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Wearing their red and black armor, Axyridis stood at the very top of the stadium grandstand, in the back row, looking out over the field and the mountains.
They were never going to mention this to anyone. As a villain, they shouldn't be expected to. But, more importantly, they figured people would probably expect some fancy description of how nice the mountains looked, or how historic or whatever the stadium was. To be honest, trying to make words about it just seemed to cheapen the whole thing, and besides, usually when other people talked about something, all it did was put yet another person in the way; another barrier between them and the things they cared about.
Besides, it wasn't hard to get a picture of what it looked like. Big gray oval, fifty thousand seats, and there's mountains and rocks that it's built into. And the sky is a nice normal sky color. There you go.
Axyridis jumped down from the stairs; the magic-tech of the armored suit lowered their effective mass, and the conserved momentum sent them at a high speed and an upwards angle. As Skylar started to approach the field, they turned the mass adjustment back up, slowing down their downward vertical velocity, and causing them to hit the ground gently (well, to their own body, at least; it made quite a dent in the turf).
They got to their feet and came face-to-face with a lanky brown-haired teenager holding a vaulting pole. They looked up at the kid, who must have been at least half a meter taller than them. "Track stadium's next door."
"Is this the future?" the kid asked. "Looks like Texas."
"It's not the future! It's not the past. It's, like, between the future and the past, but also not the present." The villain sighed. "Listen. This place is outside of time. For you, it's, like, 2006 - for me it's 2402. Also, why are you holding a vaulting pole?"
The teenager shrugged. "It's a strong component of my identity. You know that. It's your dream, after all."
Axyridis groaned. "It's not a dream. It's a world inside our collective minds generated from Khaji Da's memories."
"Sounds like a kind of dream."
"Point is, you're not a projection of my mind or anything. You got erased from my future, but you still exist in the past. That's why you're here."
"So I'm not a hologram? I was hoping I was a hologram. Obviously there's some sort of sci-fi superhero stuff going on."
"It is not superhero stuff."
"You're completely alone, wearing a heavily armored and very colorful suit that has its own antennae."
"I'm a villain." Axyridis crossed their arms. "And muted dark red and black is not colorful. How'd you know it was El Paso, anyway?"
"My dad likes sports."
"Your dad, from Paramaribo, watches American college football?"
"Yes. He likes sports, as in all of the different sports he can find. Do you know who played here in '04?"
"Of course not."
"Neither did he. But he watched it." The teenager stretched out and yawned. "You gonna tell me your name?"
"Wasn't planning on it. You?"
"Well, you obviously know who I am. Just call me whatever you already call me... I don't want to be coerced into presenting myself in a certain way."
"Fair enough," Skylar said. "But I can't make it look like you without blonde hair."
The teenager let out a small chuckle. "So I do eventually make it to the future. What do I call myself?"
"Ashley."
"Boy or girl?"
"Girl."
"I really went with that?" Ashley shrugged. "Figured I'd eventually think of something else - being Hindoestanen, it's pretty obvious that I made it up. Then again, if I'm going blonde... maybe older me is trying to distance herself from her past. How about you? You trying to cover something up?"
"You can literally see my whole face." Axyridis sighed. "My name's Skylar and you can use they and them but don't pat yourself on the back for it because I don't give a shit."
"You from around here?"
"No. Planet called Iroshar."
"I thought you were human."
"I am."
"Well, you got some sort of powers." Ashley looked up at the top row. "You know, I've always been interested in superheroes. The way they present themselves to the world, something about that spoke to me. So I'd go on these message boards and we'd speculate on who these people were, when they would show up next. There was one guy recently, wore black and blue, he only popped up once before disappearing - but his outfit was the most striking I'd ever seen. And he was standing" - Ashley gestured towards the stands that Skylar had jumped from - "right up there. My dad, when he looked at the photo, he recognized the place right away." She sighed. "He always did like a pretty backdrop."
"So you saw him? Jaime?"
"A blurry photo of him, sure." Ashley put her hands on her hips. "I see you've got the bug thing going on too with your own outfit. Were you one of his enemies? A metahuman who'd fight against him? A rogues gallery?"
"A rogues gallery is multiple people. I'm just one rogue. And that was almost 400 years ago for me! I wasn't alive then."
"And yet you're dreaming about El Paso."
"Khaji Da is dreaming about El Paso." Skylar looked at Ashley out of the corner of their eyes. "Jaime's symbiote. There's a reason the scarab is so attached to this goddamn planet. Dan showed him that you could be a hero. And Jaime showed him how."
"So let me get this straight," said Ashley. "You're a villain, and your symbiote is a hero?"
"Yep."
"Didn't know that was a thing that could happen, but okay. Why doesn't your suit look like his, though? I thought Blue Beetle was supposed to be, you know... blue."
"The Green Lantern Corps cracked down on the Reach pretty hard in the 2180s. They're not letting anyone use that shit. But the scanning, the universal translator..." Skylar shrugged. "I still got all that. Unless you thought I actually spoke Dutch. And these suits Jeremy makes for me, they only work if you've got a symbiote."
"He's bonded with you, then..." Ashley stepped a little closer. "I always wondered what that would be like. You know, two hearts beliving in just one mind."
Skylar groaned. "Let's just say... there's no easy way to understand it."
"So the symbiote is here with you?"
"Nope. 'Cause right know my symbiote is fucking gone." Skylar plopped themself down on the turf, crossed their legs, and pointedly turned their gaze away from Ashley and looked off into the empty stands.
"But you've still got your powers," Ashley said. "I mean, normal humans don't usually jump from the top row straight onto the field. How's that work if he's not here?"
"How the hell should I know? I can't talk to him - I can't feel his presence - but obviously he's still alive, if he can make the suit do its cool shit."
"So you're looking for him."
"Jeremy's been looking into time travel stuff. He thinks he knows where Khaji Da is. Where all my planet's heroes are. He thinks if you can erase someone from the timestream, you can put them back."
"Like the trash can on a computer desktop." Ashley looked down at them. "I figure if I'm in a sci-fi, I should make a really mundane analogy whenever you say something fancy sounding. So how are you gonna do it?"
"Doesn't matter how. Easiest way is to get whoever did this to just, like, undo it."
"So you're a bad guy, and your plan is to bring back all the superheroes?"
"I don't give a shit about them."
Ashley gave Skylar a skeptical look.
"Fine, maybe I give, like, a quarter-shit. But I just want Khaji back. He's the only goddamn person in the galaxy who's not a constant source of pain and agony."
"What about me?"
"You're neutral. You're like the xanthan gum of people." Skylar sat still for a moment. "Damn it. I have to emotionally connect with you."
"What? Why?" Ashley sat down next to them. "It doesn't seem like something you'd be good at."
"You're the one that binds us together. 'Cause you're the only person I know who's protected from Kriak's curse. The only way to go after Khaji without getting stuck myself is to keep a connection back to you."
"Like an anchor."
"Please stop with the analogies," Skylar said. "It's just a loophole. Kriak's from the 23rd century, and he's got dominion over every person who existed then or has been born since. You - you are neither. You just straight up skipped over all that. And so he might be able to erase future you from the timeline, but there's no way he can touch the person you are right now."
"Future me sounds neat, though," said Ashley. "Do I get to fly, or grow antennae or something like you did?"
"You know these aren't real, right?"
"Would've been cool if they were."
"You wanna save future you? Tell me shit about yourself. Make me feel like I know who you are. Because unlike Khaji Da, you are not fused to my spine, and so I'm gonna need that connection to be as strong as possible if I'm gonna pull all of Iroshar's superheroes back into reality."
"Okay. Weird personal stuff to a stranger. Which is actually way easier than telling it to anyone else... Oh. Here's one. I've kinda been lying to you this whole time."
"What? How?"
"I might be a teenager, with all the feelings I had in '07, but that doesn't mean I don't have the memories of my adult self."
"...You made me go through that whole damn exposition dump about myself?"
"Well, you never told me that when I was an adult."
"That's because it was never a necessary prerequisite for saving the world."
Ashley laughed to herself. "You know what? Maybe it shows how messed up my situation is, but you, someone who tries really hard to be as irritating as possible... you're the only other human in the 25th century that I can stand to be around."
Skylar nodded. "Everyone else thinks they're such hot shit. Like they're so much better than they used to be."
"People think that I should be happier here because of all the stuff they fixed," Ashley said. "You know what I want? Parents. Cousins. Siblings. Other humans, they don't see me as a person. They see me as a symbol of their own guilt. You can give me all the stuff in the world, and it's not gonna bring my parents back."
"That." Skylar pointed at Ashley. "That is the kind of misanthropic tirade that I respect."
"Thank you."
"You wanna know a secret about me?"
Ashley raised an eyebrow. "You have secrets?"
"I wasn't raised on Iroshar. My parents did, but I grew up in La Jolla. Two years old up through college." Skylar looked down at their feet. "I hated the other students. Always projecting onto me, trying to drag me into their activist schtick. But the profs were fine. I took classes, and I learned stuff, and if I'm gonna be a bad guy, I don't wanna drag their name through the mud."
"Ha. You were never gonna be an activist, Skylar."
"Yeah, 'cause I don't care about people."
"No. I mean, that's probably true, but you just avoid conflict. I mean, you're a burglar, not a robber. Shows how much you care about the scarab that you'd actually confront someone for him."
"What, now you're taking my emotionally vulnerable moments?"
"Someone had to."
"Fine." Skylar got up and brushed themself off. "You seen Kriak anywhere?"
"The big bad guy? You gonna... like, describe him?"
"If you see a person that isn't you, and isn't me, it's probably him. You know what?" Skylar looked around. "I'm just gonna go find him. Gimme that pole."
"Why?"
"I don't know, maybe I'll need to jump over him."
Ashley tossed the pole to Skylar. "Pretty sure you can jump well enough on your own, but okay."
Skylar picked up the vaulting pole, took a deep breath, and paused for a bit, before jogging out of the stadium through the entrance tunnel.
Ashley turned towards a mysterious figure approaching from behind and put her hands in her pockets. "Guess I'm meeting all the bad guys today. You must have known something like this would happen, right? Obviously you know about time travel."
"I knew there would be people like you," Kriak said. Like Ashley and Skylar, he was really just a human being, with an unzipped jacket and a pair of sunglasses resting on top of his head. "I've watched television before. It was Skylar I didn't account for."
"So they're the wild card here?"
"I've visited hundreds of timelines, tried to contain countless superheroes inside their own personal fantasy realms. Try to keep them complacent, keep them from trying to break out. But Skylar is the one hero who simply cannot be happy. Whether they're a sorcerer, or a shapeshifter, or a detective; they get the best of me every time. I've jumped to hundreds of timelines, different variants of my own world, looking for one - just one - where they wouldn't stop me."
"So you can create your ideal world."
"Yes. One with no heroes in it. At least, not past the 22nd century or so."
"Why?"
"It's the only way I can get away from them," Kriak said. "There must have been hundreds on Earth alone. And they were so dominant in the culture... if I had seen part of myself in even one of them, maybe I'd have let them stick around. But they'd always soak up all the attention. No one else could get their stories told, not with them around."
Ashley sighed. "I think you're just bitter that the stuff you like isn't popular."
"Yeah, that's pretty much what I just said. I don't have to justify it. I'm a bad guy." Kriak looked in the direction of the stadium tunnel. "That was supposed to be the key to finding a timeline I could work with - one where Skylar was a villain too. One where I could just leave them alone, and they wouldn't bug me. And instead I get a literally bug-themed version of them. Axyridis isn't ever supposed to be a hero, but when it's Skylar in the suit..."
"So this... this is somehow the worst version of Skylar in the entire multiverse?"
"Well," said Kriak, "at least in the parts I can get to. Looks like they're always going to be a thorn in my side."
"Unbelivable," Ashley said. "The Skylar I know isn't even that bad of a person. Did you know they only steal things that are insured?"
"I suppose timidity is its own flaw. I just wish it played in my favor." Kriak looked around the stadium. "Well, it just goes to show that I'll never be able to pull this off. Maybe I'll stay here for a while."
"Inside the mind of a symbiote that's in someone else's body?" asked Ashley. "Not sure it's my ideal living space, but you do you. As long as you aren't trying to change the fabric of spacetime."
Kriak put his hands up. "Hey," he said. "I only changed time. I have no problem with space."
"All right," Ashley said with a skeptical tone. "Just don't be surprised if Skylar starts charging rent."