As Leanna looked down at me, capping my height by a good foot, she blinked. "You're so small." She mused. "I'd never noticed."

"I was estrogen-afflicted as a teenager." I shrugged. "Didn't get any testosterone-fueled growth spurts until after my growth plates had fused."

"Wait, so you're..." Leanna trailed off, blinking. I let her process the new information. It wasn't exactly something that had come up before in her life.

"Did you ever wonder," Issy asked quietly, "why most of the heros you know are trans?"

"Not really. I kind of figured they just kept us together for our own safety. It's not like we get to know everyone. Besides, a lot of the newest ones aren't." Leanna shrugged.

"You're about the same age as Issy, so you weren't alive when it started." I spoke quietly. "The conservatives were losing ground in their battle to keep the status quo. They kept targeting the trans community, trying to make trans women public enemy number one. It was failing, in part because the existence of trans men threw a wrench into all of their arguments about 'keeping women's spaces for biological women,' so a few people with a lot of money decided to deal with the problem extrajudicially.

"They targeted injectable testosterone and estrogen, falsely assuming that only trans people use it. The thing is, they weren't trying to kill us outright, because that would be too obvious. They added things that attacked our DNA, changed us, and in a way they succeeded. You see, it's not illegal to be trans, but it is illegal to be Changed and not register with the government. It was only about five years ago that the government found out what was causing the changes and stopped them very, very quietly. We know because our people are the ones who inflitrated the companies, found out what was going on, and leaked the information.

"The United States government kept it hush-hush, and convinced almost all the other governments to do the same, because they realized that they had just been handed, gift-wrapped, a means of keeping a database of all the trans people. Heroes are the Changed who accept their orders. Villains are the Changed who either refuse to register with them, or refuse to bow to them, and though they track non-trans Changed, they don't conern themselves nearly as much with them unless they are actively harming others."

"What about the new kids?" Leanna asked. "They're not on hormones - hell, most of them are actual children."

"The people deciding what to add to the hormones didn't think about the fact that trans people can reproduce." I replied dryly. "Or that genetic changes might be passed on."

"That's - stupid." Leanna looked disgusted by what I'd told her.

"Bigots usually are." Issy muttered.

"They also really didn't expect the number of cis people who had changes, though many of those were far less intense. You see, the changes occurred incrementally over time and by dosage, so a cis man just supplementing his testosterone got a much smaller overall dose than those of us completely replacing our hormone production." I chuckled. "Athletes, on the other hand, had rapid changes that often ruined their careers, but because they were illegally doping it was pushed under the rug and the companies were able to quickly pivot and start producing just enough uncontaminated to supply to athletes so they wouldn't get caught. The whole thing was considered a single bad batch and then the world forgot."

"Is that why you're so powerful? Because you took it for so long?" Leanna asked suddenly.

I smiled. "Yes and no. A lot of us figured out pretty quickly what was happening, and the ones who had a choice often chose to stop taking their hormones or reduce their dosage. I was curious, and at the time I had no hope, so I actually very slightly increased my dosage. A group of us got together and figured out which companies were selling the contaminated hormones - all of them, by the way - and we figured out how to filter most of the contaminants out. It took us almost 10 years to figure that out, and another 13 to infiltrate the companies and gather the evidence we needed to get them shut down. We became a reseller of as much of the stock as we could, but they never sold only to us and we could only do so much. Through all of it, though, I took the contaminated stuff, but only when each change was finished. We wanted to know what would happen, and I didn't have any other reason to bother living." I shrugged, long at peace with the decisions depression had guided.

"You also spend a ridiculous amount of time every day training." Issy added with a half-glare.

"This is also true." I acknowledged. "About 3 hours a day of mixed cardio, body weight and resistance exercises, and martial arts."

"On his rest days, he goes on a three hour walk." Issy snarked, speaking to Leanna, but pointing her ire at me.

"I get stiff if I don't move enough." I shrugged nonchalantly back at her, my exercise being a longstanding annoyance of hers. "And I have to be able to contain any heroes who come by at any time without killing them."

"They're planning to drop a targeted nuke on your base." Leanna blurted out.

"I know." I replied.

"Today!" Leanna added.

"I know." I pushed my mug away a bit and leaned back on my hands. "My people will be clearing out of the upper levels soon, just in case."

Herbert poked his head thorugh the door, saying only, "it's time."

"My people will be clearing out now." I addended. "You'll either want to go with Herbert, or head out. You won't want to be here." I got to my feet and stretched, then waved the girls to stand as well.

Issy reached over and grabbed Leanna's hand, tugging her towards Herbert.

Leanna started to follow, looking like her head was spinning with the information I'd given her.

I reached over and caught Leanna's arm. When her eyes met mine, I flicked mine towards Issy, then placed the words take care of her in her head. She looked taken aback, then nodded.

As Issy and Leanna were led to the well-shielded areas below, I took the stairs to the roof. It was time to retire.

What only those who are completley trusted know - and we'd used me and the others who kept taking their doses to figure out how to selectively unlock abilities, so our most committed members were all telepaths - is that I am not the head of the organization. I am the face. The villain everybody knows about. The one everybody blames. I am the one heroes try to kill.

And I am tired.

Today, our compound will be razed to the ground, all lives lost.

In ten years, or fifteen, or five, somebody will realize that people are trying to pick up where "my" organization left off, and another face will rise. Another villain will take the stage and dance with death again and again.

Someday, maybe, the last true villain will lay dead. The last liar who will rile up the masses with hyperbole and falsehoods just for views and fame will be a bloody smear on the ground. The last vestiges of corporate and personal greed that leave others hungry while food lies rotting and poisoned in dumpsters, leaves people cold in the rain while apartments lie empty, their prices too high for anyone to actually rent, will be erased from this planet.

Someday, maybe, my daughter won't need armed guards when she marries her partner. For now, though, I know that, whether I live or die today, whether I can control this blast while stopping the knife I'm pretty sure will be planted in my back or not, if she needs those guards, she will have them.