Not A Liar

I'm not a liar. It didn't happen like that... c'mon, you just gotta believe me. Steve typed out. He had plenty time to think about the typing, sure, but it was still rather emotional.

Of course you're not, why would you say that? Of course I'll believe you, but what didn't happen like what? Alty typed in response. She was just as confused as you probably are by Steve's comments.

God dammit, I'm not a liar... not, not, not... please... It doesn't need much saying that he was nervous and scared as hell, not particularly thinking straight enough for coherence.

Slow down... tell me what happened, from the top. C'mon... calm down. Alty tried to get some answer from Steve, futily.

I'm not some damned boy... I'm not, I know I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not a fucking liar. I... didn't mean to kill him. I didn't. No. No. I'm not a liar. I'm not a liar.

***

Alright, now that you've been thoroughly confused... I'll explain it all in good time. Let's back up a bit, it was about two days ago. Two days from this conversation, was when it really started.

"Argh, bloody Mr. Spellender!" Steve cursed, his voice cracking midsentence. "I can't believe he'd do something like that! I swear... what the hell was he thinking? He should've known better!"

Ken sighed. It wasn't really that bad.

Well, for Steve it was. He had a rather nasty sore throat and had just recovered from a day flu. This wouldn't have been so bad if a presentation deadline hadn't been kicked forward while he was away. Of course, Mr. Spellender refused to allow him to do it the next day, and forced him to recite his rather shoddily done and incomplete presentation with his sore throat, making a complete clown of himself in front of the class. Not fun.

"Heh, nice job there, squeaky!" This insult shouted by some kid in his class was in reference to Steve's above mentioned presentation.

"Yeah? Fuck you too!" Needless to say, he wasn't exactly in a good mood. It wasn't going to get better.

"Hey, calm down... let's just get lunch, alright?"

"Fine."

Steve pushed Ken down the hallway. This was a fairly normal occurance, although Ken had no problem with pushing his wheelchair most of the time. Many of the tiles of the floor were ripped up, and although Ken was used to them, Steve was already angry and wasn't careful enough. Ken bumped across the hallway.

"Hey, watch it! Alright, stupid, let me go myself, thanks."

"Sorry! No need to get so upset!" Steve jumped immediately to his own defense.

"Eh, lemme do it. Really, you need to stop overacting, it's not that damned bad." Ken wasn't trying to offend Steve, but it sure came out that way.

By the time they reached the cafeteria, Steve was still fuming. Ken checked his money.

"Aw, crap... short a dollar for the Coke. You got a buck you could lend me?"

"Yeah, I've got it--" Steve reached into his pocket to get his money to lend, only to discover that he in fact, had not remembered to bring any money for lunch. This was not helping his good mood. "Aw, shit!"

***

"Yee-fucking-haw." Steve, now in the Magnet costume, was trying to calm down by distracting himself -- 'flying' seemed to do that. He should've know better. Not really, and he never would have known anyway. But you know how it is, bad days have a bad habit of becoming worse...

"Shut up, okay? I've had enough of your 'crew' and the shit that you've been bring 'round here. Why shouldn't I shoot you? Huh? Huh? C'mon, I want to hear you beg!" A female voice shouted.

Steve was upset, but... she probably should do something about that. I'd say that Steve deserves at least that much... being called a girl. That's the least that she deserves -- unfortunately for her, she also got the least. Anyway, responsibility kicked in, and she dropped in on the woman holding a gun to the head of a kneeling male youth.

"Hey, hey, hey. I'm sure this boy is a fine upstanding citizen, much like the sky is green, but that doesn't give you the right to..."

"Shut up." The gun moved from pointed at the boy to Magnet herself, "Where the hell did you get that speech from? Really... what kind of girl talks like that? You know what you are? You're a sham. I know what you--" No more words were said, due to a metal fist impacting on her face.

"Oh, and lemme guess, an asshole like you is a linguist, too?"

"Actually, yes. Doing quite well until men like you and that boy took down the neighborhood too, you pieces of crap." She took a shot at Magnet. It fell straight down half a foot in front of her face.

"Well, maybe if you used some of your expertise..." Magnet glared, her voice crackling midsentence, just when it wasn't needed. She was pissed off enough at some disgruntled woman taking a wild stab at her secret; and hitting straight home, "...and realize that you've said quite enough."

Magnet grabbed the gun, pushing enough force onto the gun to severely crush it. It'd never be used again. She also picked the woman up, and threw her against the ground out of anger. She flew off, even more angry than when she came.

"Y'know... I'm not stupid. It's not hard to figure out." Were her last words before falling unconcious. Magnet tried to ignore them.

Were these other circumstances, I would say that it would get much worse before it got better... but that's just a load of crap, and would be far too sarcastic. There's no 'better'. A fairly accurate statement would be closer to, it was going to get a whole lot worse for Magnet until it got slightly less worse.

A couple minutes of flying later, she arrived at the scene of a news truck. No cameras outside of the truck; made sense, in consideration to what happened to the last newscaster. Death of a reporter working for the network did not encourage them to be less cautious. So, they stayed well inside the truck.

If not for the arrival of Magnet, the story being filmed wouldn't be considered newsworthy. It would have been briefly appeared in a special the network was creating on one of the gangs. It was little more than a knife fight between two lowly gangmembers, and not much special. Her arrival, however...

"Hey, careful, idiots. You could put someone's eye out with one of those!" She cursed at the two, trying to compensate for her loss earlier with an easy win.

One of the two fighting gang members looked up in surprise and promptly received a stab to the chest from the person he was fighting with. As the former gang member would have found out -- if, you know, he wasn't dead -- those who engage in serious knife fights have a tendency to fight dirty. But, he was dead, so he didn't make the assumption quick enough, having much better things to think about with his dying breathes.

"Whoa! Bad murderer! What did I say about being careful?!" She pulled the knife out of his hand, it making a ping against the metal glove. She pocketed it.

Turns out, the 'bad murderer' had more than one knife.

Were Steve the real girl with the anatomy that he dreamed of one day having, she'd have a giant, incredibly deep cut across both breasts. Fortunately for Steve, there was no actual flesh there to cut, and instead, the slashing only ripped through the costume and made a scratch on Steve's chest. The costume, however, did fall completely apart.

"What the fuck?!" I'm not entirely sure if the knife-wielding gang member and Magnet said the exact same words... but they both said something close enough to that.

The knife was quickly turned around and thrust into the attacker's chest, before Magnet fly off, the way she came.

Passing right by the newstruck along the way.

They would later have to edit out the massive amount of cursing that Magnet spewed as she realized that the falling apart of the costume was being recorded by the news crew.

***

It was still on the news the next day.

"...the entire city of Ottawa is shocked as vigilante Magnet is discovered to be a male in masquerade. We're showing our footage again that the network was incredibly lucky to have received... literally a coincidence in definition." It cut to the footage that Magnet was unfortunate enough to have participated in the previous day. "As you can see here, the not-so-honest vigilante was interrupting a knife fight in progress when his costume was ripped apart, revealing a male body underneath. He then proceeded to kill the exposer of this elaborate lie..."

I'm not going to repeat Steve's language used, as that would be seriously overkill, even here. I'll say it puts drunken sailors to shame and leave it at that.

He sobbed, as he threw the TV at the wall. It hit the window, instead, and flew out. He'd been crying all morning. All that work... and although nobody knew his face, it ruined his image. His freedom. All the shit that he'd worked towards, gone.

***

Remember when I said 'it would get worse before it got slightly less worse'? I lied. The proceeding day would be just as horrible. As much as he'd love to skip that day, too... he figured that he should go to school. Take his mind off it all. It went well... until 3:15 struck. End of school. He met with Ken at their lockers.

"Man... did you hear about that shit with Magnet on the news? What a lying son of a bitch..."

"Yeah, sure. Whatever the hell..." Steve tried not to show any anger as he went through the metal detectors.

Ken followed through shortly. No indication from the metal detectors.

"Dammit!" One of the security guards operating them swore. "That's just bloody great..."

They both left the school together. Rather than taking a major street, both of them lived in a direction from the school that meant they went through an alleyway to get to a sidestreet, leading to a major street, which finally eventually led to their homes (although they took different routes from that street). But they hadn't gotten that far, and were so far, only in the alleyway.

"Hey. Speaking of sons of bitches and metal detectors... I think we need to talk."

Oh fuck. Steve thought, his heart racing. If he didn't know better, he could've sworn that Ken could hear it. Rationality shortly kicked in. It's got nothing to do with that, stop being so damned irrational. There's nothing he could've have known.

"What about?"

"You remember when you were out of school the other day? I sent you some homework?"

"Yeah..." Steve sighed with relief. See? Worrying too much. Steve thought to himself.

"Well," Ken glared at Steve. "The office gave me your locker combination, I needed to get some stuff from it. How about that thick briefcase in there?"

It wasn't actually a briefcase. It was a well insulated, military carrying case for the Magnet armour. Steve didn't say that.

"You... looked through my stuff? You untrustworthy... snooping through my stuff?"

"Shut up, you lying son of a bitch. I saw what was in it. You wanna explain?"

"...screw yourself." Steve's heart started racing against, glaring harder at Ken. "I'm not a liar."

"Not a liar? What the fuck are you smoking? You go around in some skimpy outfit pretending to be a girl? You sonuva bitch, chronic liar..."

"Shut up! You don't know shit about me!" Steve was on the verge of crying again. He was still upset from the day before, and this sure wasn't helping. Hell, saying 'this sure wasn't helping' is such an incredibly understatement.

"Really? I know that you've been lying to everyone in the damned city! I mean, fine, you get your kicks off something like that, but keep it to yourself, you lying bastard!"

"...I'm...not a liar!" Most people claim to have felt the feeling of 'snapping', of anger completely taking over and losing control. Fact of the matter is, most people don't know shit about losing control. Not in the way that Steve felt right now. Thinking back on it, he didn't even remember pulling the knife out of his pocket, nor did he actually remember flinging it into Ken's chest out of rage. He knew that he did it afterwards, but he sure didn't remember it.

"I'm not a fucking liar... not a liar... I'm not a liar..." was all that he could say. Steve ran. He didn't even realize what he was doing until he ran all the way home, and as he staggered inside his house, dripping blood onto the doorknob as he opened it.

"Oh my God... what... have I..."

***

Two hours later, Steve had managed to wash his face, although as far as he thought, it still showed all the crying that he had done during his electronic conversation with Alty. Fifty dollars bought a bus ticket to Toronto, and in five minutes, he'd be leaving Ottawa, presumably forever.

I'm not going to debate the logic behind Steve's decision to leave. Making a new start, he told Alty. He screwed up... he'd considered killing himself. Ultimately, though... he decided to start again. Run away. Try again. Get a whole new chance to screw up his life. He'd ruined pretty much everything in his life, Magnet, his friend... and killed two people. So... Steve-- no, Stephanie Winters, as he decided to go under now, was standing inside the bus station, waiting to leave. In a couple hours, the police would find Ken's body, and although under-funded as it may be, the police certainly would be able to investigate and find Steve as the murderer. His father was a police officer. He knew that they'd be able to. They couldn't find him in Toronto, though; they wouldn't investigate that far. He knew he had to go.

"Bus number 4 now boarding... bus 4 to Toronto, now boarding." Was announced in the station.

Steve left.