A Painted Nail // One on One // Closed

Charlie hums along quietly to the song blasting from her radio. It’s easier for her to concentrate with background noise. Slowly but surely, the features of the adopted pets begin to come out on the paper. So far so good. She occasionally glances at the pictures on her phone to ensure that she’s getting every detail right. If she’s going to do this then she’s going to do it properly. It’ll take time but it’ll be worth it in the end.

He slowly paces, his hands clasped behind his back as he walked back and forth for almost 15 minutes. At that point, the news crew had gotten word of Indigo's public appearance and sent out preliminary reports as their mobile crew scrambled to get to the scene.

The sound of alerts on her phone going off a million times per minute is what eventually drags her away form her work. She hops to her feet and checks her newsfeed while washing her hands. Indigo is causing trouble again? She sighs. When is he going to give it a rest? Flopping down on the nearest chair, she checks to see if there’s any live feed yet.

There indeed was. The purple-haired individual was staring up as the sky as the hero Whirlwind headed down to take his shot at the villain. A quick zoom-in on Indigo showed he was pointing at the hero, the nail on his index finger painted a very familiar purple.

Studying the live feed, she takes everything in. A battle between Whirlwind and Indigo will be disastrous. She’s so focused on thinking about the damage that she almost misses the zoom-in. Her phone chatters to the ground as she takes a second to process this. The second that it clicks in her mind, she dives for her phone and pauses the video, zooming in on the villain’s hand. There’s no fucking way……..

"Oh, boy," Indigo said, rubbing his hands together. "This will b-"
The hero wasted no time with theatrics, interrupting the sentence by throwing the villain into the air with a huge gust of wind.

Charlie, honestly not sure what to do with this information, immediately begins a series a frantic phone calls to Winston. If he picks up then she knows that she’s being stupid. With her phone presses to her ear, she pulls up the live feed on her computer so she can continue to monitor the situation.

The phone rung on endlessly as the epic battle between the two superpowered individual raged on.
"Hey, this is Winston," his voicemail spoke into her ear. "I can't get to the phone right now, so leave me a voicemail and I'll get back to you. Thanks."

“Winston, answer your fucking phone or get your ass over to my apartment! Now!” Charlie is quite frankly about to loose her mind. There’s just no way that the man that she thought she knew everything about is a major super villain. Right? But there’s no denying that the purple on the man’s nails is the same shade that she put on her best friend’s nails not even four hours ago.

The fight destroyed the whole block in a time span of thirty minutes. But, at the end of it, Indigo stood over the prone body of Whirlwind, his right foot pinning the hero's head to the concrete.
"It was a good attempt," the villain said straight to the camera. "But, alas, another failure. Does this silly town have anyone able to test me?"

Charlie leaves well over a dozen messages, each one more rage fueled than the last. It takes a lot to get her this worked up so Winston is truly in for a bad time the next time she sees him.
It takes all of her self control, not that she has a lot, not to get in her car, drive to the scene of the fight, and chew him out. She’s going to feel horrible if it turns out she’s wrong. However, the chances of her being mistaken are very slim.

"Until the next episode!" Indigo said, smiling at the camera as he took off into the air.

Winston slipped into his apartment window, wincing when he put weight on his left ankle. The fight took a lot more out of him than he liked to admit. He changed out of the costume and slipped it into the suitcase again before checking his phone. He listened to the message she had left him and was at Charlie's apartment in 5 minutes, choosing to fly over there. He rung the doorbell, a slight frown on his face as he slipped his hands into his leather jacket.

Charlie throws the door open the second she hears the doorbell ring. Even with the amount of time she’s had to think, she hasn’t figured out what she’s going to say.
Rather than using her words, yet, she grabs him by the collar of his shirt and yanks him into the apartment. She makes sure to carefully close the door, even in her fit of rage. With one hand she pulls out her phone and she grabs one of his hands with the other. A picture of Indigo’s nails lights up her screen. She glances at the picture and then his nails. This would be no big deal with the color wasn’t so hard to come by. She all but shoves the phone in his face. “What the fuck, Winston?”

He didn't show a visible reaction as he watched the video, but his mind was racing as he tried to figure out how to spin this.
"Um, well…." Winston scratched his face with his free hand, scrunching his nose up at a particularly hard punch he took to the gut. "I have no Earthly idea what you want me to say."

“You don’t know what to say?!” That’s the straw that breaks the camel’s back. “How about you tell me that I’m crazy and that you’re not a damn super villain? Tell me that I’m over reacting!” She certainly doesn’t want to be right but he’s not giving her much to work with. Just looking at him sends her into another fit of pure rage. She sends the next few minutes just shouting obscenities at him. Her neighbors are luckily not home so that’s one less thing to stress about. It allows her to put all of her focus on him. “I’m going to fucking kill you!” Anger is etched into every crevice of her now red face. It’s a massive understatement to say that she’s pissed off. In all of her years of life she’s never been this furious and it shows.

"I doubt you'd be able to," he said quietly, looking down at his feet and just taking the verbal beating. In a way, the words struck him harder than Whirlwind had. Once again, leave it to his best friend to make him feel like the biggest shmuck on the planet. Now that he thought about it, he very well could be.

“That’s what you’re going to say to me right now? God, Winston, you’re so…….ugh!” She whirls away from him, needing a second to pull herself together so she doesn’t do anything rash. It takes several moments before she turns around and faces him again. “You have one chance to explain yourself. Make it count.”

He didn't look up from his feet, his eyebrows pressing together as he once again thought of what to say.
"I tried to do that hero shit before," he said, his voice barely louder than a whisper, "About 2 years ago. The first time I got in a real fight, like with a villain, a whole block was leveled. I mean, like, gone. Nothin' but rubble and fucking dust. A demolition crew couldn't have done better, even if they had a year. The guy didn't make it out alive, neither. Everyone was so…..mad at me afterwords. Like it had been my intention to kill the guy the whole time. Nothin' I said changed their opinion, neither. Seemed like the whole world was trying to make me a villain." He looked up at her, his eyes laced with sadness and regret. "So I gave them that villain. And it's not like I don't know that what I'm doing's wrong. I just….get so mad. I see all of them out there, getting praise for the shit that they do when it's no different than what I did. It just ain't fair."

She shuts her mouth and listens as he talks, her eyes staring a hole right into his soul. The story makes her feel a little bad for yelling but not nearly bad enough to apologize for her behavior. She knows that he had good intentions in the beginning but that doesn’t excuse his current behavior. Hearing that he’s an idiot will do him some good.
“Why didn’t you just stop? You didn’t have to become a villain. You could have just lived a normal life. The path you chose wasn’t forced on you.”

"'Cause it ain't far," he repeated, his hands clinching into fists inside of his jacket. "Those guys get to do anything they want and will always have people falling at their feet just to lick the bottom of their fucking shoes. It gets me so mad that I need to go take my anger out on something. The fact that it typically involves fighting a hero is like killing two birds with one stone."

“Winston, people have died because of you. You’re destroying the city and people’s homes and wrecking their lives. Take your anger out on a punching bag, not on those you have done nothing wrong.” Charlie stares him down, her gaze unwavering. Slowly, her anger is starting to die down but it’s still there. She can still easily be set off on another furious rant.

"I break the punching bags," he mumbled, scratching the side of his face and looking down at his feet. "Sorry. That was a dumb thing to say."

She throws her hands up in the air, exasperated. “Then go to one of the abandoned buildings and just throw a bunch of shit around. Punching bags are just one option.”

Winston shrugged in response. For the first time in a while, he was at a loss for words. His mind went over every bad thing he had done over two years. So many people had died at his hands. Hundreds more injured. Millions of dollars of destruction.
"I….I gotta go." Without another word, he opened the door of her apartment and ran out, so fast he was hardly a blur.

“Don’t your dare!” By the time the words leave her mouth, it’s too late. She sighs heavily and kicks the side of her couch. What the hell do I do now? I can’t call the cops on my best friend. But…..he is a super villain…… The gears in her head turn as she tries to think. This is all way too much for her.
She heads into the kitchen and climbs onto the counters. There’s a single bottle of whiskey in one of the cabinets. It won’t help her think but it’ll help her feel better.

Another notification on her phone around 15 minutes later. Indigo had appeared at the scene of the fight once again. A video feed followed barely two seconds later. Winston walked forward, that characteristic smile of the villain nowhere to be found. He stared down at a bloodstain in the sidewalk as the emergency respondents, police force, and civilians scrambled away from him.
"I'm…..sorry," he mumbled barely able to be heard. Then, he reached up and gently removed the wig from his head, dropping it to the ground next to him. Finally, he fell to his knees and put his hands on the back of his head. He was surrendering.

Charlie, only a little ways into the bottle, stops drinking entirely when she sees the news feedback. With literally no plan, she throws the bottle aside and runs out of her apartment. There’s no time for trying to take her car so she runs the four blocks to the scene of the fight.

Sure enough, there he is, on his knees. The police has there guns drawn. No. No! She shoves a few people aside as she sprints up to him. There’s no way she’s letting anything happen to him. She positions herself right in front of him, making sure that not a single officer with be able to get a shot in without hitting her as well.

"Lady, get outta the way!" one of the police offers shouted.
"Charlie," Winston said quietly, "I'll be fine. Please move."
He never said please.

"You shut your damn mouth," Charlie snaps quietly in response. Staring down at the cops, she refuses to move at all. "Get out of here now, Winston." Based off his fighting tactics, he can fly so that means he gets a gettaway.

"Let me make this right," he mumbled, looking down at the ground as the police began to converge on the two. "I've been blind. Blind from my anger and jealousy. And I've done bad things because of it. Stuff that I should be punished for."