Wearing The Cape: Villains Inc. (2 page)

Seven, hands in his pants pockets, watched the monster advance. I looked up at him, happier now that he was here, and tried to act as casual. Somehow we’d deal.

I tried a smile. “Do you remember when you said people would like us better if there were alien invasions, giant monsters, or nasty things from other dimensions that thought humans were tasty for us to fight?”

“I take it back,” he said. He flashed his movie-star smile, eyes on the monster.
 
With his natty hat and sport coat and blond-haired, blue-eyed movie star looks, he looked ready to go clubbing with the New Rat Pack.

Lei
Zi
ignored us, studying the creature.

Riptide splash-landed beside us, changing from water to flesh and blood. “At least your dark look will hide the soot,
chica
,” he said to me.
 
“That is one ugly mother.”

The
godzilla
waded
through the flaming wreckage of the hall now, bathing in the heat.
 
Its mottled green hide shone, the disk-shaped ridges running from its crown to its tail glowed, and jets of plasma-breath burned with
laserlike
intensity.
 
Pyrokinetic
attacks were obviously going to be useless. I looked over at Lei
Zi
.
 
Electrical attacks hadn’t done much better against the insulating hide of the one that hit New York.

Seven shrugged nonchalantly. “Since nobody else is going to say it, I am.
 
This is a whole bucket of crazy.
 
Who makes Godzilla knock-offs?”

“Some
pajero
who thinks the Big One was a good start,” Riptide sneered and spat.

I couldn’t decide if his aggressive contempt trumped Seven’s casual joking. He hadn’t changed much since trading LA for Chicago. His long leather coat, with its Pisces symbol picked out in silver-studs, bordered on
villainwear
, and he still shaved his head.

“So what’s the plan, chief?” he asked Lei
Zi
.

She turned to us.

“They lost eight capes in New York before they appreciated its plasma attack. So before we draw its attention, let’s create some cover.”
 
She gave him the nod.
 
“I want enough harbor water on that fire to blind it.
 
Do it now.”

He grinned and lifted his hands, palms out. A water-spout climbed over the pier to slap itself into the burning buildings, and the
godzilla
disappeared inside an explosive plume of smoke and steam. Its roar changed pitch, its plasma-jet winking on and off randomly. The pier shook as it danced about on its flaming stage.

Lei
Zi
nodded approvingly.
 
“Your turn, Astra.
 
As hot as it is, its head has to be lit like a spotlight to your infrared vision. Get some height and drop something on it.”

I fired off a sloppy salute and picked up the grounds-keeping truck.
 
We’d reimburse them later.
 
I headed straight up; Lei
Zi
had set me to practicing target drops at the rural practice range weeks ago, when the reports came in from Tokyo and New York.

“
She’s told the other CAI capes to stay back for the moment,”
Shelly said.
 
Wonderful; the first pass was mine, for the honor of the Sentinels.

A couple thousand feet up, I looked down at the rising steam cloud. She was right; hidden by smoke and steam, its head glowed like a light-bulb on the infrared end of the spectrum.
 
I hesitated; gravity could throw harder than I could, but my aim wasn’t very good yet.

“Lei
Zi
,” I said.
 
“I’m guiding it down.”
 
And I let gravity take over.

“
Negat
—”
she began, but chopped it off.

I fell with the doomed truck.
 
The pier leaped up, expanding, and I shifted our trajectory as I hit the rising cloud.
 
Almost…now!
 
With a last nudge I parted ways with my improvised kinetic missile, rocketing sideways with all the force I could bring to change my angle of decent to something less terminal.

I’d waited a bit too long; even as Shelly gave an exultant
“
Yes!”
I hit the surface of the bay and skipped like a stone, snapping the mast of a family yacht in passing.
 
I surfaced and spat out water, pushed my cape out of my face, and checked to make sure my mask, wig, and
earbug
were still secure before flying back.

The random jets of plasma burned brighter and the
godzilla
roared non-stop.
 
It might have a headache, but it was pissed now and still advancing, almost to the parking garage by the amusement park.
 
Drat.

Lei
Zi
nodded when I landed back at the top of the pier.
 
“Good try.
 
Now—”

“
All Sentinels!”
Shelly called out.
 
“
There’s someone on the Ferris wheel!”

My stomach dropped into my feet as I looked up.
 
We all saw him: two-thirds of the way up on the Ferris wheel, some idiot stood in one of the cars
filming
the
godzilla’s
rampage.
 
At that moment the monster pulled itself up from the burning wreckage to crouch atop the car park, roaring its defiance.

“Oh
shit
,” Seven said.

It threw back its head and screamed a challenge. No longer blinded, it was primed for action, and anyone flying through its near field of vision was toast.
 
Now
the fool on the wheel panicked.
 
How he’d managed to stay up there when the other fliers were evacuating everybody from the park, I had no idea.

Lei
Zi
turned to us.
 
“Riptide, waterspout to its head!
 
Astra, Seven, you go for the idiot!
 
Go!”

We got.
 
Riptide pulled a funneled wave from the harbor and slapped the beast with it.
 
It didn’t flash into steam, but a water spout in the eye would distract anything and the monster snapped at the
fountaining
stream as I grabbed Seven and leaped skyward for the wheel.

“
Move!”
Shelly yelled.
 
“
It’s tracking!”

We smacked into the swinging car, almost spilling its passenger. Seven clung like a limpet to my back as I reached in and grabbed the teenage boy scrambling up off the car floor. High-energy plasma cooked the air behind me as I threw all of us down, heading for water. A crash and roar of frustration told me the wheel was history as I hit the water for what had to be the tenth time that morning.
 
Reversing direction underwater, I brought us up under the pier.

“So much for the sport coat,” Seven said as I hoisted us all onto a platform.

I slapped my hand over the giggles, biting down on relief-fueled hysteria.
 
Between Riptide’s distraction and Seven’s supernatural luck, we’d gotten away with it.

The boy shook his camera. “If you destroyed my footage I’m going to
sue.
”

Seven pushed him back in the water.

We dropped him on Streeter Drive and returned to our improvised forward base at the corner of the Children’s Museum. The
godzilla
still squatted atop the parking garage, blasting plasma-jets. The rides and concession stands didn’t so much burn as blow up. I sighed.

I’d loved that amusement park, especially the Ferris wheel.

Seven dropped his arm and stepped away from me when we landed.

“Safe and sound, boss,” he said.

Lei
Zi
shook her head.
 
“At least the idiot gave us a way to take the thing down—probably your ‘luck.’“

He looked blank.
 
I’m sure I did too.

“Look at the Ferris wheel.”

The
godzilla’s
plasma-jet had cut right through it, snapping spokes like thread,
slagging
cars, twisting the whole thing off its frame.
 
The shattered frame, a matching pair of pylons, cantered drunkenly—ripped away from the hub they’d supported.

“I don’t… oh.”
 
The left pylon came to a jagged point, making the thing a lance more than a hundred feet long.
 
Oh no.

“Yes,” she said. “If we let it get off the pier this mess is going to become a complete Charlie Foxtrot. The trick is to penetrate its hide. Do that, I’ll take care of the rest. Can you do it?” The air around us grew sticky with a gathering electrical charge. Lei
Zi’s
name meant Mother of Storms, and I could feel her bringing the lightning.

Seven and Riptide looked doubtful, but I took a deep breath and nodded.

“I can do it.
 
Just keep it off of me.”

“We will.”

At her signal, Riptide pulled more water from the harbor. I leaped into the air to drop immediately back down into the park. Landing at the base of the wrecked wheel, I braced myself, kicked, and the already stressed pylon sheared off at the base with an explosion of snapping bolts.
 
My heart in my throat, I heard the sizzle and hiss of heavy mega-watts above me as Lei
Zi
electrified Riptide’s spray around the
godzilla’s
face to distract it from the noise I made.

“
Go, go, go!”
Shelly chanted in my ear.

The pylon weighed tons and I fought to balance it as I rose, swinging around for distance.
 
No jet of plasma burned me out of the sky, but I desperately wished I were still carrying Seven with me; with him as a passenger, if the thing shot at me it would fall over its own feet before it hit us.

Riptide’s attack had it biting at the air. It jetted madly, its attention fixed away from me as I came around and dove. Pouring on all the speed I could, I went in low and fast, aiming below its ribcage and off its bony ridge with my huge and ungainly spear.

It saw me coming, opened its jaws, but I was in and the impact ripped the pylon lance out of my hands. The stricken monster gave a deafening roar, its armored tail smacking me out of the air as it spun about, and I hit the parking garage roof as the sagging structure finally collapsed under the enormous weight it had never been designed to carry.

Then the lightning hit with a world-ending thunderclap as Lei
Zi
let go of everything she’d been pulling in and storing up. She put it right down the steel spike I’d driven into the creature, and discharge washed over me.
 
Deafened, stunned, I barely felt the beast fall on me but I heard more crashes as we fell through each level of the garage.

“
Astra! Astra!
Dammitall
Hope, talk to me!”

Shelly. Right. I couldn’t see a thing, and realized I’d been buried.
 
Bright side, the jolly green giant was dead—lying under the still-twitching thing, I wasn’t hearing any heartbeat or breathing.
 
Its ass had been waxed.

Poor ‘
zilla
.