Okay, so I've been talking about this AU and working on it for AGES and here it is, it's starting. Part One will follow soon and is where things really start to get going. Thanks to Em and MK for their support and feedback!

It was a world of miracles and monsters, of people born with powers that no one could explain or predict. Some who were born with these powers saw them as a burden, some felt they were a sign that they had a higher purpose and needed to protect the world or try to rule it. The big cities of the world were magnets for people with powers big and small. They came to their streets to try and make their mark on the world or just try to disappear among the masses and forget they had powers at all.

London was no different than New York or Paris or Los Angeles. It called to people whether they had powers or not. Its streets teemed with criminals and honest citizens and politicians. Superheroes and villains roamed among them, indistinguishable from anyone else until they put on their war paint and uniforms and leapt into the limelight.

Bad Wolf was one of the most well-known as well as one of the most mysterious figures on the London superhero scene. She appeared around June of 2014, and started protecting the people of the city from crime both big and small, building a reputation and garnering attention quickly. She didn't seek out any fanfare though, like many did, just let it be known that her name was Bad Wolf and she meant no harm to the normal citizens of London.

No one knew why she went by Bad Wolf. It seemed like an odd name for a superhero but whenever someone had the chance to ask her—reporter or fan—she just shot them a mysterious smile and disappeared without answering.

The criminals she faced had no question as to why she chose her name. They saw her feral lupine smile in all its glory right before she took them out, saw the ruthlessness in her golden eyes that told them that she might be a hero, but that didn't mean she was good .

The media had to piece together what Bad Wolf's powers were via hearsay and secondhand accounts as she did her best to stay out of the public eye. Of course her avoidance just made everyone's curiosity about her grow. The slowly and painstakingly gathered intelligence on the new superhero caused a ripple of unease to go through the city once released. She was a hero but her powers, powers that no one had ever seen the like of before, could so easily be turned to the other side.

(No one liked to admit that any power and powered person had the potential to be good or bad but it was impossible to avoid the conversation when Bad Wolf was involved.)

Bad Wolf held power over time itself and the implications of that, the fact that someone could control something so integral to the universe as time, scared people. It didn't make little girls stop playing at being Bad Wolf or cause the media to stop lauding her actions but it made conversations about her turn to whispers and forced scientists who had been studying the phenomenon of superpowers for decades reevaluate everything.

She manipulated time, stretching and shrinking spans of seconds, spinning it into the shapes she desired and using it as a weapon against those who dared to endanger her city. She played in the space between one second and the next. The reports all said the same thing. When she called on her powers her entire body glowed gold and her eyes looked like molten pools of the substance.

The first time someone snapped a picture of Bad Wolf in her full glory, glowing gold and wrapped in her red outfit, complete with a hood that made her seem more like little Red instead of the big, bad wolf, it made the front page of every paper in London and many others around the world.

It may have been a world of miracles but some things never changed and there were those who thought being a superhero was a man's job, and there were certainly more male than female superheroes in the public eye to back up that flawed opinion. The world sat up and took notice when another female superhero made a splashy entrance to the London superhero scene a year after the debut of Bad Wolf.

The media tried to pit this new hero against the old, tried to create a rivalry but it fizzled out before they could truly get it to stick because their paths never crossed. The two heroes never gave any fuel to the fire, so the media was forced to talk about them separately instead of lumping them together and reducing them to petty, contrived drama. Little girls in London and around the world cheered when one of their heroes was in the news and told their mothers they were going to be heroes too.

The new superhero on the scene was known as Siren. No one questioned her name choice. The ginger superhero was as beautiful and as dangerous as her name suggested. She lured people in with her looks and her charm and then took them down without breaking a sweat as her foes didn't expect anything of substance from her at the beginning and continued to think her powers were exaggerated..

Her powers, once discovered, were as terrifying as Bad Wolf's. In the most basic sense, her power was telekinesis, a common one to have, although most who did could only move small objects a short distance. Superheroes with strong telekinetic powers had been known to move train carriages and cars and other large inanimate objects but it was rare.

Siren, however, moved people. She could control their motions like they were puppets, could stop the beat of their heart in their chest if she so chose.

The scientists already looking for a way to combat Bad Wolf's powers started scrambling to find a way to neutralize Siren's.

Siren didn't talk to the media but she didn't avoid the cameras. Within two months of her appearance there were hundreds of pictures of her signature red hair caught in the wind, of her in the skintight midnight blue costume and mask she had adopted, ruthless smile playing across her face.

Word started circulating in criminal circles that neither Siren nor Bad Wolf were necessarily hindered by the strict moral code that most heroes abided by and endlessly pontificated on. Their paths never crossed but their reputations were similar. Neither of them gave second chances and, if they thought they were doing the right thing, they would smile as they tore someone to pieces.

They were heroes, but they weren't afraid to stain their hands with blood if it meant people would be safer. The media praised their more public deeds and turned a blind eye to the ones that were done in back alleys and empty warehouses, the ones that were more morally grey, because they knew London needed its heroes, needed Siren and Bad Wolf.

What no one knew was that Siren and Bad Wolf needed each other.