Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm a Supervillain (57 page)

The lab wasn’t a problem. It was an opportunity. I was going to enjoy fixing this place up after I dealt with Spider.

I didn’t know how to do that. I wasn’t going to let her push me around forever, and I wasn’t going to give up and spill the beans to my parents myself so they could protect me. I wanted out of her web, for good. Supervillainy had been running away with me from the beginning, and I wanted to take control.

I would find a way. For the moment, I’d better get ready for tomorrow. If I planned on making a show, I’d need better weapons. Let’s face it, I needed better weapons anyway. My power dutifully threw up a plan, and I set The Machine to eating quartz while I filled the smelter with plastic. This would be big. I didn’t want to look too closely at what I was doing in case my power jammed on my desire to put words around it. That gave me a little room to think. The split attention effect was fun, with my hands putting together this awesome thing while I wondered how to get out of supervillainy. I had to be honest with myself. The whole thing was fun. Other than not having a choice, I had a natural talent for being a supervillain and I got a big kick out of it. Who’d have thought? I had to hope I’d find heroism just as natural!

I hefted up my finished invention in my arms and let myself take a good, solid look at it. It was big, bazooka-sized, a classic alien ray gun of wires, bulging plastic in neon colors, and a fat crystal sphere filled with writhing, glowing blue smoke. The sphere part reminded me a bit of a Conqueror orb.

What did it do? I’d stayed too detached from the process to remember. Easy enough to test. I pointed the almost feather-light gun at the floor across the room and pulled the trigger. With a satisfying buzz, the floor flared with blue light, leaving a deep cylindrical hole carved in the concrete and well past the concrete into the Earth.

I almost dropped the gun. If I pointed this at anyone, no matter how well defended, it would kill them. If I pointed this at anything, it would kill someone on the other side! This was not what I wanted super powers for! I grabbed a hammer off my worktable. I’d break this thing into bits so it couldn’t go off by accident and feed those bits to The Machine so it couldn’t be reassembled. My blood chilled just thinking about what I could have hit with that test fire. If I’d struck a gas line, I’d have blown the neighborhood sky high.

I’d start with the globe. The whole gun ran through that. One good hit and the rest would be inert. I laid the gun out on the desk, lifted the hammer, and let out a little squeak as my super power showed me what I was about to build by breaking this sphere. I didn’t understand any of the details, but I recognized the end result: A crater.

I could feed it to The Machine. No, The Machine would be safe, but I wouldn’t be. Neither would the neighborhood. The actual science involved might be wildly different, but for all intents and purposes I’d built a basketball sized fusion reactor and cracking it open would be bad, bad news. Break the shell, and it would go from reactor to bomb.

Bombs got a lot of attention. I’d been asked to make a distraction. It’s not like I wanted to blow anybody up, but I could take the hand I’d been dealt and play it in an unexpected way.

Not just with the bomb. I had it. I had a plan.

Force me to remain a supervillain? I’d show Spider. I’d show them all!

onday. My last day as a supervillain, if I had anything to say about it.

I woke up early. I’d play it light, just like yesterday. I got cleaned up and dressed, ate leftovers until I bulged, and I was reaching for the handle of the kitchen door when Dad stepped up behind me. “Sorry, Pumpkin. You’re staying inside today.”

I strangled down my frustration as tightly as I could, but my “What?!” still sounded whiny in my ears.

Dad gave me what would have been an understanding smile, if he’d understood. “Spider has a major crime planned for today. Until I know it’s safe, you’re staying indoors.”

Mom emerged from the basement stairs, blowing dust off her laptop and adding her two cents. “It’s just a precaution. Spider doesn’t like grand conquest schemes and she’s finicky about collateral damage. Not that she’s merciful, but she picks her targets carefully.”

“I’ve activated our house’s more exotic defenses, just to be sure,” Dad told us as he returned to his office, presumably to finish the job.

I sighed, grunted, and glared at the floor. “Fine. I’ll be in my room playing computer games. All day.” That ought to be the right amount of sulk to establish that I was mad, but not so mad I couldn’t surrender with a sense of humor.

I trudged back to my room, and I didn’t quite slam the door behind me, but I gave it an audible thump. Then I set up my computer to play a championship Teddy Bears and Machine Guns video again and pried open my bedroom window just a notch.

I could teleport through that, I thought. I’d angle around as close to the corner of the house as I could see, to avoid any windows. Then I’d grab my bike and be gone.

I took a step, and my face hit the grass. Pain jolted my neck and lower back. Ow. I climbed back to my feet and found myself right outside my bedroom window. What was this? I’d never missed a teleport before!

Oh, right. Dad probably had a teleport disruption field. I needed to take a little more interest in what he had lying around the house.

Well, the hard way wasn’t that hard. I crouched low under the windows and scurried down the length of the house, grabbed my bike, and pushed off hard. If my folks saw me, they saw me. If they found out I wasn’t in my room, so be it. I had an excuse ready. I’d tell them I was on a date with Ray. A Birds and the Bees lecture would be toe-curlingly mortifying, but it wouldn’t last long and I’d get through it.

I left all of that behind me. The next part was simple. I rode down to school and down to my lab, where Ray and Claire were waiting for me already. I changed into my villain jumpsuit in a backroom, with Claire guarding the door. She didn’t need to. We were all business today. Ray carried my bomb up the elevator, and we set it right out in the middle of the schoolyard where it gave off a devilish blue light that churned and spun. I thought the base, with all the tubes and wires, set the reactor sphere off nicely.

Ten after noon. We were ready. I sat on the sphere, kicked my feet, and asked, “Vera? Project what I’m about to say as far as you can.”

I pushed aside a faint worry that would be “planet wide” and announced, “I’m sorry to interrupt your daytime television, ladies and gentlemen, but The Inscrutable Machine has been thinking about this for a while now, and we’ve decided Northeast West Hollywood Middle School has to go. I apologize to those of you caught in the blast radius, and I’m hoping a superhero or twelve will show up to try and stop us just as much as you are. I’m really getting a kick out of humiliating them.”

I heard my voice projecting out of every car and house I could see, so my message got through. School wasn’t in session, but how many superheroes sent their kids here and lived in the area? We might be drowning in opposition in a minute.

With any luck, my plan would hold. I rubbed the top of Vera’s head, and she took the hint and stopped broadcasting. Then I sat and kicked my feet some more while the superhero world scrambled.

I didn’t see it coming. Shrieking filled the world, stabbed at my ears, vibrated my bones and teeth, and made me more than a little nauseous. I fell forward off the bomb, barely able to control my limbs. My voice sounded pathetically distant as I yelled, “Vera, project his weapon back at him!”

The shrieking didn’t stop, but it moved away, stopped tearing my body apart. I climbed awkwardly to my feet. Even Ray staggered as he got up.

Echo stood in an open doorway of the school, clutching the sides of his helmet and gritting his teeth. The screeching stopped as whatever he used to project the sound burned out under Vera’s override. Did I see a few sparks from his other equipment?

The clever little rat. Big rat, compared to me. He’d staked this place out waiting for us, hadn’t he? He thought he had us by surprise. He’d weathered the sonic weapon much better than we had, and through the ringing in my ears I heard him declare, “I have more than enough weapons left to defeat you, Bad Penny.”

Echo sounded confident, but he was the superhero I’d wanted to see most. I stretched my back, listening to the ringing gradually ease. “I’m sure you do, but I have a much more hilarious game in mind.” I kicked the button on my bomb.

“One hundred. Ninety nine. Ninety eight,” it recited loudly and so very slowly.

I rubbed my ear through my helmet and told Echo, “Here’s the rules. We’re going to go very far away, and if I see a giant blue ball of imploding plasma on the horizon I’ll know you failed. To make this fair, here’s three hints: One, you might want help. Two, do not destroy the bomb. I’m betting your sensors have told you that already. Three, you don’t have time to try and catch us. Bye!”

“Ninety. Eighty-nine,” the bomb announced as I activated my light bike and zoomed away, leaving Echo stuck with it. Either the sonic shock had rattled him, or he’d accepted my warning. He didn’t chase after us.

I didn’t go far. I looped around to the residential section of Western and got off my bike to wait for Ray and Claire. They came zipping up the street together, Claire skating and Ray keeping time with her at a run. I’d have liked to have stuck with them, but I hadn’t figured out cruise control on my light bike yet. It went “fast” and “really fast right now I mean it.”

Claire looped around me twice as she slid up, then hugged her rag doll and asked, “What happens when the countdown gets to zero?”

I gave her my most sarcastic sidelong stare. Since she couldn’t see that through my visor, I hoped my voice would project the same emotion. “Nothing. Do you think I’m crazy?”

Ray cracked his knuckles. “So, the library?”

“The library,” I agreed. Then something hit Vera.

Wind whipped past me, a gray shape I didn’t get to see clearly. I heard one loud crack as it knocked Vera out of the air and another as she hit the asphalt across the street.

I had half a second. “Waityoureallywanttohearthis!” I yelled at the top of my lungs.

I hadn’t been hit yet. Claudia was listening. Ray and Claire watched the buildings around us, for all the good that would do. Generic Girl was too smart to let us see her coming.

I held up both hands, palms out. The less threatening I looked, the better. “Right now, Cabal is robbing Voidworks. Witch Hunter is robbing the Museum of Jurassic Technology. Spark and Ground Pounder are robbing Substation Twelve. Spider blackmailed us to create a diversion. They’re all diversions. Lucyfar, Entropy, Rage and Ruin, and She Who Wots are attacking the library right now to steal something powerful called the Orb of the Heavens.”

No response. Claudia had always been suspicious, even paranoid. In this game, she needed to be. I went on. “We’ve had enough. Spider can reveal our secret identities if she wants. She may think we did what we were told, but we’re heading to the library right now. We’ll beat everyone she sent if we have to and guard the Orb until the official heroes arrive. I’d like your help. The adults don’t want to admit it, but you’re the most powerful hero in LA.”