Maysah was more distant than usual as they rode to the complex, a merry little band of washed-up heroes now turned criminal. She was trying to determine when it happened exactly, it of course in reference to completely fucking her life up to the point where taking part in a barely planned heist against a major corporation seemed like an acceptable course of action. 

The answer didn’t come to her in the form of some grand revelation, but rather a mild acceptance of something she’d realized awhile ago. The mistake hadn’t been calling herself Stardust, dressing up like a nitwit, and challenging the most powerful and dangerous people in the world—it had been stopping. She’d stopped because the corps had falsely named her a criminal, outted her secret identity, and directly caused the murder of her husband. But why? They had used all of their ammunition against Maysah, and she had lived through it. They had practically made her indestructible, and she had waved off the gift so she could be depressed and hideaway as a sad, aging widow. 

Imagine the things she could’ve accomplished in twelve years without having to worry about the repercussions of her actions. The corruptions she could have exposed, the corporations she could have collapsed, the systems she could have destroyed, all allowed to fester and spread like cancer while she stocked books for a sum barely above minimum wage. Stopping wasn’t just a mistake; it was malicious. A petty act of revenge against the world whose only crime was indifference.

Was it too late to set things right?

Maysah swallowed hard and balled her hands. She looked up, caught her glamour staring back at her, and grimaced. The effect had a few more minutes before it would fade, and the pill felt heavy in her pocket. She put her hand over the lump in the gray jumpsuit that they’d been given to better blend in but didn’t pull it out. Arbiter, for the trillionth time, said he thought the plan was stupid but offered no alternatives. 

“And?” asked Void, obviously annoyed with the complaining.

“And that means we must be the biggest fucking idiots in the world since we agreed to it,” rasped Maysah, her throat strangely dry. 

She moved her hand from her pocket and watched Arbiter, who didn’t seem to hear her. Seconds later, she heard his voice over her headset telling them that, predictably, things had already gone to shit and they had a railgun humming to life against them. Maysah cursed and began to move, slipping out of the door that was somehow already open. Had the Tower hit some button to automatically slide it open or something? Maysah shook her head. This wasn’t a concern. Her eyes fell on the railgun platform: that was a concern. 

It took a matter of seconds. It might’ve just been enough time for the railgun to get off its first shot, but it wouldn’t fire another. The plasma crackled to life around her in a radiant purple glow as Maysah shielded herself and bolted towards the platform. If Arbiter tried to reach her, it would be impossible for the second she activated her powers his handy dandy headset was instantly fried. In a similar fashion, Maysah fried the railgun as she touched it. Simultaneously, her body harvested the plasma generated by the railgun powering up its shot. The purple light around her danced violently as she sent a twisting blast of plasma slicing through the barrel, rendering it impossible to fire even if they managed to get the railgun back online. 

Maysah rolled her shoulder as she felt her glamour fade away.  As if she needed it, there wouldn’t be a doubt in any corporate goon’s mind that the woman who’d just blown up their railgun was anyone other than Stardust. She chuckled. The subtle approach had lasted a grand total of ten seconds. She supposed that meant she was the distraction then. She could handle that. Maysah fired off blasts throughout the platform, melting through support beams to prepare it for a collapse while holding back just enough to let any operators flee in time. She dropped from the platform and began spraying plasma blasts skyward, a signal to the others that they should go on. Let Carolex think that Stardust was working alone. Let them think that Stardust had finally come back to right all of theirs and the rest of the Big Six’s wrongs. They wouldn’t be far from the truth. 

And even if they did fuck this heist up, at the very least she could hurt their profit margins by causing a few hundred million dollars worth of property damage in the mean time.