Necradia stood back, watching with arms raised like a puppeteer, as her small herd of zombies attacked the bank tellers. Their screams filled the air, drowning out the alarm, and she closed her eyes to savour it.
It was then, just when she was starting to enjoy herself, that a young woman, no older than Necradia herself, managed to scramble across the floor and drop to her knees in front of her. The woman's face was streaked with blood, and her tears had run her mascara down her cheeks, in a look similar to the one Necradia herself had worn last season. _Well, without all the snot, of course,_ she thought to herself. She was about to call one of her zombies back to deal with the woman when she spoke.
"PLEASE STOP IT! For the love of God, call them off! We'll give you whatever you want, just stop it! Why are you doing this?"
Looking down into the woman's pleading eyes, hearing the desperation in her voice, Necradia had just a moment of doubt. As if in slow motion, she looked around the bank, noting the carnage everywhere, and for once she could not stand to take it all in. Her eyes skipped over it, trying not to register the details of the horrific scene she had wrought, but as the alarms kept sounding and the screams burbled down, everywhere she turned it was severed this, dismembered that, pool of coagulating such-and-such. It all looked so ... shocking.
She shut her eyes tight. _What's happening to me?_ she wondered, then felt an unusual warm spot where the woman on the floor was touching her leg. Opening her eyes, she saw a soft, blue-white glow under the palm of the woman's hand. Necradia jerked her leg away, but the nauseating feeling persisted. The room began to spin, and she grabbed onto a hand railing for balance. She turned to the woman on the floor.
"What did you do?" she asked, her voice a mix of awe and dread. Before the woman could answer, the zombies had converged on her, turning any response into more screaming. Though Necradia did, at last, call them off, it was too late. Whatever the mysterious woman had done, Necradia would not find out from her now. She heard sirens in the distance, and recognised that she would or should be feeling like that was the start of the real party, but the feeling wasn't there. She hesitated, then took the handle of just one of the bags of cash from the vault, hovered a short distance into the air to make sure she wasn't still woozy, then flew off, out the door and accelerated to full speed over the rooftops. Her zombies would follow on foot, or distract the cops long enough for her to get away. They'd catch up, or she'd summon more if they died. She started feeling bad for them, then wondered at that. There were always more zombies. Why feel anything at all for these ones?
Whatever that woman had done, Necradia hoped it wasn't permanent, but she had a horrible sinking feeling that she'd been infected with something. Something, she made a face, good, like "compassion".
Mokalus of Borg
PS - Necradia was my favourite of my City of Villains characters.
PPS - She was how I explored the "Going Rogue" expansion.
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