Title: The Attraction of Power
Author: Nopporn Wongrassamee aka The Evil Author
Summary: Mirage muses over her attraction to power.
Disclaimer: The characters and settings belong to whoever owns them. I'm just too lazy to look up who they are.
Power. I love it.
As I told Mr. Incredible, I'm attracted to power. And it's not just power in the form of authority or money that I get as being the Number Two person in Syndrome's empire. There's also physical power as embodied by the Supers. And then there's power of the mind.
But my attraction is a fickle thing. The most important thing about power is that it must be controlled. Power uncontrolled is simply dangerous to everybody, especially myself. After all, what good is power if it harms you in the end?
I was attracted to Syndrome because he had power. His power was intellectual. He could make the most amazing things, especially weapons. His people skills were somewhat lacking, but he had vision. We struck up a partnership of sorts. He made the merchandise and I sold it to anyone who would pay.
I found his geeky, childish manner and obsession with Supers to be amusing. What I remember about Supers from my childhood was everyone suing them left and right, and how everyone was saying they were a dangerous, unpredictable element. So I had no problem luring them to their deaths at the claws of Syndrome's Omnidroids. After all, it's not like the Supers didn't know what they were getting into; I gave them briefings similar to the one I gave Mr. Incredible.
But it was during Mr. Incredible's interrogation that my world view began to shift. When Mr. Incredible had me in his arms and in a grief-fueled rage, threatened to crush me like a toothpick, I believed him. But he didn't. He had raw physical power and he was perfectly in control, even when he later had me by the throat. I think that's when I fell for him. It's a pity that he's already married.
But as for Syndrome, I saw that he wasn't in control. He was a powerful man that was out of control. He didn't care at all if Mr. Incredible killed me or not. All Syndrome cared about was getting his revenge for a childhood grievance and fulfilling a childhood dream. I could tolerate Syndrome not caring about the deaths of innocent children; we sold weapons to questionable governments after all. What I couldn't tolerate was his lack of concern for me.
Loyalty is power too. Syndrome showed me none, so I withdrew mine.
And now? Syndrome is reportedly dead, killed while attempting to kidnap Mr. Incredible's youngest child. Even if he's not, Syndrome would still be a fugitive. That leaves me as head of the organization. True, most of our assets have been frozen by the government. But between turning over carefully edited evidence of Syndrome's misdeeds to the authorities and at the same time offering them some of our more advanced gear, I expect to resolve that shortly.
I told Syndrome that valuing life is not weakness and disregard for life is not strength. Look at me; I held on to those values and they made me one of the richest and most powerful women on the planet. Not only that, I can count the foremost team of Supers in the world as allies, if not friends.
Did I mention that I love power?