Villain at Night *Third Book To Hero by Day

Chapter 25 - White House Down

"You can't define someone by their name or how they look. You can't think that you know who a person is until you've seen what they can do. Maybe that's why the first supers wore masks. They knew that anything they did in their past lives would affect the public's view on them, so they made themselves a new identity."

~ Arabella Jones (Sonic)

:Oliver:

It was actually a lot easier than it sounded to break in to the White House.

The main entrance was not lined with Merlonium, as most of the public was made to believe. I found this out the year Captain Impossible and I got medals from the president after we saved him from an assassination attempt. We were told to not stand too closely to the secret service agents because they had Merlonium lined bullets. The real threat to super villains was the agents, not the building itself.

And, since we were heroes trying to stop a threat, the secret service was hopefully not going to use those bullets on us.

We thought the worst part would be trying to find the secret room where the cabinet and the machine were, but that was also very easy. It seemed The Obstructer and Mary got here a little bit before us. All we had to do was follow the trail of agents on the floor, unconscious with terrifying expressions.

It seemed Mary was having fun slowly turning people crazy.

If The Obstructer succeeded, then Mary would also be out of the business with no powers along with the rest of us. Why she would be on The Obstructer's side should be preposterous, but it did make sense once you considered some things. Mary's only purpose in her new life was to kill me, according to Nicole. Maybe she thought it was worth it to lose her powers if I eventually lost mine as well. She could guess as well as anyone what my powers meant to me. Without them, I was just a scholarship kid from the wrong side of town.

When Elise, Aden, and I reached the heavy duty door where the body trail ended, we opened it. I was prepared for maybe the room littered with the dead bodies of our country's most influential leaders, but we were met with quite a different sight.

My mom, still in The Obstructer getup, was arguing with the president of the United States.

Now, that was surprising enough, but the weirder sight was Heather standing up to Mary in her Midnight costume. She didn't know that Mary was Midnight, and even so she was standing up to her. It was such an unlikely thing for Heather to do that I was a bit in shock at first. Maybe she was finally learning how to find her voice, and in a hostage situation with super villains with the White House cabinet in the room no less.

"Who the hell do you think you are?" Heather exclaimed. "You can't barge in here and say that you're taking control so easily. How do you expect out get out of here without being hunted?"

Mary chuckled. "Oh, poor Heather. You have no idea what's been happening to your dear superhero friends while you've been locked up in this room, do you?"

"I think she does now." Elise announced, walking straight up to Mary.

Mary sneered. "Oh, you guys did make it out. I was hoping that Olly would be a bit more broken by that machine. He deserves it after all he's done."

I clenched my fists. The only thing I did was try and get rid of a villain who was trying to kill me. Mary jumped in the way, which was it. It wasn't my fault that she was brought back like this. What else could I have done to her to make her hate me so much? We used to be friends, didn't we? Did that mean nothing to her now that she had the power to take me down?