Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm a Supervillain (21 page)

The thing heard Ray land, and looked back at us over his shoulder. His eyes widened, which merely left them tiny, piggy, and black. “You brought her. You really are The Inscrutable Machine!” His transformation had given him a wheezy, squeaky voice I couldn’t hope to match up to one of my classmates. I might even be imagining how excited he sounded; it was that garbled.

And boy, the transformation. I had to feel bad for him, inheriting a power like this. He had all of the ugly. All of it. He hadn’t left any ugly for anybody else. No hair, his head fusing into his shoulders in a mass of blubbery gray muscle, skin like armadillo or rhino hide, and the grossly distended face that brought attention to his sharp teeth—that was just the first glance. He couldn’t look more like a supervillain if he tried.

Speaking of…

I lifted my air conditioner cannon and pointed it at his hideous face. “That’s us. I’ll sign your head just as soon as you put down the girl. This is your first time, so I’ll give you a hint—hostage dramas give us more time to surround you.”

That set off a wheezing gusher. “You would sign my head? Really? What about my shirt? You can’t write on this monster skin, I’ve tried. Meeting you means so much to me. My uncle and his friends are always telling me that I’m not ready, and a superhero would clean the clock of any kid my age, but I’m stronger than any of them. Everybody knows Miss A couldn’t touch you, and she—” He leaned toward us as he babbled, and the girl behind him got enough free room to let out another yelp and start squirming. Pressing her back against the wall and choking off her scream, he finished lamely, “Sorry.”

“Listen, Lumpy—” I started.

He cut me off. “Sharky.”

My silence must have said it all. “I can come up with something better,” he mumbled.

“There’s, like, six guys bigger than you already using it,” I pointed out. With any luck, my voice dripped contempt.

That thick skin didn’t show expression well, but the way he lowered his head looked pretty embarrassed. “I know, I know. I just didn’t expect to need a good name ‘til I was eighteen, and then you happened!”

“Yeah. About that,” I echoed, scrambling to get my thoughts back on track. Drama. I needed to scare him. My cannon didn’t need to be cocked like a shotgun, but I grabbed the levers for the settings and yanked them from one side to the other so they clacked loudly. “You’ve been dangerously misinformed. We’re not on your side. Put the girl down and surrender, and we’ll give you a chance to convince us not to give you to the police.”

Was he shaking? I was a little girl in a tight, gray spacesuit with a china pipe on my arm! I couldn’t be that scary! Those were definitely big breaths he was taking. He couldn’t possibly be psyching himself up to fight me. Except that’s exactly what he was doing, and, by the time I forced myself to believe it, he rasped, “It’s okay. I get it. I knew it would happen when I came out here. I just got a little star struck, right? It’s your territory, and that means I’ve got to take it from you.”

It was going to take a lengthy explanation of the difference between a superhero and a supervillain to make those shark brains understand which side I was on. Before I could even find the words to start, his body bulged. Muscles swelled like inflating balloons. He grew another six inches. That stony hide couldn’t cover him anymore, and big gaps ripped in it, then flapped slowly like gills. He’d actually found a way to get uglier. The wet, pink crud showing through those flaps was hard to look at. So much yuck.

At least he dropped the high school girl. Sharky’s foot thudded as he took a clumsy step toward me. Compared to that, Ray slid in front of him as smoothly as a snake. Sharky swung a wide punch, and it couldn’t have been that slow. It just looked that slow when Ray ducked under it.

I cleared my throat loudly, looked straight at the cowering teenager, and gave my head a jerk. Even through the visor she figured out that was for her and ran hunched over down the length of the wall toward the street.

I’d also gotten Ray and Sharky’s attention, and I pointed my air conditioner cannon upward and announced, “I think I’m the one he wants to fight.”

Sharky nodded clumsily. “Yeah. Yeah!” He lurched toward me. Ray stepped out of the way, and I shot Sharky dead on.

He was tough. I liked the setting that blew Marcia off her feet, but it only pushed him back a half step. It might as well have been a stiff breeze.

He couldn’t dodge. I turned the force way up, left the focus wide, and, as he took a step to charge me again, blew his legs out from under him. He hit the asphalt with a wet, loud smack as gross as the holes in his skin. I slid the focus lever tighter, let the visor’s magnifier help compensate for my lousy aim, and, as he tried to lift his head, I shot him in the face with a cannonball of pleasantly chilled compressed air. That rolled him over onto his back. Had I hit him too hard? No. As long as he lived, no such thing.

With that in mind I shot him again, rolling him back over onto his belly. He didn’t seem eager to get up this time, but I still stayed out of arm’s reach when I walked up toward him. “You’re so not ready for this, Sharky. Not now, not ever. Go home and think about it. Think about how you’d be going to enhanced-abilities jail right now for mugging if I was on a regular superhero patrol.”

“I’m a superhero on patrol, and that sounds like a great idea. In fact, why don’t I send all three of you together?” Marcia’s snide voice announced.

Not this! I looked back to see her drop lightly off the roof down by the street entrance, all dressed up in her Miss A costume. People jumping off roofs still looked weird to me. I’d have to get used to it.

I tried really hard to keep hold of my temper. “I’m pretty sure I just stopped the mugging and beat up the mugger.”

“And I’m pretty sure there’s a charge for gang war. That’s the DA’s job to figure out. Mine is to leave you gift-wrapped for his convenience.” She sounded so snippy..

As an alternative to shooting her in the face, I played the shrew right back at her. “A job you’re doing so well. Outnumbered against opponents who’ve beaten you once already, you just gave up the element of surprise so you could get in some quality sarcasm time.”

That only made her smirk more annoying, and she upped the gratingly snide tone another notch. “I’m sure your mirror is all quiet and appreciative when you give your villainous monologues. I’m so sorry to spoil your moment. Would now be a bad time to point out I’m also not outnumbered?”

Orange, flickering light presaged flames, hot and roaring, sheathing a high school boy in a red and black superhero costume as he walked calmly around the corner. Oh boy. Fire-based powers. This had gotten dangerous, fast.

“I don’t know if you keep up with the other team, but this young man’s called Ifrit. I think he’s Marvelous’s younger brother,” Miss A explained with a sadistic grin.

“She’s wrong about that,” Ifrit sighed. Apparently Marcia got on everyone’s nerves. “But she was right that we’d catch you here this weekend.” Fire powers, and the look he gave me was way more serious than Miss A’s.

“We’re barely a block from the school, and the ego that put on a show there just had to return to the scene of the crime. Oh, and have you met Gabriel?” Marcia got more venomous every second. Wait, didn’t I know that name, Gabriel?

White wings fluttered, six of them, as Gabriel landed. His white suit made him look like an inverse of Ray, except Ray didn’t have those six huge wings that could do way more than fly. This wasn’t fair. This wasn’t even close to fair. Gabriel was new to the superhero scene, but he certainly wasn’t a sidekick. Those wings were scary. I knew because—

“Gabriel! I read your blog! What are you doing here?!” Claire squealed. She was a high-speed, brown blur skating around from the opposite entrance to the parking lot. Of course, she’d been watching, and now she zoomed up to the white-winged young hero, grabbed both his hands, and they spun like dancers as he dragged her to a skidding stop.

He chuckled. I might have, too, despite the seriousness of the moment. “I’m doing my job. Fighting supervillains. Supervillains like you, young lady,” he answered her.

Claire gave him a knowing look, her head tilted to one side. “Kind of my point, isn’t it? How did Little Miss Sore Loser rope you into an obvious grudge match like this?”

Claire was obviously laying it on thick. I mean, she was wearing bear hoodie pajamas! Still, she had a point, and Marcia didn’t like that.

“Grudge match?” Marcia screeched. Ha! Claire had hit a nerve.

At that, Ray stepped forward and bowed floridly to Marcia, arm curving underneath his body and then lifting up and back. She spun around her baton, bared her teeth, and marched on him. He lunged for her, fist raised, and, exactly like Thursday night she twisted, but, this time, they both fell, then back-flipped to their feet like twins.

It was on. Gabriel’s wings extended, but Claire gave his hands a tug. “Seriously, Gabriel, look at that. Will you be proud of yourself when you post online that you took part in this? Right after the video of you talking down Lucyfar?”

“You really read my blog?” Gabriel asked her, the dumbfounded tone telling me she’d scored a point. I turned my head. I couldn’t tell who was scoring points between Ray and Miss A. As I watched, she jabbed the end of her baton at his throat. He grabbed it, and she swung the baton and her whole body, tossing him past her into the wall. Except he climbed back to his feet easily and she crouched, wheezing. He’d hit her, and I’d missed it.

“Does the name E-Claire ring a bell?” Claire asked Gabriel as Ray grabbed for Miss A, got his arm twisted into a painfully awkward looking angle, then yanked her off her feet and threw her over the next car. Had he been trapping her with his strength, or had he barely escaped a trap himself?

“Yes. Yes, it does. So that’s your online and your supervillain handle?” Gabriel asked her as fire roared up all around me.

Oops. I heard Ifrit’s voice outside the not quite opaque flames. “I don’t know what’s going on, but we can figure it out after you three are under control.” He held both hands out toward me, controlling the cage of snapping flame I’d been trapped in. Let myself be trapped in.

I’d just made a bigger fool of myself than anyone else here. Ifrit had been right. Business first. The walls might not be physical, but walking through them would put me in the hospital. I could feel the flames, muted by my jumpsuit. I clenched my fists.

“E-Claire is right, Ifrit. Miss A’s lost a screw. We shouldn’t get involved in this. We don’t know what’s really going on,” Gabriel chided him.

“Seeing supervillains in costume is usually good enough,” Ifrit answered.

I heard Claire’s voice next. “Come on. I know you can’t trust me, but look at Miss A and tell me this is on the level.” Everyone was a vague shape through flickering orange and yellow to me, but the fast moving shadows would be Ray and Marcia, and I could hear Marcia’s grunts and snarls of anger with no difficulty.

“If we don’t win, it won’t matter who we decide is right,” Ifrit shot back.

Okay, I’d let him argue enough. I took two quick steps forward, eyes and mouth shut, and tried not to yell at the feeling like I’d stepped into an oven, then out of an oven. I felt like I’d gotten a sunburn on my face and wrists, but my burn resistant jumpsuit had done its job. I lifted my hands and opened them so that the charge I’d built up arced out and grounded itself in Ifrit
before
I announced, “I agree.”

The lightning wouldn’t hurt, but surprise made him jump a step back, and when his first foot touched the asphalt I had him. I raised my air cannon and fired a couple of merely stunning shots. The cage next to me disappeared, and instead he swung his hands up and spun arcs of fire that exploded every time one of my blasts hit.

I deliberately and visibly thumbed the levers of my cannon higher. “Nice shields. I guess I can turn up the juice without worrying I’ll kill you.”

His eyes narrowed. He looked and sounded very serious. “Nice fireproof suit. Looks like I can do the same.”

I saw the flicker around his hands and threw myself down. I fired a shot somewhere in there, but it didn’t have a prayer of hitting. My jumpsuit was really not sufficiently padded, and I got a jolt of pain when my shoulder hit the asphalt. The flame that swept past me hurt even though it didn’t touch me. I needed to get behind a car, but I wouldn’t have the time. I swung up my cannon instead.

Miss A and Ray spun past Ifrit in their latest grapple, and Ray’s elbow shot out and hit the back of Ifrit’s head.

The little devil. “Reviled!” I yelled, hoping Ray would know who I meant. He did. He dropped and pushed Miss A up and into the open, and instead of blasting Ifrit I blew Miss A off her feet.

She hit hard, but she got her feet under her and tried to flip up. Ray hooked his foot behind hers, and she smacked onto her back again. Ifrit was more of a threat. Flames gusted up around him, but the blow to the head left him too muddled. I had a half-second to point my cannon at his face.

I didn’t have time to fire, because a huge, white wing extended and wrapped itself around Ifrit like a blanket. Another scooped up Miss A.