#SuperViral, Ch 7: Collateral Damage & Clickbait Pt. 2

The lie, Connor Feder had decided, was the soft lighting, the endless PR packages, the gentle indie pop. The lie was the cloying, predictable perfection of his life with Jenna.

It was the soft lighting she insisted on for their apartment. It was the endless stream of light-colored PR packages. It was the gentle, looping indie pop music that played in the background of her BeamCast videos. His life with Jenna had become a brand. It was a carefully planned #CoupleGoals hashtag that felt as tight and uncomfortable as his hero suit after a twelve-hour shift. His life was content, co-created and curated for public view.

He scrolled through his Lens social media feed. His thumb moved with practiced speed. There was Jenna's latest post: a beautifully lit picture of her holding a mug of herbal tea. The caption read, "Cozy nights in with my hero after a long week. So grateful for these quiet moments. ✨ #Blessed #GlowUp." It already had eighty thousand likes.

It was perfect. It was stable. It was the kind of family-friendly, sponsor-safe content that kept his bosses at the Windy City Guardians happy. But it was completely, soul-crushingly boring.

He was a hero with kinetic powers, trapped in a still-life painting. His own patrols, which used to give him a real adrenaline rush, had become a dull routine. The small-time crooks and petty criminals of Chicago didn't offer any truly epic video footage.

Then there was Roxxi. Roxxi was the cure for the boring sameness of his life. She was all sharp edges and even sharper jokes, a challenge wrapped in spandex and ambition. Her gym was a glorious mix of clanging iron and raw effort. Her apartment was a simple concrete loft, all amazing city views and hard edges. A weapon rack passed for modern art on one wall.

Their time together was a high-stakes game of witty arguments and physical competition. She understood the hunger for more - more followers, more power, more impact. With her, he wasn't just "Jenna's hero boyfriend"; he was Kinetic, a force of nature. He told himself it wasn't really cheating. Cheating was emotional, about replacing someone. This was… keeping things separate. It was letting off steam, a necessary release from the huge pressure of keeping up his public image. He was a hero, after all. Heroes had needs, stresses that normal people, that Jenna, couldn't possibly understand.

This excuse looped in his head as he stood on the edge of a skyscraper overlooking the Chicago River. The wind whipped at his suit. He had his phone mounted on a hidden body cam, feeding directly to his BeamCast channel. "Alright, team," he said, his voice a confident deep tone for his viewers, "Kinetic here. Got a tip about some low-level arms runners using the old wharf down there. Time to make a house call."

He took a running start and leaped from the building. The stomach-dropping fall was pure adrenaline. Just before he hit the next rooftop, he used his power. A series of three shimmering blue-white copies of himself peeled away from his body. Each one did a perfect, acrobatic roll upon landing, creating a stunning visual display of his kinetic mastery. He landed perfectly himself, the hero shot. That's the clip for Current, he thought, a flicker of satisfaction cutting through his professional focus. But as he was admiring his own work, a small-time lookout, surprised by the display, scrambled away from the edge of the roof and slipped down a fire escape, disappearing into the maze of alleys below. The element of surprise was gone. A prickle of professional guilt surfaced - the main goal was to stop the arms deal, not to create a viral video. He quickly pushed the feeling down. The lookout was a nobody. But the engagement numbers from that landing would be spectacular. On a secret channel, he sent a quick text to Roxxi: "You see that entrance? Top that." The reply came back instantly: "Show-off. Buy me a drink later and maybe I'll be impressed."

The thrill of the exchange was stronger than the thrill of the chase had been.

***

The walls of Connor's carefully separated lives began to feel less like strong concrete and more like crumbling drywall. The digital world, once his triumphant playground, was turning against him.

It started quietly. Anonymous comments on his Lens posts, hidden under the loving fan messages. "Heard you're echoing somewhere else these days, Kinetic." A comment on a photo of him and Jenna: "She looks so happy. Wonder if she knows about @RoxxiFlex." He deleted them instantly, blocking the accounts, brushing them off as trolls, as jealous Valora fans who couldn't move on. But the comments kept coming, like persistent, biting insects.

Then his name started appearing on the well-known Super-gossip forums. These were the digital back alleys where anonymous users traded unproven rumors and grainy long-distance photos. Threads titled "Kinetic's New Workout Partner?" and "#Conna on the Rocks?" were getting popular. His carefully managed story, the one he and Jenna and their agents had spent two years building, was slipping from his control. It was being rewritten by faceless strangers. A sour, buzzing heat rose in his throat.

Jenna's behavior only made his anxiety worse. She was quiet. Her usual bright energy was gone. Her smiles didn't quite reach her eyes. Her positivity on her own streams felt fake, strained. A part of him, a small, withered part, felt a pang of guilt. He knew he was the reason for her withdrawn sadness. But that guilt was quickly pushed down by a larger, more defensive annoyance.

That quiet. The withdrawn sadness. It was the same silent treatment Valora used to give him, the same disappointed sighs that made him feel like a villain just for wanting to breathe. A familiar script began to play in his head: the hushed questions, the draining talks. Valora's face, tight with suspicion. He felt the walls of the apartment shrink. This feeling, this annoyance, strangely justified his continued secrecy. He was pulling away because she was pushing him away with her silent accusations. He deserved the simple, adrenaline-fueled comfort Roxxi offered.

To fight the rumors and show his dominance again, he decided to go all in. He needed to prove he was still a top-tier hero, focused and powerful. He announced a special live-streamed night patrol on his BeamCast channel, promising his followers "raw, uncut action." It was a reckless move, but he felt like he had no other choice.

He sat on a rain-wet gargoyle overlooking an abandoned warehouse district in the West Loop. The city lights were a glittering pattern below. "Alright, team, Kinetic here, live and on the scene," he murmured into his comms mic. The audio fed directly to his thousands of viewers. "Got info about a possible exchange happening in that warehouse. Smuggled tech. Could be dangerous. We're on full watch."

A few blocks away, as they had planned beforehand, Roxxi was also live-streaming on her Lens account. She was in her own high-tech gym, in the middle of a workout. Sweat gleamed on her sculpted arms. "Putting in that late-night work," she said to her own audience, pausing to catch her breath. "Feels good knowing heroes like @KineticFlow are out there right now, keeping us all safe while we grind." It was a subtle, thrilling digital link between them, a shared secret hidden in plain sight.

For twenty minutes, Connor provided expert commentary. His focus seemed total. He pointed out guard patrols, analyzed weak spots, and built the tension perfectly for his audience. The chat scroll accelerated, a blur of fire emojis and breathless questions. Then, during a quiet moment, his personal phone-the one he stupidly hadn't put on silent-buzzed in his utility belt. He pulled it out, annoyed, keeping it below the body-cam's view. It was a text from Roxxi, sent deliberately to his public number. The notification banner flashed for a fraction of a second at the very top of his stream's screen. It was a tiny but catastrophic calculated move.

Roxxi 💪🔥: Bored yet? My place is way more fun… 😉

It was on screen for less than a second before he swiped it away. The air in his lungs turned to ice. But in the digital age, a second was forever. His stream chat, which had been full of tactical talk, instantly changed.

User_NightWatcher: WOAH did anyone else see that??

SuperSleuth_Chi: SCREENSHOTTED! Who is Roxxi?!

Conna4Ever: that's that fitness girl right? wtf is going on?

GossipGhoul: OH THE TEA IS HOT TONIGHT!

Connor fumbled. His voice was suddenly a half-octave higher than usual. "Uh… just a… a team alert, folks! Encrypted message, codename 'Roxxi.' Standard protocol. All good." He tried to sound like he was in charge, but the lie was thin and pathetic. He knew it. The viewers knew it. The damage was done. The rumors now had a face, a name, and a time-stamped, undeniable piece of digital evidence. The walls of his separated lives hadn't just cracked; they had been broken through.

He was losing control. The anxiety turned to anger. This was the result of Jenna's jealousy. He was a hero. He needed the adrenaline, the excitement. It wasn't his fault.

He was ready to go into the warehouse and kick the shit out of something.

"Alright, team, let's head in," he said, voice tight and angry. "This is where it gets real. We're live."

His team, a group of junior heroes, was waiting in a nearby alley, out of the range of his Lens-cast. They had been following his lead, listening in, and they were ready for action.

But Connor didn't wait for them. Instead, he ran toward the warehouse, a burst of kinetic energy launching him over the chain-link fence and across the cracked parking lot. He landed near the back door, his boots making an impressive crater in the wet concrete. A couple of the guards shouted in surprise. One raised his weapon, a standard-issue pulse rifle.

Connor laughed. "You think that toy's gonna do anything?" He pulled the gun from the man's hands with a quick jerk of kinetic energy and threw it to the ground. The other guards, confused and frightened, ran off. Connor stepped forward, his hand crackling with power. The guard, unarmed, panicked and tried to run, but Connor caught him by the ankle. With a sharp twist, the guard flipped in midair, landing on his back. Connor put a knee in the center of the man's chest, holding him down with his super-strength.

"You wanna try and take me, huh? You and what army?" Connor asked, his voice low and dangerous. The man whimpered. Connor punched him, once, twice, three times, a solid hit to the gut. The man doubled over, coughing and wheezing. Blood dripped from a cut on his cheek.

"Connor, stop!" cried one of the junior heroes. "The others got away. We have to bring this guy in."

Connor stood up, slowly. He looked at his bloody knuckles. They tingled. His pulse pounded in his ears.

"Right," he said, suddenly exhausted. "Bring him in."

He turned off his Lens camera. The night patrol was over.

***

Connor walked back to the apartment. The adrenaline from the warehouse fight mixed with the cold dread from his disastrous live stream. Beating up that guard, the satisfying crunch of his knuckles, had been a welcome release. It was a physical way to deal with the digital cage that was closing in on him.

He was already creating a story in his head, a plan to fix the damage. He'd claim his personal phone had been hacked, a planned attack by anti-Super trolls to make him look bad. He'd release a statement with the Windy City Guardians about the successful operation. He would bury the notification mistake under a mountain of heroic action videos. He could save this. He just needed to get his story straight, maybe get Jenna to post something supportive, to show they were a united team.

He pushed open the apartment door. He already had a charmingly sorry line about a "tough patrol" on his lips. It died there. Jenna was waiting for him in the living room. The soft, gentle lighting she usually liked was off. Instead, a single, harsh floor lamp cast long, twisted shadows across the room. It looked like a room for an interrogation.

She wasn't crying. She wasn't pacing. She was sitting perfectly still on the edge of their stylish grey couch. Her back was very straight. A tablet rested on her lap. The mood was icy, all its usual warmth gone.

"Hey," he began. His voice sounded weak and empty in the tense silence. "Long night."

"We need to talk, Connor," she said. Her voice was quiet, calm, and had none of the emotion he was used to controlling. It was the calm of a battlefield after the fight is over. It terrified him more than any tears or shouting ever could.

He tried to change the subject, to take control. "Jen, I know you probably saw some stuff online about the stream, my phone was hacked, it's a whole thing, I can explain-"

"No," she cut him off. The single word was like the crack of a whip. "No more explaining. No more stories. Just the truth." She tapped the screen of her tablet, then turned it to face him. "Let's start with this."

It was the screenshot. A crystal-clear picture of his phone screen, with the notification from Roxxi 💪🔥 shown in all its damning, winking-face glory. "A team alert, Connor? 'Codename Roxxi'? Is that really the best you could do?" Her voice was filled with a contempt so cold it was almost elegant.

"Jenna, listen-"

"No. You listen." She swiped the screen. Another image appeared: a side-by-side comparison. On the left, a screenshot of his Lens post from three weeks ago. It was captioned "Late night patrol keeping Chicago safe #HeroLife," and time-stamped at 1:15 AM. On the right, a screenshot of Roxxi's Lens story from the same night. It was a short video of two cocktail glasses clinking in a dimly lit, recognizable downtown bar, time-stamped at 1:30 AM. One of the hands in the video was clearly his. The unique silver ring he wore glinted in the low light.

He stared. His mind scrambled to find an excuse, a believable lie. But she wasn't finished. She swiped again. It was a direct message conversation between her and a person they both knew, a low-level influencer. The friend's messages were full of apologies but clearly confirmed what had happened. "Jen, I'm so sorry, I saw them at The Gilded Lily last week. It definitely looked like more than a 'charity collab' meeting."

She had receipts. Real, undeniable proof. The gaslighting, the heroic excuses, the "secret information" shields - they were all useless now. They crumbled to dust against the hard, cold wall of her evidence. The charming image of Connor "Kinetic" Feder shattered completely. All that was left was a cornered, panicked man.

"This!" he finally exploded, his voice raw and desperate. "This is why! This is why I needed space! You're suffocating me, Jenna! Going behind my back, talking to people, screenshotting my life like some kind of… of stalker! You're just like Valora was!"

"Don't you dare bring her into this!" Jenna stood up. Her own voice rose, the icy calm finally breaking. "She was right about you! I was a fool to believe I was different. I was just the next convenient, understanding idiot for you to lie to!"

"My life is not a goddamn 'Get Ready With Me' video!" he yelled, walking towards her. "You think your little makeup tutorials are the same as what I do? The pressure I'm under every single night? The risks I take? You have no idea what it's like!"

"My 'little makeup videos' built me a career, Connor! A career you were more than happy to use every time you needed to boost your precious engagement numbers! Don't you dare put down what I do!"

The argument spiraled. It was a raw, ugly flood of accusations and resentments that had been building for months. It was in this moment of extreme arrogance, of needing to win, to prove he was right, that he made his final, disastrous mistake. He snatched his phone, his thumb jabbing at the screen. "You want to act crazy? Fine! Let's show everyone the real Jenna Evans! Let's show them the needy, insecure woman behind the #GlowUp!"

He hit the live button on his Lens account. The small indicator glowed, broadcasting their toxic, private breakdown to the world.

"What are you doing?!" Jenna shrieked. Her eyes were wide with disbelief and horror.

"I'm showing them the truth!" he roared. A wild, cornered look was on his face. The fury and humiliation of the night boiled over. The familiar thrum of kinetic energy in his veins turned into a high-pitched, angry whine, begging for release. He felt a surge of raw power, hot and uncontrolled. A shimmering blue-white Kinetic Echo of himself, twisted and jagged with anger, lashed out from his body. It wasn't a controlled trick, but a violent spasm. It shot across the room and slammed into the large, fancy mirror on the wall, shattering it into a thousand pieces with a deafening crash.

The sight of the destruction, the sound of Jenna's sharp, terrified gasp, sobered him for a moment. He looked from the shattered mirror, to her horrified face, to the glowing 'LIVE' icon on his phone. His breath hitched in his throat.

Jenna stared at him. Her face was a mask of cold fury and genuine heartbreak. All the love, all the curated perfection, had been burned up in this single, ugly moment. "Get out," she said. Her voice was barely a whisper, but it carried the finality of a death sentence. "Get out of my apartment. Now."

He fumbled with his phone, his hands shaking, and ended the stream. They were plunged back into a silence broken only by the faint, tinkling sound of a stray piece of glass falling from the mirror frame. The perfect couple was officially, publicly, and spectacularly over.

The click of the apartment door shutting behind him was the loudest sound Connor had ever heard. He stood in the clean, brightly lit hallway. He held his gym bag in one hand and his phone in the other. He felt strangely empty, as if his powers had scooped out his insides. The adrenaline was gone, replaced by a buzzing, confused shame.

His phone, which had been vibrating non-stop in his pocket, now seemed to burn in his palm. He unlocked it. It was a digital disaster. Notifications flooded the screen, a relentless deluge from every platform. His Lens account, his Current feed, even his professional Lifeline page were being bombarded.

He scrolled numbly. #KineticCheats was trending at number one, worldwide. #JayGlowsDown and #TeamValoraWasRight were not far behind. The gossip sites had already clipped and reposted the most brutal moments of their live-streamed fight. People were already writing opinion pieces about toxic masculinity in the Super community. Memes were already circulating: a picture of the shattered mirror with the caption "Kinetic's relationship status."

The comments were a river of hate. "Hypocrite." "Trash hero." "Knew he was a snake when he did Valora dirty." His carefully built brand, the charming, slightly reckless hero, had been burned to the ground. Even his loyal fans were turning on him, disgusted by his aggression, his lies, his cruelty to Jenna.

He saw texts from his agent, each one more frantic than the last. "Connor, what the HELL did you do?! Call me NOW!" Then a formal, ice-cold message from his boss at the Windy City Guardians: "Feder. You are on immediate administrative leave pending a full conduct review. Do not report for patrol. Do not represent this agency in any capacity. We will be in touch." He was suspended. Benched. An outcast.

He kept scrolling, like a form of digital self-punishment, watching his life's work burn down in real-time. He saw a repost of Valora's latest Lens story - her laughing with friends on a beach, looking happy, successful, and completely unbothered. The caption someone had added read, "The unbothered queen we should have stanned all along." It was a brutal, public victory for her, and an equally public condemnation of him.

Then, in the middle of the storm of hate and professional ruin, a new message popped up. It was from Roxxi.

Roxxi 💪🔥: Heard things got messy. My place is open if you need somewhere to crash 😉.

He stared at her message, at the winking emoji that felt both like a lifeline and an anchor tied to his ankles. He looked at the digital fire of his life on his screen, the career he'd destroyed, the relationships he'd shattered. A strange, empty mix of shame and anger churned in his gut. But beneath it, there was a flicker of something else: a defiant, reckless excitement. He had been exposed, yes. But he had also been, in the most destructive way possible, set free from the sickening perfection he'd grown to hate.

His thumb hovered over the keyboard. He thought of Jenna's heartbroken, furious face. He thought of his suspension. Then he thought of Roxxi's concrete loft, the clanging iron of her gym, the exciting challenge in her eyes.

Choosing the thrill of the new over the smoking wreckage of the old, he began to type his reply.

He was completely, utterly unprepared for the true, lasting extent of the collateral damage that was still to come.

***