Problem Child DELETED SCENES 1/3

I wrote out an entirely different arc (and much shorter storyline!) of Aiko's kidnapping, and then decided I didn't like where that story was going. The prose is fun, though, so I thought you might like to see what could have been. In this deleted iteration, Aiko was a bit more honest, the President was more transparently evil, and Mercy was a bit happier.

It diverges from the scene where Aiko realizes that her dad isn't coming to pick her up from patrol.

“Let’s go find out,” Marvel said gently. “Call your house?”

She nodded sharply and called it with shaking fingers. It rang. She swayed, thinking of what she would say. It rang. It rang. It rang, and then someone picked up with a click. “Mom,” Aiko burst out. “Dad isn’t here.”

“Aiko,” said Mercy Graves on the other side of the phone. “Please don’t be alarmed.”

Her blood ran cold.

“We were so concerned when you weren’t home,” Lex Luthor’s assistant continued. “Where are you? Do you need a ride? Are you with a friend?”

“Yes,” Aiko said slowly. Fuck. Fuck, it turned out the President was evil after all. That was really going to make her life inconvenient. “I’m with a friend. I’ll get home with them. Thanks.” 

She hung up and made eye contact with Marvel, who had cheered up immensely. “That your Mom, kiddo?” he asked cheerfully.

“The President has kidnapped my family,” Aiko said flatly. “I need to go rescue them.”

He blinked at her. “...The President?”

“The President,” she confirmed. She grabbed his sleeve and tugged insistently. “Pick me up, we have to go fight his ninja lady bodyguard. At my house.” 

Marvel let her climb him like a tree, clearly baffled. “Uh- I can take you home, sure,” he said.

…He didn’t believe her. Whatever. “I live that way,” Aiko pointed.

“Taking off,” he said obligingly. He didn’t seem to notice or care when she dug her phone out again to send an update to Robin.

“Thanks for the info,” she painstakingly texted. “Unfortunately, we can’t pursue it tonight. The USA Pres kidnapped my family.”

Robin’s reply was nearly immediate.

“Unfortunate.”

Yeah, it sure was. 

Aiko closed the kitchen door silently. She took a moment to listen to the house. There was no TV on, no radio playing. The heating unit wasn’t humming, which meant the air was pretty cold. She had peeled off her tactical gear, and only put back on what could be hidden underneath her regular clothes. It left her feeling vulnerable.

‘I am not,’ she reminded herself fiercely. ‘Marvel is waiting outside. And I don’t even need him. Mercy is mostly human. I could break her neck and be done with her, if I didn’t want information from her.’

The only sound in the whole house was the faint, regular breathing of one person in the dining room, and period tapping on a phone. “Aiko, honey,” Mercy called. There was a subtle thread of cruel amusement in her voice, despite the kind pitch. “Come in.”

‘I hate her in my house. She and Luthor are too comfortable trifling with me. They’re going to regret this.’

“Coming.” Aiko kept her velcro-strapped tennis shoes on as she walked in. The pink lights danced along the floor as each step activated the shoes. Dang. Outdoor shoes, on the carpet. She suppressed a wince as she crossed out of the kitchen tile onto the white carpet. Mom would be pissed, if she ever learned about it. Well, Aiko mused. Maybe Mom would make an exception for confronting supervillains. 

Mercy was sitting in Mom’s big armchair, her legs crossed at the ankle. She slouched back to survey Aiko with glittering amusement. “Did you have a nice day?” She asked, tilting her head to the side in a challenge.

‘I’m going to kill her,’ Aiko promised. She smiled shyly and clambered up onto the sofa. “Fine,” she said. She dropped her bag beside her as if the contents weren’t an important secret. Predictably, Mercy glanced at the dinosaurs-on-rollerskates themed backpack and dismissed it. Stupid of her. It was a great backpack. Also, she had a knife in the side pocket. Probably more importantly than that, her phone was open to a call with Robin so that he and his mysterious friend could help find information. 

Aiko pushed down the vindictive pleasure at so easily slipping this past Mercy. Mercy was unforgivably sloppy. A disgrace of an operative, really. 

“We went to the store and we ran and then we had a fight,” she rambled. “But it’s okay, we made up.” She looked at Mercy as if she expected praise for this.

“Good work.” Mercy’s eye twitched. But her tone was even, which was pretty impressive, given her hot temper. Her icy blonde hair reflected the dim light in the room, a threadbare spill from the streetlights outside.

‘Are my parents going to want to move again?’ Aiko resisted the urge to sigh heavily. Might as well cut to the chase. “Why are you here? Where is my Mom?” 

And her brother, and her father, she did not bother saying. She watched the older woman smirk. 

“Your parents had to go to work,” Mercy lied. Man, she really thought kids were this dumb? “Your brother is at my house, with my friend Hope. Your Mom said you two should come and stay with us.” She didn’t smile so much as she bared her teeth. Aiko immediately hoped that her brother hadn’t met this woman. She would have scared him so bad.

‘They took Natty as leverage against me, and to see if he has any potential like I do.’

The play immediately became clear. Luthor wanted full control of her development and environment. He wanted to raise her to be loyal to him. He had the wealth and personal power to pull it off, whether he intended to keep her a secret or illegally adopt her under a new name. She had a sick suspicion:

‘Mom and Dad are probably dead.’

Aiko took a moment to respond, even though she needed to keep talking to keep Mercy from realizing anything was wrong. Her hands were shaking. If this was her- no, if it was Danzo stealing a kid to raise as a weapon, he would kill the parents. It was neater if there was no one to make a fuss about missing kids, and it wasn’t like her parents had any personal or political power to protect them in this world. They weren’t a Hokage and a Jounin. They were firefighters, which was cool and all, but it was nothing to this kind of threat.

Shit. She had really fucked up. Her whole body shuddered. “And where is that? Is it close?” Her voice nearly broke. Shit. She was off her game. She needed to get it together, she needed to keep it together. Her brother needed her. Fuck. Her breathing picked up.

“Oh, don’t cry,” Mercy said carelessly. There was no attempt at comfort in her voice. She stood up, digging her heels into Mom’s nice carpet. “It’s not so far away. My car is in the garage. Let’s go.”

Aiko licked her lips. “Okay, thanks,” she said. She picked her backpack up and put it on. “Do I need to bring anything for the night?” She probed for information. Obviously, Luthor was never going to let her come back here. How much were they going to lie to her? Her misery hardened into cold fury.

“You should get your pajamas and clothes for tomorrow.” Mercy walked past Aiko carelessly on her way out of the room. She was within an easy arm’s length. The disregard would have been infuriating if it wasn’t such a gorgeous opportunity. Aiko could see it- one strike to the spinal cord, and it would be over for this wretch.

She fought down the desire to pull out her knife and plunge it into the small of Mercy’s back. She could do it with her hand, just break Mercy’s back with a hit, but she wanted to overt violence of hot blood spraying across the room.

‘It would be so easy.’

The moment passed. Aiko controlled herself. She pushed off the couch to follow as Mercy walked into Aiko’s bedroom and flipped on the light. The audacity was breathtaking.

‘She’s already been around the whole house to know the layout,’ Aiko realized. ‘Am I really not meant to recognize that she shouldn’t know where my room is?’

The intrusion in her personal space rankled, but she was disciplined enough not to let it show.

“Jammies are there,” Aiko said importantly, pointing. Mercy gave her a poisonous look but went. She took a small amount of pleasure in bossing Mercy around. It probably wouldn’t last if she played along with the kidnapping for long. The kid gloves would come off in Luthor’s plan eventually. He had to have a plan for dealing with her when she became intransigent, and he had to be smart enough to know that she would become a big goddamn problem when he never sent her back to her family. 

She took out a change of clothes carelessly. It didn’t matter what it was, the yellow dress and long tan socks that were on the top of her drawer would be fine. It wasn’t like she was actually going to stay with these people. Aiko opened the main part of her backpack and put in the clothes, hyper aware of the phone in the front pocket and the knife in the front. Anyone competent would do a quick search of the bag, and then they would miss out on this lead. 

Mercy tossed the pajamas toward her carelessly and slammed the dresser shut. Aiko caught them out of the air, chirped a thanks, and shoved them on top before closing the bag again and putting on the straps. She looked around her room, ready to leave– and then couldn’t resist darting forward to grab the plushie off her bed. She squeezed the little doll defensively. It was- it was just part of her act as a helpless child. It didn’t make her feel a little safer or braver. That would be stupid.

Mercy looked at the plushy. Her nose wrinkled. “Is that… Etrigan?” She sounded disgusted. “The demon?”

Aiko hugged it a little harder. “Yes, he’s my favorite,” she said. That was common knowledge, Mercy could find that out from her schoolmates or any of the photos of her last birthday party. 

What she kept to herself was that the idea of an evil being from hell being a superhero was sort of a personal inspiration. She followed at Mercy’s heels like a duckling, pliant and quiet as she raged internally.

Aiko watched the suburbs pass outside the car window for a while. Mercy had wanted her in the front seat. On the one hand, that wasn’t very smart given that she was obviously too small for it to be legal. But on the other– 

Well. Mercy would probably rather risk dealing with a traffic cop than whatever Aiko could do when out of sight.

‘I wish I had played it subtler with her. This would be easier if she had no suspicions about me.’

Hindsight was perfect vision. Aiko tried not to feel too irritated with herself for toying with Mercy before. She hadn’t known. She’d been testing and assessing them because she knew there was something sketchy about them, after all. 

They left city limits and made no move to slow down. Aiko considered how dumb and patient to play this– she had cheated herself of the total ingenue role, but she was genuinely a small child.

“We’re going to your house, right?” Aiko said, deciding it had been long enough that a child would lose their ability to wait quietly. She lowered her chin to rest her face on Etrigan’s soft tummy. “I didn’t know you lived in my city. I thought you lived in D.C.” 

Mercy sighed, obviously sick of humoring a child. “I don’t,” she said shortly. Her tone did not invite elaboration. 

‘She might just be an asshole with no patience for kids in the first place.’

Aiko kicked her feet a little in the front passenger seat, trying to do something with her excess energy. Her arms were wrapped around her backpack. The speaker should still be aimed at Mercy. She didn’t really know what Robin needed to hear, or how he expected to be able to help given that he lived so far away and they didn’t even know where Mercy would take her. 

She caught a faint flash of movement in the sky. Aiko was careful not to turn to look. It was probably Marvel tailing them. If Luthor really didn’t know that Aiko was associated with Marvel, it was a good trump card to keep in the wings.

‘It doesn’t matter how good I am,’ Aiko thought grimly. ‘I can’t extract one or more hostages in hostile territory without ally support.’

So she had to get them there, ideally without a huge delay while they chased her. So she tried again. “Are we going to the big white house?”

Mercy sighed, irritated. “No.” She took a sharp turn that made Aiko bump against the door. Something in her bag clacked when it connected with the hard plastic. That wasn’t what you’d expect to hear from a child’s bag of packed clothes. It was the holster for her knives, actually.

Fuck.

She could see Mercy wonder what it was. Her eyes narrowed. And she opened her mouth–

“By the way, do you have your present with you?” Mercy asked. “The one-”

“Yes.” Aiko cut her off, because Mercy could say anything too incriminating. She did not want Marvel or Robin to know that she had a big green rock or a gun. Or that she had accepted presents from Luthor. “I love birthday presents.”

It would probably come out, but later was better with that sort of thing. It wasn’t like Robin or Marvel had any room to talk. They were obviously child vigilantes as well. Hmm. Maybe she didn’t care what they thought…

‘I should get the gun case out, move it to be more accessible.’ Aiko fiddled with the zipper head of her bag. ‘It would be satisfying to shoot Luthor with the weapon he gave me. And it wouldn’t connect me to Marvel’s apprentice figure.’

Mercy snorted. “So I have heard.” She pulled down a rather narrow paved road that looked unobtrusive. The surrounding area was flat and green and… and there was a huge expanse of concrete coming into view. There were small figures in the distance, lit from below.

“Are those airplanes?” Aiko blurted out. She leaned forward hard enough to tug at her seatbelt. Fuck. Marvel could not fly fast enough to keep up with an airplane, she was pretty sure. 

‘We are going somewhere further than I expected,’ she thought grimly. ‘Probably DC, then, so I am accessible. That’s… That’s closer to Gotham, actually. It might help with Robin. But between the two of them, I would rather have Marvel than Robin in a fight.’

“Yes. Be quiet.” Mercy drove down a gently curving road at high speed. The car engine got increasingly loud as they flew down private roads.

It was dark by this point, so it was a little hard to tell. But Aiko looked out the window and tried to find signs of people– cars, lights inside the big building they were circling. 

‘It’s pretty empty. Is it possible to privately own an airport?’ 

Aghast at the sheer tackiness, Aiko was struck silent as Mercy finally parked the car. She remembered at the last second to check the dashboard and note the time– 10:12PM. They had been driving for about 40 minutes. The time disappeared as Mercy turned the car off and immediately threw her door open. She got out with an angry click of heels and a jingle as she yanked the keys out of sight. “Hurry up.”

Charming.

Aiko unbuckled and used her foot to push the door open, getting up and slinging her backpack on as quickly as possible to trot after Mercy’s heels. They crossed the tarmac towards a plane. Aiko looked it over as well as she could in the dark– white, medium-sized, with a stripe in dark blue. It was a handsome machine, and it was humming warmly as they approached it. 

The first human beings she saw were two pin-thin flight attendants standing on either side of stairs that glinted silver where the plush carpet didn’t cover. Aiko waved and received no reaction. Mercy didn’t acknowledge them at all, only glancing back to be sure that Aiko was following her up the stairs. She stepped onto the plane and heard steps behind her as the flight attendants followed. 

“Here.” Mercy took a right and then ducked into a seat row to grip Aiko’s shoulder firmly and navigate her to walk in front. There were only three rows of regular seats before the plane opened up into what looked like a hotel lounge.

Two people were sitting there, waiting. Lex Luthor had a short glass with an amber liquid carelessly in hand as he sat, slouched back. 

Across from him, Aiko’s mom was sitting pin-straight and twisting her hands together. Her dark eyes looked haunted under the ugly cold lights. “Baby!” she blurted out.

“Mom!” Aiko threw herself onto her Mom’s lap, putting herself between her and the threat. 

Luthor laughed. “See,” he said smugly. “No need to worry. We found your little girl.”

She could feel Mom’s heart beat racing under her cheek. Mom clutched the back of her head, fingers digging in just a little bit possessively. “Of course,” she said stiffly. “I shouldn’t have doubted you.”

“Of course,” Luthor agreed. Aiko held herself still, integrating this new information.

‘Dad might be alive too,’ she realized, full of hope. ‘He is using us against each other. He’s going to use her to convince me that things are fine, so that I listen to him. If he wants to play it that way, he has to keep her around for quite a while.’

“Where is–”

“Your brother is sleeping, baby,” Mom cut her off. It was a lie. Or it wasn’t the important truth. The important thing was that her hands were shaking. She needed Aiko to believe this. “It’s your bedtime too, sweetheart.”

“Mercy will take her to her bed,” Luthor said carelessly. Aiko didn’t have to look to know that Mercy would be scowling. “We have a lot to talk about, after all, Ms. Uzaki.”