AN: Here is my NaStySuMo story. Yup.
My name is Thunder Thighs, and I’m a hero.
I help little old ladies cross the street. I save kittens from trees. I stop masked thugs from robbing banks.
And like every hero, I have my foes.
Darth Dry Cleaning likes to exploit my greed and curiosity by leaving me clothes with stuff in the pockets.
Lord Chemistry likes to make me angry. He also says weird things. Like “You are the potassium to my water.” I guess he thinks we have an explosive relationship . . .
And then there’s Buzzsaw, my arch nemesis. With whom I was meeting today. I hated his place. Booby traps every-freakin’-where. Seriously, why couldn’t the guy have minions like everybody else? Why did he have to plant spinning sharp objects all over the freakin’ place?
I looked behind me at the swinging axes I had just passed. The ceilings in these halls were too low for me to jump efficiently, so I was always scared I’d screw up and get hit. Taking a deep breath to calm myself, I jogged through the hall, turned the corner, and stopped.
“Buzzsaw!” I screamed. “What the hell is your problem?!” Seriously?! ?! Freakin’ gods of everything! I swan, this guy changes the layout of his place every time I come here. This hall used to be empty. Now I just about face-planted into some spikes.
Before me was the mother of all traps. Spinning saw blades along the wall above a pit of spikes. Second, was a platform with darts being shot across. Third, a swinging spiky log with a beam halfway between the platforms for me to jump on. Fourth, a platform with spikes in the floor that shot up after you stepped on them, more darts, and five spinning spiky columns. Fifth, one more swinging ax above a pit of spikes.
I was going to kill him.
I watched the two blades, until the first one was at the top of its track, and the second at the bottom before running along the wall to the next platform, and rolling to the edge to avoid the darts. There, I crouched at the edge, letting the log swing a few times, tracking its rhythm. Right after it passed above me, I launched to the beam and pushed off immediately to the next platform, running as soon as my booted feet touched floor so I wouldn’t be impaled, slid through an opening between the columns, rolled under the darts.
And off the edge.
~*~*~*
Great. I was dead. My body impaled on spikes. If I opened my eyes, no doubt I’d see my bloody body, the thickish, crimson liquid running down the metal to stain the stone floor below.
However, when I opened my eyes, I found a patch of sunlight on the pale ceiling above me. Buzzsaw didn’t have windows in his trap halls. Sitting up quickly, I realized I was in a feather bed, wearing a long, baggy shirt that wasn’t mine.
“I knew that last jump was impossible for even you to make.”
My head whipped to the side, and my damp brown hair smacked me in the face. My expression went from anger to confusion in less than a moment. Damp?
“Thunder?” Buzzsaw asked, coming in to my view. He sounded concerned, and it added to my confusion.
I shifted my attention to him. He was tall, tan, and broad. His black hair messy and, and grey eyes framed by dark lashed.
Too bad he was a villain.
Too bad I was a hero.
“Buzz . . . I should be dead.”
Buzzsaw took the chair next to my bed and smiled at me. “Did I not just say I knew you would be unable to make that last jump? There were not the usual spikes at the bottom. There was water.”
That explained my hair. “Wait, why?”
“I wanted to prove something to you.” Before he continued he handed me a tea cup. I looked at it, then at him. There was a trap here, someplace. But he nodded, and I took a tiny sip. I couldn’t help but smile at the perfectly sweetened (aka sugar shock for anyone else) tea and took another drink. “I do not want you to die,” he said when he was satisfied with my acceptance of his offering. “You and I are foils, and we need each other. A villain has no purpose if he does not have a hero to challenge him.”
“But I have other foes.”
“Who? Darth and Chemistry?” He laughed. “They are not like us. They are naught but bit players. How long does it take you to defeat them? Two minutes? How long does it take you to defeat me?”
He had a point.
“Thunder, we complement each other. Besides, I could easily kill you, and you could easily kill me. After all,” he said, laying his hand on my thigh. “You could easily crush my head between those thighs of yours.”
I looked at his hand, and back at him, arching a brow. “And what the hell is your head doing there in the first place?”
“Oh, I could think of a few things,” he replied with a grin. I smacked his hand away and he laughed. “As I was saying, we need each other. So I will not try to kill you, and I will destroy anyone who thinks they can attempt it.”
I was silent as I looked at him. He wasn’t lying, and that kinda made me uneasy. But a deal is a deal.
“Okay. I won’t kill you, either.”
After all, a hero didn’t have a purpose if she didn’t have a villain.
Woobie speaks . . . 