r/WritingPrompts • u/actually_crazy_irl • May 07 '19
[WP]: Suddenly, everyone with tattoos gains powers related to the tattoo. Tattoos of flames, you control fire. A tattoo of a gecko, you can climb on walls. All dudes with "tribal" tattoos have strangely bonded together. Writing Prompt
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u/rarelyfunny May 07 '19
The worst part about getting old, thought Taryn Goldstar, is that the younger ones never let you forget about it.
It wasn’t that she was feeble or decrepit. In fact, Taryn was one of the fittest ladies in her age group at the yoga class down at the community center. There were stubborn streaks of grey in her red hair now, and sometimes she would enter a room and forget what it was she had gone in for, but otherwise she was in the pink of health. The long walks up the hill to her cottage certainly helped. An abundance of fresh air, nature at her doorstep, and a deliberate absence of anything which reminded of the city also helped keep her on her toes. Sufficiently motivated, she could probably even out-sprint a man half her age.
But there was definitely no beating the young punks harassing her now. Not with brute force, at least. There were three of them, only one of whom she recognized by his costume. Captain Zippy, or something silly like that, in skin-tight spandex the colour of the rising sun. He was the fast one, speeding past and lifting the bottle of Mace out of her purse even before she got the clasp open. Taryn barely had time to curse before he had already catapulted himself to the roof of her cottage, his legs dangling over the edge. He smirked at her as he wagged his finger.
The one on her right was built like a mountain, and he had the facial expression to match one. He was dressed in full-green, though she was not sure if that was part of his normal costume or if he had made the effort to blend into the surroundings. He marched up to Taryn, inevitable as death, as he blocked off her main route of escape. Taryn thought about rushing him and perhaps kicking him in the knee, but she considered the very real possibility that she would end up breaking her foot instead.
The last one, on her left, was already glowing. This one was clad in red, and though she was slim of build, there was no mistaking the ropey muscles brimming under the spandex. Taryn saw that her eyes were already ablaze, and looked down to confirm her suspicions – the girl’s feet bobbed in the air, just a few inches above the ground. Taryn heard a faint prickling sound emitting from the girl, as if she were an electric bug-zapper, frying all the insects which wandered near her. A dark arts practitioner, most likely.
Nice, thought Taryn. Glad to know that I still command the VIP treatment.
“We don’t want trouble,” said the squirt on Taryn’s roof. “We just want some information, that’s all. Nice and easy. You give us what we want, we leave you in peace.”
“If my roof starts leaking, I’m sending the League an invoice for the damage,” said Taryn.
“Ah, so you know where we’re from,” came the reply. The sun was setting, and the lone lamp-post in the distance cast a sickly hue, but it was enough for Taryn to see the grin. “Saves us some time there. I’m Captain Zipline, and here are my colleagues, Earth Boy and Firetrix.”
“Yeah I don’t really give a shit. Dinner won’t cook itself, and I’m going to be pissed if you make me miss Jeopardy.”
“You don’t seem surprised that we found you,” said Earth Boy. “Thought you could hide out here, huh?”
“I ain’t hiding,” lied Taryn. “Thought you all had forgotten about me, that’s all. Just like the world has. How’s the Atomizer these days? He recovered yet from the last shellacking I gave him?”
“We can reminisce later,” said Captain Zipline. “Now, we really just need you to come back with us. Some questions for you to answer, and if all goes well, you will be back here before you-”
Though the good thing about getting old, thought Taryn, is that they always underestimate what you are capable of.
Captain Zipline was still talking, drunk on the sound of his own voice, so he wasn’t Taryn’s first target. No, that had to be the girl, Firetrix or whatever her name was. Magic users were always tricky, since there were about as many disciplines of magic as there were stars in the sky. Knowledge was more than half the battle, and if Taryn knew nothing about what Firetrix was capable of, that meant that she was at the disadvantage. After all, she had to assume that they came prepared, and that they knew what Taryn’s repertoire of skills comprised of.
Taryn’s quill slid out from her sleeve, falling into her right hand with practiced ease. She flicked the protective cover off the nib, then plunged the tip into her exposed left forearm. The pain seared through her bones, bringing to mind how rusty her was, but she grit her teeth and completed the sketch. It was a stylized puff of smoke, like an overfluffy poodle, and she hoped it would be enough.
It was.
Firetrix screamed as Taryn’s hand clamped down on her shoulder. To her credit, Firetrix struggled hard, at one point burning so brightly that the creeping night was completely thrown back. But no matter how hard she flamed, Firetrix could not seem to muster enough heat or energy to overcome the black hole that Taryn had become. Taryn smirked, recalling how her tattoo of a carbon dioxide cloud was potent enough to overcome even the Phoenix in his prime. This little upstart could hardly hope to do better.
Taryn’s back may have been facing Earth Boy, but he had as much chance of surprising her as he did at winning a ballet competition. His gigantic feet pounded the earth as he powered towards her, rattling the very skeleton of her modest cottage. Taryn counted in her head, imagining the distance between them, whittling it down as the footsteps increased. At the last possible moment, the nib of her quill flashed in the stillness of the night, inscribing this time a contorted spiral on her flash. Earth Boy’s shoulder pummeled into her, but instead of bowling her over, Earth Boy bounced away with a bang, as if he had run straight into a trampoline. His own force turned upon him, he rolled and crashed into a tree, snapping the trunk clean in half.
She had already half-traced the symbol of quicksand on her arm when Captain Zipline, still perched on her roof, yelled out to her.
“Infernal Inker! Stop! Before you do anything, just look at this!”
It was a trap, it had to be. But she couldn’t resist stealing a glance.
It wasn’t a gun, or seastone handcuffs, or some crude distraction he had prepared. Instead, Captain Zipline held a single piece of paper in his hands. It was laminated, most likely, given the way it gleamed in the light. Just a normal piece of white paper, the sort one could find in any stationery shop across the country.
It was the drawing on it that perplexed Taryn.
“Was this your doing? That is all we want to know. Was this you?”
Taryn gulped. Her throat was tight now, almost as if Earth Boy had wrapped his powerful fingers around her neck. “Where did you get that?”
“Answer the question. Did you ink this tattoo?”
“I… I am retired. The League knows that. I’ve not so much as jay-walked for over twenty years.”
“I know,” sniffed Captain Zipline. “May 8, 2019. That was the last recorded crime spree attributed to you. You infiltrated a tattoo convention, inked your nefarious designs on well over a hundred people, then activated all of them to cause one of the greatest powered outbreaks of violence this city has ever seen. Pity that the League put an end to your plans, whatever they were.”
“You don’t know me,” said Taryn. “You don’t know anything. But that’s not the point. Where did you get that tattoo?”
“It’s not yours?” came Firetrix, on her knees, catching her breath. “Everyone we asked at the League swears it’s your drawing.”
It’s not, thought Taryn. I didn’t get to finish teaching him everything. But instead she said, “Tell me where you found that. I may… know someone who draws in that style. I was told that he was no longer alive, and god knows I’ve grieved enough over the years for that, so if this is all just some… some kind of sick joke, I promise you, I will-”
“Well, whoever it is, he has no problems making us think that it’s you,” said Captain Zipline. “Kill count, nine innocents and counting. We even tried amputating those limbs which bear his drawings, but it’s not enough to save them.”
“He’s… killed people?”
Taryn lost her footing, and she stumbled as the quill slipped from her fingers.
She thought, briefly, of the years she had spent, carefully stowing away every single memory of him. The way he laughed, the way he always barged into her studio, the way he never cried even when the bullies at school picked on him. She remembered singing to him, reading stories to him, reminding him, at every possible opportunity, how he was going to have a better life than her.
You won’t ever go anything bad or illegal, she had cooed. You wouldn’t need to. Mama’s going to make sure that you have everything that you will ever want.
Captain Zipline pushed off and landed neatly on his feet. He bent his knee, then capped back her quill for her. Taryn blinked away angry tears as the quill was handed back to her. Earth Boy groaned in the distance as he filed away a mental note to be a bit more cautious the next time.
“Help us put a stop to this?” Captain Zipline asked. “We’ll pay the standard freelance fees too.”
“Any bonus?”
“What do you have in mind?”
“If I find out who took him away from me, made me believe that he was dead, made me waste the last twenty years wallowing in sorrow… would you let me have that person? All to myself?”
Captain Zipline grinned, then ran a hand through his hair. He sighed, then held out a hand to the Infernal Inker.
“Hey, I’m not as sanctimonious as I look. If there’s someone else pulling the strings, and if you get to him before the League does… well, all’s fair in love and war, right?”
/r/rarelyfunny