and a brand new address on the back. You say no to either of them and your life just goes straight to shit. You say yes, and you aren’t a person anymore. Not in their eyes. You’re just a fucking asset, and I’m not going to be one of those.”

She wanted him to say something like some of her former friends, or teachers, or anyone else. Something about how it would be better for society for her to use her powers for good, or some shit about there having to be some accountability. 

Fuck the fact that it meant saying goodbye to living her own life. 

Fuck the fact that she’d have to live where they said, as they said, instead of getting a fucking choice like anyone else. 

[i]Go on. Say something. Say something like all the rest. Say some stupid shit that I can –[/i]

Rachel stopped dead in her tracks. No. No. No. She had come here to [i]avoid[/i] doing something stupid. And…and the badger hadn’t done anything that deserved getting shocked out the window or any of the other dozen things that she had in mind. 

The lightning started to fade as she took greater control. Some few sparks still shimmered under her feet and the blown-out soles of her shoes, but most of it was back where it belonged, humming away inside of her. She took a few more deep breaths, walked over to the chair, and dragged it back to where it had been. 

“Sorry. I…I was trying not to lash out, but –”

“You were kept waiting for hours, then abused by my assistant. I understand that your patience was wearing thin. Just as I imagine you appreciate that I would be within my rights to deny your request to work here after that display.”

Rachel opened her mouth to protest…then slowly closed it again. She sighed, slapping her forehead with her palm a few times. 

“Fuck…fuck, you’re not wrong. I mean – fuck. That was – I don’t know what I was thinking. Thank you for your time.”

It was an automatic thing. She shouldn’t have tried. Hell, she shouldn’t even have hoped. The cheetah pushed the chair back – 

“I did not say that I was going to turn you down.”

She stopped. Everard reached into his desk drawer, pulling out a folder with stapled documents inside. 

“I believe that we have a position for a new engineer. The electro-generation will be of help, certainly, but by and large, I do not imagine that we will be using you for anything but a standard engineer’s duties.”

“…You’re serious?”

“I am. Yes. If you are serious about applying?”

“Fuck yes. God, I – you don’t know how bad I need this job.”

“Then you will be a hard worker.”

The paperwork came out. She could hardly believe what she was seeing, or what she was hearing. She’d been pushing for this ever since her powers had been put down on the public record when she was in her early teens, back when she couldn’t hide it anymore. The only reason that the government hadn’t come looking for her was she’d been able to hide the worst of it, keeping the extent of her powers – and how high they could go – from being logged on any official database. She was still a low-tier super in their eyes; so long as she didn’t let them find out that it went any higher, she could keep her freedom. 

And now…now she was going to be making a paycheck. She could have a normal life. She…

She was on track. 

“Just one thing,” Everard said.

“Does it keep me from getting hired if I say no?”

“No. But it will give you a substantial hiring bonus if you say yes.”

“…What is it?”

“Before you leave for the night, would you consent to giving the outgoing lines a blast of power?”

“…Heh. Sure. I need a discharge before I leave, anyway.”

“Splendid.”

#

Two hours later, Rachel was on a bus heading back to the Dry Lake apartments. The cheetah was floating on cloud nine, shaking her head with a grin on her face as she fought the little giggles that were bubbling up from inside her. 

[i]Signing bonus of a thousand bucks, then one and a half times that per week…god, that’s going to turn everything around for me.[/i]

No more looking at the government websites begging for qualified supers to sign on for ‘the common good’ and trading her freedom for a government leash. 

No more staring at the corporate supers that patrolled just on the other side of the dried-up lake outside her apartment, watching them flash cash and having to remind herself that they were mostly chipped and controlled by their controllers. 

Life…life was finally – 

THUNK!

The bus slammed into the car just in front of it. Everyone but Rachel got thrown out of their seats, and the cheetah only avoided that fate because she slammed her hip into the standing support pole. She winced, cupping her side as she stumbled toward the front of the bus. 

“What the fuck happened?” she muttered, past the driver. 

“Ugh…some sort of bank robbery or something,” the driver muttered, pulling himself back from the wheel. “I’ll check with dispatch and see if it’s anything serious.”

“Well, judging by the fact that we got mega-wasps coming down, I’d say it’s serious enough,” Rachel said, nodding toward the sky. 

“What – ah, fuck, not this asshole again…”

The cheetah stepped back from the front window as the mutated giant wasps descended from the sky. She’d seen enough of the Arching-style supervillains to know when it was one of them. The dangerous supervillains ignored the whole cape and costume style of villainy; they’d sooner throw themselves in a lake as stand surrounded by minions in the town square monologuing about what they were going to do to their nemesis. 

Jury was still out whether they were clinically insane or just theater kids that had [i]completely[/i] lost their minds, but as far as she was concerned, as long as it was an Arch-style super instead of a genuine villain, the only one in any real danger was the super the villain saw as their nemesis. Everyone else was more or less safe so long as they stayed out of the danger zone. 

She went back to her pole, letting people know that it was just an Arch-style villain. They calmed down, going back to their books, phones, and other forms of entertainment. 

#

Another hour later, she reached the apartment. The villain – The Golden Wasp or something like that – had been taken down by a group of corporate supers that had been dispatched from their security company. It wasn’t flashy, but it also wasn’t destructive: exactly what the corporate overlords preferred. 

Of course, they had to wait fifty minutes for them to arrive, but once they did, it was over in two, and the bus was on its way again three minutes later. Five minutes after that, she had been dropped off just outside her apartment, and…

[i]…I keep forgetting how much of a dump this place is…[/i]

Not that she’d had much choice when it came to places to live. On the other side of Dry Lake were the rich people that’d paid into government works to terraform the land and get some springs pulled to the surface, and on the rounded bit near the north side, middle-class people settled into cheaper housing further away from the Bay Area and the more beautiful parts of the region. 

On the south side, however…

Rachel stared up at the three-story apartment building, the main chunk of it splitting off into two wings that pointed toward Dry Lake as if there was anything to see that was more than a dustbowl. The building itself was ragged, the old paint worn down and blasted away by windstorms and sandstorms, leaving parts of the building looking like craggy brown stone and the rest like speckled mold-green and sun-pink. It was a mess no matter how you looked at it, and there was a reason that the rent was through the floor. 

Despite that, she still had barely been able to keep up with the cheapest rate by getting a deal from the landlords, and even then she’d been scraping along the bottom, barely able to keep a roof over her head. 

[i]That changes today,[/i] she thought, thinking of the cash in her pocket. [i]No more. This is my place now. Fuck ‘em.[/i]

The cheetah walked up the stairs to the third floor, following the central stairway and then the outer corridor. The parking lot and the freeway were her only view, since she had to settle for the side that faced away from the lake. 

As she walked, she heard the usual noises from her neighbors. Donkey jackass that was growing his own weed and puffing it out the window, so much of it that she had to duck to avoid walking through the rank cloud. Senior vixen that had gotten a boobjob last year and had been making porn on OnlyFans for the last three months, and [i]loudly,[/i] too, trying to make ends meet. A runaway raccoon – probably only sixteen – that was hiding out in one of the rooms, probably as a squatter. 

Not any of her business, but she picked up theirs by osmosis just by living near them. Couldn’t help it. 

She reached her door at the far end of the floor, room 334. She reached for the doorknob – 

“Think she’ll be getting home soon?”

She froze at the familiar voice. 

“Yeah, probably. You really need to stop hounding her, darling. Just because she’s willing to bend over for a break on the rent doesn’t mean that she can’t get you for stalking.”

And the other. Fuck. The Bennetts had come calling. 

Rachel hissed, biting off a ‘fuck’ before it could come loose. She had hoped that she would be able to at least settle in before they started coming round for rent, but looked like that opportunity had already run away from her. She’d just have to get this out of the way now. 

Not that they were going to be happy. Gaz was going to be pissed off that his convenient holes were gonna be off-limits, but she was more worried about what his wife would be like. 

[i]Well, might as well rip this bandaid off…[/i]

She turned the doorknob and stepped inside. The landlords, both of them sitting on her couch, turned her way. 

“Well, well, well, look what the cat dragged in,” Lila said, the cougar standing up and walking around the far side of the couch. “And here I thought you might have finally skipped town on us or something; you were getting quite the steep tab there, you know. I might have had to come out of retirement to chase you down.”

“Heh, you don’t want her flexing those claws at you, girl,” Gaz said, the rat of the pair leaning back with his bare feet on her coffee table. “Didn’t used to call her Clawroline for nothing, you know.”

She’d heard that story a hundred times before. Lila used to be a hero, but a very low-level one, one of the minor-leaguers that had been on the payroll of some convenience store for both the press and the fact that it was cheaper and more effective to hire one person to do the job of three. ‘Clawroline’ was little more than a speedy, hard-hitting pretty-girl in her time, from what she had been able to dig up. 

That said, Lila had aged well. The cougar – literally, in her late forties – had the looks of someone that should be pulling pool boys into her bedroom while her husband was off at a conference a few states over. Rachel didn’t mind when the cougar flirted with her (nothing special there, the married woman flirted with nearly anything with a pulse), but she never let it go further than that…well, when she had a choice. 

Gaz, on the other hand, was always pissing her off. The rat, barely five feet tall, had that grimy look that the worst of the species often did. His fur was slicked back, looking like some slimeball from a used car lot or from a different era. He was always in her business, trying to figure her out, being pushy about rent some days and pushing her to get a job in one of the strip clubs that he knew on others. 

If it wasn’t for the fact that the deal she had with them that cut rent in half meant that he got her holes twice a month, no questions asked, she would have thought that he just wanted to see her naked. Unfortunately, he had seen her that way too many times for that to be a real reason to push her there. 

“So, where have you been?” Lila asked, leaning over the back of the couch. “Trying to get another job?”

“Tell me you went down to Peach’s Shack,” Gaz said, chuckling. “You’d make her a shit-ton of money. And make plenty for you, too.”

“Fuck off.”

They blinked. She reached into her pockets and pulled out half the bonus, shoving it into Lila’s hand. 

“Here. Five hundred now, and you’ll get twice that in two weeks when the first paycheck comes in.”

“…Girl, you didn’t tell us that you were getting a job for real,” Lila said, shaking her head. “I thought that you were just going to –”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t fail this one. Now get the hell out of my apartment.”

“Hey, we still –”

“Shush, Gaz,” Lila said, shaking her head. “Just relax, girl, okay? I know that you think you’re all grown up now that you got a few dollars, but remember who buttered your bread til you got ‘em, okay? You might be on top of the world right now, but don’t think that it lasts, hon. Just look at me; I’m a poster child of what can happen if you think that what you got now is gonna be there forever.”

“Just…shut up and get out of my apartment.”

“Oh, we’re going, hon, we’re going,” Lila said, waving for Gaz to get up and follow her to the front door. “But just so we’re clear, dear. You’re still a good 5k in the hole here, and that’s gonna take some time to pay off. So, unless you can pay that all off this month, we’re still gonna get some favors, okay?”

“…”

“Heh, so glad we understand each other. Come on, Gaz; girl needs her space.”

“But you just said –”

“Honey, trust me. We women, we understand these things,” Lila said, dragging her husband along. “And if you tried to put that pretty little prick of yours in her right now, she’d just claw it off. See you in a few days, hon! Try and relax so you’re not making that sour face between my legs when I come back.”

Rachel held the door open until they were out, and even then, she almost slammed the door on Gaz’s tail. She flicked the lock closed and slumped against the door, growling deep in her throat. 

[i]Of course they don’t want to let it go. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck…[/i]

So much for everything being better. What else was going to complicate things?

Ring ring. 

Ring ring. 

“Why do you ask these things?” Rachel muttered, slowly pulling her phone out of her pocket. “Hello? Who the hell is this?”

“[i]This is The Ooze, calling on behalf of the federal government. I assume that this is Rachel Hood?[/i]”

“…Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.”











[b][u][center]The End[/center][/u][/b]

Summary: The beginning of a story that shows what the world is like in the League of Super Heroines, though set before the girls knew each other after school. In this case, we’re following Rachel Hood, a cheetah with power over lightning. Enjoy her reckoning with her poverty and other issues. 

Tags: Implied Sex, Electrokinesis, Electric Control, Electricity, Super Powers, Superheroes, Super Villains, Supervillains, Job Interview, Series, No Sex To Start, Worldbuilding, Character Introduction, Cheetah, Cougar, Rat, Badger, Lemur,