Daydreams and Disasters

Midnight Snacks

AN: This is actually a rewrite of a piece I wrote 10 years ago. I thought it would be perfect to kick off my drabble series! In this Nancy is new to town, fresh out of space, and still making rookie mistakes.

Karma and a Show

The store would have been eerie in the darkness if not for the rampaging villain, his flames casting vibrant flickering light over the aisles. Something about liminal spaces had always fascinated Nancy Solo, 16 year old heroine of Capital City, but there was nothing liminal about this. Pyro was furious, anger heightening the power that he wore like a mantle of emotional embers, and she couldn't really blame him.

She'd made him that way. Purposefully.

No, she did not have a death wish.

Nancy, or Ghost as she was known by friends and enemies alike, liked to believe that there were some universal principles at work in the chaos that we all call reality. She had them distilled to three major rules at this point, although she was willing to tack on minor amendments if necessary.

1. Karma is real, omnipresent, and just waiting for the right moment.

2. Listening to monologues was a waste of the brain space it took to process them.

3. Appearances are incredibly deceiving and only idiots get deceived.

So far her little list hadn't steered her too far astray.

Besides, she wasn't sure why she and Lord Karma should be on bad terms anyways. She was doing her best to support the city, stopping the daring heists of the villains who kept popping up like she was playing a city-wide game of whack-a-mole. Okay, so maybe she didn't need to insult Everett's mother. And maybe she didn't really need to insult his new haircut.

But the insult to his intelligence was warranted. He'd broken into this grocery store just to attempt to pop popcorn with his hot hands at 2 AM on a school night. She had rights too, like the right to not fight idiots when she could be getting valuable sleep! Nevermind she didn't attend school. Work still started at 8 AM!

Pyro ran past, screaming bloody murder about how he was going to roast her corpse and dance on the ashes, and she couldn't help the snicker that slipped out. She was invisible. Untouchable. And standing right in the middle of the aisle he'd just tramped through like an enraged bull on energy drinks.

"You really are dumb, Pyro." She gloated, feeling secure in her anonymity. "And you scorched that popcorn. How many brain cells does it take to tell that you don't make popcorn at 5000 degrees Fahrenheit!"

A garbled growl had her snorting into the darkness. Oh man was he stupid. She could feel her control slip momentarily in her glee. Some things were just too entertaining when you'd had as little sleep as she had in the last 48 hours. Oh well, it wasn't like he could track by sound, right?

Her laughter was cut off by the hand that snapped out and snatched her by the arm spinning her around and into a massive, flaming fist. She fell backwards into a shelf of sugary cereals, regretting all of her life choices as her eyebrows singed and her bangs charred an unattractive ash color.

Maybe Karma wasn't a lord like she'd thought. Maybe he was a witch.

(Still worth it. So worth it.)