Secrets of a D-List Supervillain (18 page)

Wendy blasts the monk off her, who then transforms into something larger and more difficult to brush aside. She’s staggering, but still manages to keep the shapeshifter away.

“Wendy? Are you okay?”

She destroys a window and takes flight while mumbling, “Stuck me with something.”

“Andy, don’t lose sight of her! Wendy, stay close to the ground.”

The rest of the Guardians hadn’t made a hostile move... yet.

First Aid kicks on his armor’s speakers. “Wendy, we have orders to bring you into custody. Let’s not make this any more difficult than it is already.”

Checking the monitor, Wendy doesn’t look like she’s up for any kind of conversation. Larry lacks any real world experience at dealing with people, much less superhumans.

That leaves me. I dial up the synthesizer to prevent anyone recognizing me and activate my external sound system.

“Considering Rakshasa already assaulted her, I think we’re beyond that now. She’s not going with you and if you think otherwise, you’re sadly mistaken.”

My weapons systems are now online, except the railgun. Flipping over to the private channel, I ask Wendy if she’s okay. Her reply is barely intelligible. Larry expands his energy form’s hands and slides them under where she’s floating. Seconds later, she drops into them.

Rakshasa joins their side in the form of a wolf. They’re running at full strength, and we’re pretty much down one and one of us will need to watch her.

First Aid continues, “It would be best for everyone if she comes with us. Let justice run its course.”

“Justice has nothing to do with this and you know it. Funny how you got here so fast, almost like you were heading down to where I’d been working on that fire break.”

“We just wanted to talk,” the man with the healing touch says.

“I doubt it. If you were, you wouldn’t have drugged up the one person who is interested in talking, but I do have a question for all you Guardians—where were you when Patterson was attacking San Francisco?”

“We’d been told to stay away,” First Aid’s response comes a bit too fast, and I know I’ve hit a sore spot.

“And like a good little group of flunkies, you always do what you’re told,” I say, and have the suit extend a foot. “It’s not a boot, but you can lick it if you want.”

The arrogant Mystigal snaps first, “I’ve had enough of you!”

Her magebolt slams into my shielding as First Aid yells for her to stand down. At first I want to laugh and tell them to remember who fired first, but then notice the shard with my left arm’s weaponry just went dark. The tip of the pulse cannon and the grenade launcher’s barrel drop onto the ground next to the suit.

Shit! The crystals are susceptible to magic! I hadn’t considered that.

There’s a hollow feeling in my stomach as I realize my invincible suit of armor isn’t nearly as invincible as I thought it was, only seconds before. I fire before she gets another opportunity.

“Red, give me Wendy. Take out the mystics. Magic screws with my armor!”

Larry puts our unconscious leader onto the hood of someone’s truck and leaps over me as all the Guardians attack. I move by the truck to protect Wendy, and draw a bead on First Aid’s suit. He dodges most of my initial barrage, but I still clip him. Larry thrashes about like a bear being attacked by a pack of wolves, and the parking lot of the TV station becomes a warzone.

Rakshasa’s giant serpent tries to wrap up Larry, but he dashes him into a brick wall. Everyone ignores me for a moment and concentrates their firepower on Larry’s energy form, causing him to stagger.

We aren’t doing nearly as well as we had against Patterson’s robots!

“Red, take out Mystigal and I’ll be able to fully engage!”

“No,” Stacy says and points at the monitor from over my shoulder. “Tape Delay’s running the battle. She’s the one you need to neutralize.”

“What?” I demand and look at the hero in the Protector armor. So far, she is hanging back and only offering fire support.

“She’s using her seven second foresight to tell the others when to evade.”

“Damn, you’re right! She’s coordinating their side. Andy! Run a broad spectrum burst of white noise through the suit. If Tape Delay can’t communicate with them, she can only help herself.”

The way all of them discarded their ear pieces before I jammed their communications, told me that Stacy had guessed correctly. Unfortunately, my tactic knocked out Larry’s earpiece as well and he hadn’t thought to imitate our opponents.

The only thing I can think, seeing our Keystone Cops level of ineptness on display, is that I’m glad Wendy isn’t awake to see this, because she’d be yelling at us for blowing off the training sessions.

Larry shared a few of his own four letter sentiments as he yanked his headset off and renewed his assault on them. I could only do so much and stay beside Wendy.

“I need to get her back through the poop chute. Andy, get ready to take control of the...”

“No, I’ll do it,” Stacy says. “Give me a minute to get a hoodie from your closet.”

I’m stunned, to say the least. “There’s a ski mask in there, too.”

I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t have a moment of worry that she’d throw in with the West Coasters and sell us all down the river, but I realize that is a stupid idea. She could just take me out now, put Andy out of action and the fight would be over.

That’s when I knew my problem won’t be loving her; that’s easy. My problem is going to be getting past all my trust issues and paranoia.

Now seating—insecurity party of one.

I take out the frustration at my personal shortcomings on Tape Delay, and treat the surrounding city blocks to an ultraviolent light show. Amanda Rae What’sherface probably doesn’t deserve my ire, but I keep her fully on the defensive and unable to help her teammates while the rest of Patterson’s former team gets to do the live version of the Imaginary Larry test. A jade bolt of energy called down from the sky above smashes into Red and drives him to his knees at the same time Mindcracker, First Aid, and Grand Vizier hit him with everything they’ve got.

Even my shields would suffer under that bombardment, but Larry forces himself up like the main character in one of those giant monster movies, and smacks the charging bull elephant form of Rakshasa aside like the shapechanger was nothing to him.

Stacy returns in my blue sweatshirt with the giant “Have a Nice Day!” smiley face on the back and a full face black ski mask. I make a mental note to tell her that she can pull off the hot terrorist look.

“Go feet first,” I tell her. “Grab Wendy and push her back through. Andy, will help you. Wait for my signal; I’ll lay down a blanket of smoke. She’ll be on the hood of the truck, just to your right.”

“Got it!” She says and climbs up on the slide, like a bobsledder waiting for the green light.

I flip a few buttons and the shard spins around inside the bottom of the suit. The thick bottom plate slides open and I chuck for smoke grenades through it.

Pausing, I wait precious seconds before saying, “Switching to infrared. We’re obscured and go, go go!”

At my yell, Stacy pushes herself forward as I spread Mega’s legs and pop the armor plate up and out of the way. Seconds later, Mega shits out a disguised Olympian. She rolls up against the front wheel of the truck and snatches up Wendy like she weighs nothing. It’s so easy to forget how strong Stacy is as Aphrodite. She and Hestia rate as two of the weakest on her team in terms of physical strength, but even so, the Love Goddess can easily lift as much as Bobby.

Wendy’s lolling head emerges from the large chunk of mirror, bringing a thick cloud of smoke with her. Andydroid finishes pulling her through and lifts the team leader out of the way. Stacy scampers back through and I reseal the opening in Mega’s armor after making certain my girlfriend is clear.

When the board shows that the suit is airtight, I have Mega step through the wall of smoke. The West Coasties are barely holding their own against Larry, and it’s high time I join the party. The way Protector circles my buddy, who is holding Mindcracker in one of his hands, reminds me strangely of King Kong against the biplanes, except Fay Wray never tried blowing the big ape to pieces with her mind like this dude is attempting.

Accelerating to a full run, I open up with my remaining weapons. First Aid still isn’t comfortable in his new armor. He’s still on the ground fighting in the manner he’s used to. My opening salvo gives him a little extra practice being airborne and announces to everyone that I’m back in action.

As I unload everything against the difficult to hit Protector before she can successfully reengage, the pistol magnetically locked to Mega’s hip becomes more tempting with each passing second.
To charge the railgun or not to charge the railgun? Billy Shakespeare asked the wrong question.

Activating my propulsion system, I fly toward Red and his energy beast and zap Mindcracker with a taser pulse. Now they are the ones who need to be careful to avoid hurting their teammate. I keep Larry’s energy beast between me and Mystigal.

Using my left hand, I hit the big red button with the Donkey Kong sticker on it and watch the lights dim around us as the capacitors begin drawing power to charge the railgun.

“You’re not going to…?” Stacy whispers urgently.

“No, not in the middle of a city.” Of course, my reluctance is more about how badly it would reflect on my team’s current situation than out of concern for the population of Phoenix. Mostly, I just didn’t want to get yelled at by Wendy when she wakes up.

After all, it’s about keeping your priorities in order.

Toggling on the external speakers, I address the circling heroes, “We are withdrawing outside of the city limits. If you want to follow, we can continue this where innocents are less likely to get hurt. We’ll wait ten minutes. If you don’t come, we’ll leave Prince Charming to get his beauty rest and go on our merry way. This is your one freebie. You attacked us first, and we have taken your best shot.”

For effect, I draw the pistol from my side and continue, “But you haven’t experienced what we’re capable of, yet.”

“You’re in our jurisdiction!” Rakshasa protests.

“I recognize no one’s jurisdiction on this planet, save perhaps for the exiled Rigellian Prince,” I say and draw a surprised look from Stacy.

“Are you an alien?” The Vizier asks.

“I see no need to answer your question,” I reply, avoiding the answer. To Larry I say, “Come, friend human. Let us depart.”

• • •

“I think Vizier about shit himself when you said you were from outer space.”

Thirty minutes later, Larry is still laughing it up on the couch as I emerge from Wendy’s room with Gabosaurus Rex in my arms. Andy is constantly monitoring our leader’s vitals after isolating the brand of sedative Rakshasa used.

Wendy probably needs the long nap anyway.

“I don’t mind spreading a little misinformation, and that will get them thinking alien superscience instead of magic. I’m cool with that while I come up with a way to shield my crystals against magical energy. It’s the big lie all over again. The Internet is already on fire with all kinds of new rumors. I, personally, like the one that the suit is an alien bonded to a human pilot.”

Stacy doesn’t seem nearly as happy. In fact she seems really angry. “They’ll go talk to Gravmatar, Cal. What do you think the Rigellian is going to tell them? What if he wants to come up here and fight you in some kind of honor combat? I wish you had mentioned to me you were thinking about using that as a cover story. I would have talked you out of it.”

“I came up with this on the fly and went with it. Besides, Gravmatar is strong, but Larry beat him a long time ago and I’m sure Mega could take him. What gives?”

“Holy shit!” Larry says recalling the memory. “I did beat Gravmatar! I can’t believe I forgot that.”

Ignoring my friend’s revelation, I focus on the look on Stacy’s face. It is practically screaming that I screwed up again.

“You don’t joke about aliens, Cal. Ever! Now, the government isn’t just going to treat you like a rogue super. They’re going to consider you an operative of an alien race. Cal, they’re going to send me, and my team, after you. You just guaranteed that!”

“Guess I need to change my name to Captain Unintended Consequences.”

“Ya think?” Stacy adds. “They’re also going to start tossing alien collaborator charges at Wendy. How do you think that’s going to play out?”

It’s tempting to ask Andy if he can put Wendy in a medically induced coma for a few days. Maybe there was still time to give her to the West Coasters?

Looking at my daughter, blissfully ignorant of the situation, I adopt that certain tone all parents get with their infant children and say, “Mommy’s going to call Daddy a bunch of bad names when she wakes up. That’s right, isn’t she? She sure is!”

Gabby smiles and laughs while I consider that living to see my daughter’s first birthday might require faking my death a second time.

“So in summary, Stacy says I screwed the pooch royally by implying the Megasuit is an alien. The good news is that less than half the opinion polls online are saying that you’re an alien collaborator. The bad news is that of the half who don’t believe, some of those think you’re under alien mind control.”

Wendy sighs loudly and sips at the coffee I brought her; one cream and one sugar—just the way she likes it. The profane outburst hasn’t happened yet, and I’m wondering if we can’t get more of that drug they shot her up with.

“Cal,” she says, and seems to be gathering her strength for an epic ass reaming. “You know what your problem is? You’re too clever.”

I’m still expecting the backhand instead of the backhanded compliment, buy I’ll take what I can get.

“Look,” I offer. “If you think it’s necessary, I’ll go ahead and reveal myself. It’s not like I’m running around the countryside.”

Wendy shakes her hand dismissively, and her power swirls the air around where the two of us are sitting on her bed. “No. I meant what I said in that interview. You and Larry want your privacy and I don’t want to take that from you. We’ll figure a way through this. What are you going to do about your suit’s vulnerability?”

I’d spent as much time on that problem as I had on practicing how I’d tell Wendy about this mess.

“I’m going to build a case and lay some protective runes on it, and run some tests to see if that will fix it. The other option is to run them through cold iron which in most cases is magically inert. I’m going to use a couple of the small shards and run a control experiment to test out my hypothesis.”

Wendy looks at me with a blank expression on her face before saying, “I still must be a little stoned from that junk they injected me with. I only understood about half of that.”

“Guess we better make sure Gabby doesn’t get any boob juice until that garbage gets out of your system.”

“I stopped breastfeeding a month ago, Cal.”
Hey! There’s that irritated tone I know and love!

“Sorry,” I say, feeling more stupid than I had before I started bringing her up to speed. “I should have noticed that.”

“Well, you’ve been using formula when she’s here with you, and you already know how difficult things were getting on the outside world. Where is your girlfriend anyway?”

“Normally, this’d be where I joke that I wore her out because I’m that much of a man, but she had to go. Apparently, the Olympians are training ahead of investigating this new alien menace. She’s in her armor and I pushed a private comm circuit through the crystal shard into her suit. She should be installing it right now. I figured that when we have our eventual run in, I’ll be able to help coordinate whatever we decide to do.”

“Did the interview get broadcast?”

“Yes, and no. The government seized it, but Andy and I were recording it. So, we released it on social media in other countries, so that makes the government look even more suspicious. You’re a viral sensation now.”

“Yay, me!” she replies. “Good move on releasing it. We have that working for us.”

“Yeah, it doesn’t exactly paint the West Coaster’s in a favorable light. They assaulted you and they fired first.”

“Were there any civilian casualties?”

“No fatalities, but there are several in the hospital, and the property damage is estimated around eight mil. You sure you’re not pissed?”

Ms. LaGuardia looks up at her ceiling. “I am, but not at you. You did what you needed to do to get the team out of there safely. I’m angrier at myself for being taken out of the fight so easily. They were going to send the Olympians at some point. You just forced their hand.”

“So, we’re good?”

She half-laughs and says, “I should probably have you rig up a switch for me that shuts off your external speakers when I’m not conscious, but we’re good. I knew what I was getting into when I let you recruit me to be the head of this team. You do amazing things, Cal. Sometimes they’re amazingly stupid and other times they’re amazingly brilliant. It’s one extreme or the other with you.”

She’s pretty good at this whole backhanded compliment thing.

“You up for company? I know a little girl who misses her mommy. Andy just isn’t a good substitute. I recommended he try entertaining her with poetry. Thirty minutes later, he was doing this street poetry riff on being a superhero. Definitely not Little Miss Muffett.”

“Yeah, go get the munchkin. I’ll stick to raising her. You’re on your own with Andy.”

• • •

“So, she didn’t blow a gasket? Guess you got all worked up over that for nothing,” Stacy says over the private channel in her armor.

“I must’ve mastered the whole alien mind control thing. So, what’re you up to?” I ask, lamenting that I don’t have a tap on her video feed... yet.

Have to remember that for next time.

“Waiting for Apollo and Hera to finish sparring. I’ve got the winner, but Zeus and Athena are up next. I’m definitely liking the armor more and more. I didn’t break a sweat taking down Tia, and before you got on, I was catching up on my neverending pile of emails.”

“Aw, I’m telling!”

She laughs. “Just because I’m better at you than multitasking, don’t be jealous. Besides, you’re always nagging me to be in the armor.”

“Did you ever tell Hera about the hacked video game?”

“Yes, she went and got a copy just so she could see the scenes herself. It was good for a laugh. Where’s Mega today?”

“South of the Border. Decided to add illegal border crossings to my list of questionable activities. Considered taking him to one of the beaches and going through the poop chute and hitting the beach, but decided against it.”

“Gravmatar is coming up from South America to help locate you,” Stacy adds.

“Guess he didn’t like the idea of being the only resident alien on the planet. Unless there’s something you’re not telling me.”

“There is Cal, but this is something I need to talk to you about in person, and I’m not sure I’ll be able to slip away anytime soon.”

The yellow and magenta skinned Rigellians are the only race Earth has had contact with, after their Prince-in-Exile arrived on our planet several years ago. Supposedly, there are others out there, and despite the efforts of the various governments to open up more formal relations with Rigel, they’ve ignored us and let our planet be Gravmatar’s private little Elba on the Milky Way.

Most assume that the aliens are waiting for us to “grow up,” but now my girlfriend is hinting that it goes a little deeper.

“Well, if you don’t want to talk about that, what would you like to talk about? More story time?”

“Sure, why not?”

• • •

“You gonna let me be on your team?” Bobby asked, after I’d explained the card, and he’d berated me for letting an easy three mil get away.

“I might have to recruit from the other side of the fence, Bobby. You up for that?”

“You got to bump nasty with two super hotties and you’re butt ugly. Doesn’t seem so bad to me.”

He had a way of reducing very complex life choices into two sentences. It was admirable, but short-sighted. Sadly, life shouldn’t be measured by who happened to be sharing a bed with me at the time.

Then again, I couldn’t quite dismiss his wild speculations. With the exception of HillBilly Bobby, I didn’t have much of a team available to me.

“It had its moments,” I answered. “But I won’t get any recruiting done until I finish my new suit.”

The now empty lower level was where I was assembling the new suit. At the moment, I had two pulse cannons and a pair of grenade launchers pushed through shards. There was plans for two more pulse cannons. It was symmetrical, but somewhat uninspired. I needed something more powerful, but was at a loss as to what. That could wait; I had both arms needing synthmuscle.

“Hey, Andy,” I greeted the statue, and got to work running the spools of muscle through the autowinder. To the uninitiated, it looked a lot like making pasta. Taking the indivual strands, I slid them into the winding collar and dialed up the mechanism. The eight strands wrapped around each other and became a single, thicker strand. When I got six of them, they were wrapped into a larger bundle and later six became four. All this became a single piece of the musculature.

For the Ultraweapon suit, Patterson employed two guys named Ettin. They were conjoined twins with superstrength, who didn’t mind spending twelve hours a day winding synth.

My cynical side said that Promethia was also getting credit for employing people with disabilities.

Sometimes I could get Bobby to do this, but invariably he’d start drinking, and quality control suffered. My little banner saying, “Don’t Drink and Wind,” wasn’t appreciated by my roommate.

It was tedious work that reinforces the mantra that armor building is a hobby for the rich or the obsessive.

But even the obsessive can get bored, so I slid another one of the spell plates into the holder and started translating. Even with the magic necklace giving me the ability to read languages, I was still having a problem understanding the context, especially when the text of the spells goes on to a second one of the tablets.

Rex’s indexing system made absolutely no sense to a human like me. His math system appeared to be a base six instead of a base ten. The written language lacked any punctuation, and used very few words to describe anything other than a dinomage; and most of those words described how they tasted. It was a carnivorous dialect. This particular tablet was part of a set, with three others. Several words jumped out at me about materials and manipulation.

Last week, I pieced together the spell Rex had used to make his lizard hybrids out of Kim and the other townspeople of that Louisiana parish. Bobby bought a ferret for me to test the spell on, but became too attached to it to let me experiment with it.

The ferret didn’t like me.

The feeling was mutual, but when Bobby goes to his room to “feed the ferret,” it isn’t a sexual innuendo.

Instead, I used a fish Bobby caught and the totem containing Rex’s finger. The spell made the fish grow an extra tail. Bobby wanted to eat it anyway, but I talked him out of it.

Hey! Wait just a damned minute. What was this passage saying?

Materials can be altered in composition. It requires focus and fine control to make this change. You must feel the change, using your blood, and “will” the effect into existence.

Blood? Oh great! I’d found that most of these lizard spells required cold blood.

“Sorry, Andy,” I said to him. “To cast this spell, I’d have to be...”

And there it was. I’d have to do a partial transformation and become something like Kimodo. To do that, I was going to need a ridiculous amount of practice.

“Bobby! Want to go fishing?”

• • •

All in all, I like lizard magic better than human magic. It has almost a computer language to it; where you can script components together to make a spell, almost like putting together an old batch file, albeit one that usually requires blood. Human magic is chanting with motion, runes, and other shit.

Of course, standing in front of a mirror wearing a swimsuit and the claw of dead dinomage like a belt buckle, in a crude ring drawn in my blood mixed with that of several dead geckos and an iguana, I was more nervous than enamored. That last fish had grown clawed feet and was able to survive on land until I undid the transformation. I’d kept it in a tank for a week and checked it on a daily basis.

“Remember,” I said to Bobby. “If something goes wrong, pour that liquid on me. It should reverse the transformation. If it doesn’t; stun me and contact Swamplord. He should be able to find someone who might be able to undo it.”

“I still think this is a stupid idea,” Bobby said. “I reckon that if Swamplord can’t fix you, I’ll sell you to one of those sideshows.”

His crass words were oddly comforting. He made statements like that when he was nervous.

Because I wasn’t starting from a lizard, I needed the ring of blood to kind of kickstart things. PETA would join the line of groups wanting a piece of my ass if they ever discovered what I was doing here.

However, no ferrets were harmed during the preparations for this spell.

Gripping the augment with my left hand, I started to cast the first section of the spell. Even with my previous successes, I was still a little skeptical.

“Ahhhhhhh!” I screamed, the fish hadn’t seemed to hurt this much.

“Are you okay? Cal, are you okay?”

“It’s working, but it hurts!”

An itch burned across the surface of my skin, and I could feel my muscles cramping up as the transformation took hold. My fingers were melding together and I could see the nails lengthening and curling. The food I’d eaten revolted and was summarily expelled. It was maybe thirty seconds of agony that felt like hours, as I collapsed in my own vomit and had a minor seizure.

The pain stopped and I pushed my tired body off the stone floor. There was a chill in the air that I hadn’t noticed before.