Blake stared at the crying, blindfolded and bound young man seated in the middle of the dim room. The only light in the room was a pillar of white light that highlighted the prisoner; his hands were cuffed behind the rickety wooden chair. He was shirtless and looked like he worked out often. Blake doubted the wood-rotted chair would hold him if he really thought he could escape. Both Blake and the gagged man knew he couldn’t escape, they were not the only ones in the room.
“Flashy, huh?” Blake mumbled to himself while he walked a circle around the man. “Okay,” he grinned to himself and stopped behind the chair. He pushed the man’s head forward to expose the back of his neck and he felt no resistance. The prisoner had already given up. Blake wiggled his fingers and his hand began to glow with a soft green light.
“Stop!” a woman shouted from the darkness. “You’re a healer?” she asked. Blake looked around to try and pinpoint the direction of the speaker but gave up. He answered the darkness.
“Yeah,” Blake said, then he remembered who he was speaking to. He did not know how many others were in the shadows but he knew there was only one woman. “I mean, yes Ma’am, that’s technically my power.”
“We have enough healers, we don’t need more. Thank you for wasting our time,” she said.
“I’m not here to be a healer, I’m here to be a villain,” Blake said.
“It’s not a very threatening ability,” the mystery woman replied. Blake smiled.
“It depends on how you use it,” Blake said. He tilted his head down at the prisoner sitting in front of him. “If you let me show you..,”
“Very well,” she replied. Blake was glad for the interruption. In the back of his mind, he knew he had an audience. But she reminded him that he was auditioning. He needed showmanship if he wanted to join the League of Blood. They told him to be flashy, but he realized that meant his whole presentation not just the demonstration of his abilities.
“When most people think of healing…,” he addressed the darkness. “…they have a very broad view of it. A cut closes and a broken bone fuses itself back together and that’s it. But the secret is healing is a natural bodily function. And that means healers…,” Blake lifted his hand in the air and rekindled the forest-green glow. “can control it.”
In a single, swift move his hand dipped down to the man’s neck and came back up again. The man wiggled in the seat to try and get away, with screams of agony escaping from around his gag the whole time. His pained voice filled the room for several seconds before he went quiet. He still appeared to be yelling, but could no longer be heard. Blake now knew another villain, the Silent Knight, was in the room. The applicant lifted his hand higher to show everyone the spinal column looped in his hand. After he lifted it as high as his arm reached he began walking to a random dark spot in the room, pulling the spinal cord with him.
“It’s still attached at both ends. It still works,” Blake said. “He still feels pain.” He walked a circle around the man leaving lengths of the man’s bloody spine on the floor as he pulled on the loop making it longer and longer.
“How did you get it out?” A man’s voice asked.
“Good question!” Blake said. He was starting to feel more comfortable. He dropped the spine and walked to silent, sobbing man. He placed both hands on top of the man’s head. “The thing about controlling a biological process is with enough practice you can convince the body to think you’re part of it.” Blake leaned forward and sunk his into to the man’s head as easy as if he were dipping his hands in a sink full of water. “You can convince it that everything is a-okay.” He pulled upward and his hands came out covered in blood and holding the man’s brain, still attached to an elongated spine. The prisoner screamed silently.
“And if someone was good enough…,” Blake yanked the brain out further, grabbed the spine and began swinging the brain above his head like a flail. “They could heal damage in real time so that nothing comes apart.” He stopped spinning the brain and let it dangle. “Unless they want it to,” he said. The brain fell off the spine and plopped on the floor. The prisoner’s body went slack and he fell forward in the chair. His cuffed hands kept him from falling off all the way.
“Do you have a villain name?” the woman asked.
“Blake Brimba,” he told them his full name. “I want everyone to know who I am.”
A short, pudgy woman with royal blue hair stepped out of the light and Blake heard gasps of surprise all around him. He guessed that wasn’t something she normally did.
“What’s your favorite number?” she asked him.
“33,” Blake replied without hesitation, then chuckled. “Huh, I didn’t even know I had one,” he said. The woman nodded.
“I’m Mundo. Welcome to the League of Blood.”
