The Devil's Foundry

Empress knew that Electra was watching, of course.

Electra knew she wasn't subtle. Her old team went out of their way to remind her of that every time they went for a stealth mission, and Empress certainly hadn't let it slide.

That said, the hero still couldn't stop herself from assessing her tiny, vindictive companion in a new light. And not just because Electra had just gotten shoved into a clearing full of venomous hummingbirds, yet had walked out unscathed.

She had known Empress for most of her heroic career, from the time she made her debut to their final climactic showdown in the middle of Empress’s doombot. Electra thought she had the villainess pegged, but the more time they spent together, the more Empress let her mask slip, giving glimpses of the person beneath.

A person that Electra was realizing that she didn’t know.

That she’d never known at all.

“Take a picture.” Empress’s words jolted Electra out of her thoughts. “It'll last longer.”

Electra laughed, rubbing the back of her neck. “You'll need to advance the camera first.”

“Yeah.” Empress rolled her eyes. “That and everything else we need.”

For instance, Ella knew that Empress had a biting humor, but she never realized the woman was as deprecating with herself as she was with everyone else.

“How’s that going for you?”

Empress shrugged. “I have no idea what they call silver nitrate here, so mostly I'm just hoping there's a picture demon or something that I’ll stumble onto eventually.”

That was the other thing. Between the two of them, Ella was the one with a background in light novels and Isekai stories, but it was Empress that was really getting the mileage out of her cheat skill. Not that Electra hated her own powers, but it was clear that she had a lot of catching up to do.

But none of that was the reason Electra was spending so much time staring at her current companion.

“Which one is the real you?” she asked.

Empress turned to look at her, one immaculately sculpted eyebrow arching oh-so-delicately above her nemesis's olive features. “Whatever do you mean?”

Electra shrugged helplessly. “You flip flop at the drop of a hat,” she said. “One second you're all, ‘There are no lines I won't cross!’ and the next you’re, ‘I’d die to give my employees a livable wage’.” She shook her head. “It’s just… I have no idea what to expect from you.”

“Maybe you should have been paying more attention.”

Electra huffed. “Don't give me that! If you don't want to talk about it just say so, Jesus.” She crossed her arms. “Excuse me for wanting to know what flips your evil villainous megalomania switch.”

A second eyebrow rose to join the first. “Evil villainous… megalomania… switch.” Empress nodded slowly. “Got it. Give me a second to write that one down.”

Electra sighed. They were most of the way back to Silverwall already. It looked like she wouldn't be getting any straight answers out of the villain today. “Sure, sure. It's not like you need any help coming up with new one-liners.”

“No.” Empress gave her a sharp smirk. “You've given me plenty of practice.”

“And don't I know it,” Electra grumbled. “But for real, it's heckin’ freaky, the way you go from caring middle manager to a quote unquote evil villainous megalomaniac.”

She jammed her hands into her pockets, ignoring the way Empress stared at her for a few long moments as they trekked back towards the city. Well, at least they got the feathers. Now, Electra liked to think of herself as a pretty self-sufficient kind of girl, but not having a cell phone? Definitely the worst thing no one ever mentioned about getting sucked into an Isekai.

Well, there was that one time, but no one talked about that.

For obvious reasons.

“Why are you interested all of a sudden?” Empress asked.

Electric glanced over. “Isn't it obvious?” Empress just waved a hand for her to continue. With a sigh, Electra said, “Before, you were always in evil megalomaniac mode. You know, you show up, blow up whatever, we try to stop you. And then we'd all go off and… I don't know, do our own thing in between.” she shrugged again. “I guess I never really wondered about what you were like off the clock.”

Empress gave that laugh of hers, the one that still sent chills down Electra’s spine, and had done so ever since… well, if you were up to date with the hero scene, you'd know. “There is no off the clock for villains, Electra.”

Now it was Electra's turn to raise an eyebrow. “You’re still avoiding the question.”

“Am I?” the villainess spread her arms, one hand reaching out to ruffle her pet lizard demon’s mane. And apparently, that one was the leftovers are the first gang boss to mess with her. If that was how Empress treated her enemies, well, Electra guessed it paid to be her friend. “Why does one of them have to be fake?”

The hero blinked, taking a second to process that. “Uh, ‘cause they're like, polar opposites?”

Empress just smiled.

Electra watched her for a second, eyes narrowed. “No, for real. I've seen you string a guy up by his intestines.” It was a moment that had stuck with her, because while Empress had killed people—more people than Electra would ever really be comfortable with—she was never so brutal about it. “And now I'm supposed to believe that in your downtime you went around handing out Christmas gifts to good little boys and girls?”

“Well, there was that one time, with the lump of coal.” Empress giggled, tapping her chin with one hand. “But that's hardly germane to the conversation.”

Electra rubbed her forehead again, trying to slot this new tidbit of information in along with the rest. It didn't make things any easier.

The woman was the villain, essentially the last big player in the entire continental United States. Electra and the rest of Aegis were the heroes that stopped her. And yet, here she was ‘in a new world with your arch enemy who’s really hot’, and Empress was the one actually making a difference.

Electra wasn’t so blind that she couldn’t see that.

She hadn’t joined the heroes to feed her pride either. It was the whole reason she’d been willing to show up at Empress’s doorstep, hat in hand, and ask to be put to work.

She just wanted to know why.

Electra opened her mouth when Empress spoke again.

“Did you ever wonder what he did?”

Electra blinked at the non sequitur. “What who the what now did?”

“David M Elliot.” Empress cast her gaze skyward, fingers curling in Blue’s mane.

“Uhhh.”

Empress coughed. “The intestines guy. And here you were giving me shit about it.”

“Oh, uh, yeah! I remembered that.” Electra put on a weak grin, stomach twisting guiltily.

“Anyway.” Empress gave her a picture perfect Shaft head tilt, and Electra felt her breath catching slightly. God, and here people still called Electra a weeb for trying to make Jojo Poses a thing. “Did you ever wonder what. He. Did?”

The air suddenly felt heavy. Electra swallowed, all thoughts of god and anime vanishing like the morning mist. “What did he do?”

“You know, that's funny.” Empress mimed laughing. “That's actually really funny, because I know for a fact that the information was on your database, or at least, it was. That's where I found it in the first place.” She shrugged. “Guess they swept it up before the internal audit.”

Electra didn't like where this was going. “What did he do, Empress?” Before, she wouldn't have even questioned it. Of course Empress, no matter what her past record was, would eventually snap and hang some guy up by his intestines in the middle of Times Square. But now, Electra had seen the woman behind the mask. The woman who took in the tired and the poor, the woman who protected people, the woman who was doing a better job of being a hero than Electra was. “What did he do, that made you come for him?”

Empress shrugged. “Oh, you know, not much. It was just a child trafficker and molester. A regular Jeffrey Epstein, if you will.”

Electra's lips twisted down into a sharp frown. “And you decided to—” She stopped. Of course, Empress hadn't gone public. At that point, she was already nearly six months deep into her career as a super villain, on a tear through the United States and abroad.

Not to mention that, when she wasn't busy stealing priceless diamonds, or holding entire conglomerates hostage from orbital satellites, she tended to eviscerate the local crime lords and cartels wherever she put down roots.

Empress raised an eyebrow. “Yes?”

Electra shook her head. “I realized it was stupid before I even said it.”

“That would be a first.”

Electra huffed. “Every time with you, huh?” She ran a hand through her hair. “God, and he was a major donor as well.”

“Aren't they all?” Empress asked whimsically.

Electra grimaced, but said nothing. She had been on her fair share of busts in the past before. They weren't always what she thought they'd be.

“It wasn't just that though, was it?”

Empress stilled. “Hmm?”

Electra turned to face her. “It was personal.”

Empress didn't say anything for a long moment. Then she started walking again.

“You asked me, a little bit ago, which one was the real me.” Her lips pulled back into a sharp grin, the kind she usually wore while revealing her master plan one second too late for the heroes to stop her. Half the time, she was even right about that estimation. “What's the difference, between the Empress that goes around handing out presents and kittens and works to build a better brighter tomorrow for the people under her care, and the Empress that will cheerfully eviscerate man without batting an eye?” She spread her arms, spinning to put Silverwall at her back. They were only a few minutes’ walk from the city. “The answer, is that there is no difference. This is, as I've said over and over again, exactly who I am.”

Her smile vanished. “And I make no apologies for it.”

Electra met her nemesis's eyes for a long moment. In a way, it almost hurt.

Electra had spent her whole life trying to live up to her own ideals. She’d fought, and she’d struggled, and she’d risen every step of the way, doing her best to make the world a better place. It hurt, because she just now realized that the woman she spent so much of her life fighting had done exactly the same.

Or, well, so close that Electra began to see the differences that led them both to where they were.

And how few these differences really were.

“Alright.”

Empress raised an eyebrow. “Alright?”

Electra had always hated the whole ‘we're not so different, you and I’ thing that superhero comics liked to do. It was overused, it felt cheap, and it was never really true. Except, it wasn’t true here either.

Empress and Electra weren’t anything close to the same person.

But Electra would bet that, at one point, they’d both been little girls with a picture of Marvelous on their wall who wanted to make the world a better place.

And it hurt.

But, in her experience, the truth usually did.

“Alright,” Electra said again. “What's next?”

“Just like that?” Empress asked.

Electra nodded. “I mean, you answered my question.”

Empress gave her a sharp look. The hero could tell that the other woman didn't really believe her yet, but that was fine. She’d been playing along so far, but they both knew there was a world of difference between working together when your back was against a wall, like during the Ilmorian invasion, and actually working together.

That was fine.

Electra had struggled her whole life to get where she was, and she didn't regret—couldn't regret—the lives she saved as a hero.

But being a hero had never been the end goal. She had chosen to be a hero because she thought it was the best way to help people. If it wasn't the best way anymore, then she just had to look for a new one.

Even if it came from her worst enemy.

“So, what’s the play…” Electra took a deep breath. “Boss?”