It was an excuse, normally, for Zoe Katsaros to doll herself up in her tiniest outfit and strut it with the best of them downtown. It didn’t matter who she was behind the mask, how much money her family had, or what expectations her parents had of her. She could toss it all away and just be a happy twenty-something among a crowd of carefree, kindred spirits. Sealing her identity away behind a costume was the most liberated she ever felt.
Yet as she got older, her parents began to expect her at more and more of their socials. The Katsaros family was prestigious, with a foot in politics through her father and a huge investment in the business side of Destiny City. To them, appearances were everything. Everything. Her presence was excused during college, when she was assumed to be living on campus and too busy with her studies to take a break for anything. But now that college was no longer an excuse, she seemed to have run out of ways to avoid the expectations that came with her last name. She’d never dream of forsaking it for her freedom, not with the opportunities that it provided, but that meant her will was rarely her own.
That was how she came to be standing in her room in the west wing of the Katsaros mansion, staring down at two costumes on her bed.
One was typical of a party-loving youth - a mermaid’s costume with a long flowing wig and less material than the wig itself. It had been bought hopefully, in preparation for a night on the town, when she’d still been naive enough to think that her parents hadn’t already decided.
The other was elegant, if somewhat less revealing - a flowing peacock-inspired dress with a slit, gloves and an intricate mask to complete the look. Her mother had picked it out and dropped it off in her room that morning, without so much as an apology for not telling her sooner. It was simply that she never felt the need to inform Zoe of her decisions, as if Zoe’s life were entirely hers to control.
As Zoe ran a finger over the real, thick fabric of her masquerade costume, she knew at once the cold truth behind that thought. Zoe’s life wasn’t her own to control. With a sigh filled with as much contempt as she could manage, she plucked the outfit her mother had given her and slipped away to her dressing room.
-
Hours later would find her greeting guests in the banquet hall downstairs at her mother’s side, trailing along at her shoulder and flashing her best smiles beneath the mask. It was a joke, she felt, to wear a mask and then have herself introduced as the heiress. That wasn’t what masks were for. Yet she was the ever dutiful daughter, no matter how much her insides had tightened and threatened to revolt. Face after face passed her by - old and withered, young and freckled, handsome and not. Her mother seemed to put extra emphasis on every young, wealthy man that had showed up, as if that might encourage Zoe’s own attention, but she treated them with the same aloof attitude that she greeted all others.
It was some time before her mother allowed her to break away and mingle within the gathered guests, apparently having decided that no one new would be showing up and if they did, they were late (and that was unacceptable). Being apart from her mother was nearly as terrible as being bound to her side and Zoe spent a majority of her time walking in an attempt to avoid being cornered by anyone. When they made eye contact she merely smiled and slipped away to another area of the party, always moving, always avoiding.
It wasn’t long before something began to seem.. wrong.
She wanted to contribute her realization to her skill as a senshi but that would have been a lie. At best, she was subpar. Truthfully, she was bored and a generally hypercritical person. The first thing she noticed was how frumpy some of the server’s uniforms were, as if they were layered atop other clothing. Idly, she began to wonder how they had slipped past her mother’s attention, but she supposed the woman wasn’t as sharp as she used to be.
It was when they began to behave strangely that she took a second look.
None of them seemed to actually be handing out any of the drinks or hors d’oeuvres lining their trays. They were circling through the crowd with low eyes, checking corners and door handles. Suddenly concerned that her parents were going to be robbed blind, she found herself trailing after them while maintaining as much of her composure as possible. After all, it could have simply been her own boredom lending her imagination a hand and wouldn’t she look just silly if she accused some poor working class men of theft when their only crime was ill-fitted fashion?
The truth, however, was not long in revealing itself.
Just as she was about to give up on the idea that they were doing anything other than a bad job at serving the guests, she noticed they all suddenly began to.. leave. Not willing to let them leave the manor with pockets full of her father’s silver, she slipped through the kitchen just in time to see them peeling off their server’s uniforms.. revealing the entire reason they had appeared frumpy in the first place.
Beneath the crisp, black overcoats and breeches were uniforms of another type, only these varied from person to person and she knew if she’d been Midas in that instant, they would have had a collective aura so dark and thick that it would have given her chills. One by one, they noticed her there, and wicked smiles spread over their faces.
“Did you want these back, cutie?”
A young, green haired lieutenant flashed a handful of glowing pearls at her. Reality struck her hard as she realized they hadn’t been stealing jewels or silver, but the very essence of life itself. No one had died, she knew, but the implications of them simply slipping into the party unnoticed made her breath catch in her throat. And the real servers? Where were they?
“N-no,” she stammered, mentally cursing herself for her uncertainty because of the way it made them laugh. She couldn’t power up now without being found out.
The green-haired boy began to walk forward to her with a purpose, one hand stretched out, when he was stopped by an old, more serious man.
“Let Ichor have her, we can’t be seen here.”
Ichor? Her mind raced with thoughts about what an Ichor was. They backed out of the kitchen quickly and slipped through the double-doors of the service entrance. As soon as they disappeared, she let Midas claim her, drawing her magic over her body without hesitation. She wasn’t sure what she was planning to do, but she couldn’t just let them slip away. She bounded through the service entrance and turned to -
SMACK.
The sound was so loud that it shook her thoughts, so much so that she didn’t realize, at first, what it was. Her back collided with the wall of the kitchen and her thoughts dimmed from the impact. As the world slowly began to regain color, she was aware of deep ache in her chest, where something had collided with her.
That something was slowly slithering through the open door of the service entrance - a big, thick, muscled something. Belatedly, she realized it was a youma, and that this must be the Ichor they had been talking about.
With a determined grit to her teeth, she pushed herself slowly up to her feet and stood between the youma and the entrance of the banquet hall beyond. Seeing the test of will, it rose up from the floor and flared a cobra’s hood at her to show its dominance, hissing with a voice that sounded eerily human. She had only a small movement of its head to tell her it was about to strike. As it surged forward she leaped backwards through the doors, then used her strength to slam them shut on its face.
Another loud smack filled her ears but this time, she wasn’t the one taking a lump to the head.
Behind her the banquet hall’s buzz began to die off, until she became aware of a smothering silence. She had been noticed - a senshi, a terrorist, in the midst of politicians. How many of them were part of this set up? The youma gave her no time to think as it dove again, this time swinging the doors open and forcing her to leap up on her parents’ grand piano. Somewhere in the distance she heard her mother cry out in fear - not of her daughter being in danger, because how could she know? The fear was for the priceless antique that she had dared use as a platform. If she’d had the time, she would have stomped on the keys for good measure, but the youma had made its entrance and party goers were beginning a frantic stampede for the door. Although she’d earned the ire of the chaos creature, she could also see its attention beginning to wane.
There were a lot of tasty snacks nearby that packed a much weaker punch.
As it began to turn and focus its attention on the crowd, Midas’ heart quickened. She didn’t have offensive magic like some of the senshi she knew - she didn’t even have defensive magic that would stop something like this. Nor did she have the weapons knight wielded to boost their physical prowess. Her eyes flickered around the room that her mother kept in such careful order, searching for anything that might help her. It was then that she noticed her father’s pride and joy - an old samurai’s katana that she had been told repeatedly as a child not to play with.
Too bad she was Midas, and not Zoe.
The serpent dashed through the crowd, making it peal back in waves, loud with shrill screams of terror. She wasted no time leaping from the piano to the display case where her father kept the sword, smashing through the glass with a swift punch. It didn’t feel nice, exactly, but the cuts were shallow and she knew she’d heal before it could scar. Not to mention she took a certain amount of satisfaction from bleeding on her mother’s hardwood floors.
She turned on the creature, just in time to see it rear up and flare its hood again - right at her stubborn, prideful parents. Her father, a tall imposing figure even without a superhuman identity, had put himself between the creature and her mother. The woman, for all that she was normally the picture of perfection, seemed somewhere between fainting and hysteria. There were only a few seconds between her parents and an unfortunate end.
The Senshi of Greed dove forward and slashed with all the might she had in her being, knowing that it would be her one and only chance. The sword met resistance, though it made a clean slice, right through the upper portion of the youma’s skull. The too-human scream began again, then trailed off to a gurgle. The snake’s body collapsed on the floor and exploded into a pile of dust, swirling around the pristine room despite her mother’s horror.
“I - Thank You,” her father managed, wide-eyed but still. Behind him her mother brought a hand to her forehead in the ultimate show of dramatics, then collapsed onto the floor in a heap that demanded immediate attention. Though her father stooped immediately to check on his wife, there was an air about him that suggested this was nothing that he hadn’t dealt with before. Mrs. Katsaros had a tendency towards exaggeration, although Midas had to wonder if it wasn’t deserved this time around.
“Has anyone seen Zoe?”
Midas tried not to seem surprised at her father’s question but bit her tongue to keep herself from answering. Concern was not something he generally showed anyone, even the ones he loved.
“I’m sure your daughter is fine, Mr. Katsaros. She looked like she had better things to do when I saw her leaving earlier.”
Midas damned herself in that one sentence, knowing that she would be scolded when she finally returned home from ‘partying’. The stony look on her father’s face told her as much. Yet she could live with damning Zoe to keep Midas a secret, especially with the way a few guests were watching her, as if they might like to trap her and take her home. How many of the people at this masquerade ball hid behind another mask at night?
The katana was dropped unceremoniously to the floor and Midas exited the way she had come, leaving through the kitchen door. The Negaverse would be looking for her in the area and her parents would be waiting for Zoe to come home for a nice, long talk.
Naturally, the best thing she could do was slip away downtown and do exactly what she’d wanted all along.
Party.
Word Count: 2222
