Origins of a D-List Supervillain (20 page)

The old, where there’s smoke there’s fire, routine,
I thought and dodged the flames. The smoke impacted the ground between us and hid me from the pair of superhumans for the briefest moment.

Twin whips created by some form of telekinesis cleaved through the smoky barricade snapping out from the woman taking shelter behind “Double D.” Instead of just trying to beat on my shields, the cowboy-hat-wearing Gulf Coaster tried to ensnare me this time. Considering my mass and relative strength, it was a bad idea on her part. She was probably just trying to hold me long enough for her boyfriend there to hit me with some of his more potent discs. Then again, Eyelash wasn’t necessarily the brightest mind on that team.

One thing is certain; I wasn’t going to get the silly string filled ones that he uses when he visits kids at the hospital!

I let her plan happen and immediately triggered a three second burst from my jetpack, essentially jumping backward. My tactic caught her unprepared and dragged her right into the back of the man shielding her. I let out a small chuckle as the two went down in a heap, and sent a heavy taser pulse to keep them down for a couple of minutes.

Turning my attention away from the fallen pair of heroes, I saw She-Dozer and Spirit Staff were giving Bobby a fit, while above, EM Pulsive was duking it out with K-otica in a swirling mass of energy that my sensors told me would be a very bad idea to interrupt.

Eddie knows what he’s doing,
I thought.
This is his idea anyway. Better help Bobby!

Spirit Staff was an Oriental monk with some kind of magic, unbreakable staff. He turned aside Bobby’s force clubs with an ease that bordered on contempt. The legend around the man’s weapon was that it channeled the fighting talents of every warrior who had ever owned it. Though short, and with a slight build, he rained a veritable whirlwind of blows down on my buddy. It wasn’t hurting Bobby nearly as much as it was distracting him from his real problem—She-Dozer.

The woman matched his strength and looked like she trained extensively in Mixed Martial Arts. Bobby’s training regimen usually involved a case of beer and trying to burp the alphabet. Spirit Staff frustrated Bobby while the Amazon was really taking it to my partner in crime.

She-Dozer was about as invulnerable as my
compadre
and I put aside any reservations about fighting a woman and sent a burst at her. It knocked her about twenty feet away and gave Bobby a breather. The Staff repositioned himself to defend against both of us. I had hopes that my technology would be more than a match for his staff, but my next burst was deflected.

“Power levels at sixty-five percent,” the mechanical voice announced. “Shields at seventy-seven percent. Estimated flight time is twenty-six minutes and eight seconds.”

I ran through the numbers as Bobby recovered. The police had cordoned off the area, and that was the point. Seawall’s gang was launching a crime spree and we’d be clogging up the works and limiting the emergency response. Eddie’s plan was simple. The Guardians wanted both him and me and we were happy to oblige, knowing just how the police and the do-gooders would respond. Naturally, we knocked over a bank in the middle of the city. I wouldn’t have even come along, but Eddie called in his favor that he’d earned by introducing me to Vicky.

Give Eddie some credit; he likes to rob many places at the same time. Sure he’s a bit of a show off and a complete and utter tool, but he dreams big.

The only thing that hadn’t gone our way so far was K-otica’s unpredictable power level. She could be the most useless enemy you’d ever meet; about as effective as the almost-normal groundskeeper they employed who could make five copies of himself. Other days, you needed to run away from her as fast as humanly possible. Today, we were getting something close to the latter and K was giving EM Pulsive all he could handle and then some. Otherwise, we’d have already steamrolled these clowns. At her weakest, she throws around pretty colored lights like some kind of small scale special effects show. Today, her lights were concussive beams of pure power and she was able to use them to fly.

Truth be told, I was a little worried that she’d beat Eddie or he’d do a runner and I’d be left fighting her. Lining up a shot, I gave Eddie an assist. My full power burst chipped away at my remaining energy, but distracted her long enough for EM Pulsive to give her a full barrage and the Latina with rainbow colored hair plummeted to the ground, but got up just as quickly, looking angry.

Eddie was looking noticeably dimmer and that wasn’t a good sign.

I couldn’t offer any additional assistance. She-Dozer was back on her feet and charging me. I jumped to the left and fired both my blasters at her. The one that hit spun her around and sent her sprawling to the ground. I was smiling until she leapt up with a manhole cover in her hand and threw the thing at me like a damn Frisbee.

The heavy object broke through my shields and hit so hard that it shattered my chest mounted light and left a big dent in my front armor plating. The warbling Master Alarm activated.

Damn me for underestimating her! She’s stronger than my suit and can take as much punishment as she can give.

Bobby continued taking continued abuse from Spirit Staff and we needed to buy at least another five or ten minutes.

“Surrender Stringel and I won’t have to rip that armor off of you piece by piece!” Dozer threatened.

“Kiss my boil ridden ass, Dozer!” Technically, I do get an occasional bout of skin irritation when I stay inside the armor too long—another item I’d need to correct in the next design. Perhaps I was sharing too much.

The Gulf Coaster was a much better hand to hand fighter than I would ever be, so I boosted skyward just before she got close to me and sent a burst down on her.

It was slightly stronger than that kiss I’d offered her moments before. Swooping down, I grabbed one of those small metal dumpsters from an alley and lifted it up. I tossed it at Spirit Staff and mentally challenged him to block that.

He dodged instead, but Bobby staggered around and ripped the lid off the dumpster and caught Spirit Staff flatfooted as a result. The next owner of the staff might pick up something useful from that experience, but the present owner would need a few minutes and maybe some medical care to sort things out.

Unfortunately for us, Bobby’s attack and the subsequent injury to her bed warmer, sent K-otica over the edge and she took issue with all three of us villains and most anyone still upright on that city block.

“Shields under heavy assault! Sixty three perc...forty-nine percent.”

Bobby took a bad hit and the outburst had even winged She-Dozer. I wasn’t faring that well either. K-otica, all amped up on power, had a tendency to let that go to her head. In her place, it would probably piss me off too, knowing that you have that much energy inside of you, but only ever get to tap into it when fate smiles favorably in your direction. It would almost be worse than having no superpower at all.

I’d still trade;
I thought and tried to get to the unconscious Bobby. Eddie had vanished and I couldn’t see him anywhere.
Time to grab and go!

Another barrage sent me off course and into someone’s apartment. I crashed through the bedroom and out into the kitchen on the other side of the wall and found my shields at a measly twenty-one percent.

Not good! Not good!

I stumbled back toward the opening, but saw K-otica now standing on Bobby’s limp and bloody form looking back up at me with a half-crazed look on her face. She-Dozer was next to her, trying to calm her down. When the overpowered lunatic caught sight of me, she raised her hands and Dozer had to knock the other woman’s arms skyward. The burst of energy went to the heavens and I counted myself lucky for the interference. Maybe Dozer wasn’t so bad after all. I froze for a second while the two women struggled. Eyelash was already on her feet and so was Discus. Four against one was shitty odds and I didn’t see a way out of it that didn’t involve Bobby in custody.

“No!” She-Dozer shouted. “Calm down, Karina! You can’t destroy a building. Taiki will be okay!”

As much as it pained me to do it, I turned and ran through the apartment, into the hallway and out the other side of the window, triggering my jetpack. With Eddie gone, and my shields about down to tissue paper, there was no way I could get Bobby. Flying away, I tried to justify it that Bobby was injured and they’d be obligated to take him to a doctor, but I still felt like a failure.

• • •

“I’ve seen the available news footage, Cal,” Vicky said. “It doesn’t look like you could’ve done much more than you did. EM Pulsive was in charge, and left both you and Bobby hanging out to dry.”

“Yeah,” I agreed with her. I could count the number of people I considered friends on one hand and one of them was in a hospital under armed guard and awaiting transport to the SuperMax.

“Besides, it’s like you said, he’s still in a coma and it’s not like there’s a supervillain hospital out there. Most tend to use a private doctor service. I could’ve gotten you in contact with one, but not on such short notice.”

After collecting my slightly larger than expected share of the multiple heists from an apologetic Eddie and telling him my rates would be double on his next job, I made it back to Alabama and stuffed the prototype I was working on and my other important gear in the van and drove to Vicky’s estate near Branson, Missouri.

Before leaving I gave two pulse pistols to Tweedledee and put him in guard mode. I started to give Dum one of Bobby’s spare forceclubs, but shut him down instead. There was no telling what that deranged robot would do if left alone.

“Thanks for putting me up these past couple of days,” I said. She came out for the weekend, but left me all alone there during the week. My armor was repaired and the prototype was nearing completion, right on time.

“I like your level of paranoia, even if it’s unwarranted,” she answered.

“Just because it’s illegal to use telepathic scans on a criminal to learn where his base is, doesn’t mean they wouldn’t do it on the side and just say that Bobby confessed.”

“True,” Vicky conceded and passed me a can of cola. “But, Bobby’s mind is impenetrable. Whatever gave him his powers, keeps out mind probes.”

I was suitably shocked. “You’re shitting me! Bobby never told me that!”

“He might not even know,” she answered. “Why do you think he gets so many bodyguard gigs? Bobby is strong, but he’s not really that powerful when it comes down to it. General Devious checked him herself and she couldn’t get in.”

“So you’re finally admitting you work for her! I knew it!”

Vicky rolled her eye at my dig. “Assuming your pulse cannon prototype works as advertised, you’ll get the answer. Until then, keep guessing.”

Instead of pressing her on that and not getting an answer—again—I went back to something that bothered me, “So why didn’t you tell me that when I contacted you? I could’ve stayed back at my hideout.”

“I figured you needed a place to decompress, plus I’d get a chance to watch the magic happen in person.”

“You’re just trying to get into my armor,” I said, playing one of the only cards I had against her.

“Also true, but it is working. I can tell you’re close to caving on that front. It’s only a matter of time.”

It was my turn to give her an “oh please” look.

“How close are you to finishing?”

My best guess was a week, so I lied. “Ten days.”

She grinned and said, “In that case I’ll set up the big demo for eight days from now, right after I get out of the hot tub.”

• • •

I’d hoped that her employers would have come out east, but instead I rode on a private jet to Nevada and then in a delivery van a hundred miles into the desert. At least I had my armor to keep me occupied.

Using my GPS, I found that the only structures in the area belonged to a ghost town that was abandoned around the start of World War I. To pass the time, I watched imported porn that I’d downloaded and tried to figure out whether I’d correctly guessed which villain bankrolled Vicky. It was a shame that she went ahead instead of hanging out with me. Then again, she probably wouldn’t have approved of my viewing choices.

Wow, those girls really put the lay in Malaysia!

The delivery van came to a stop and the back door rolled up revealing armed men in coveralls and several Type A robots, along with three Type B’s. I hadn’t seen any of the gyroscopic balls in quite some time. None of them had any insignias, which was either a security precaution or Vicky screwing with me—or possibly both.

Definitely the Overlord! No doubt in my mind.

“This way please,” one of the men with a plasma rifle strapped across his back said.

I picked up my prototype and hopped out the back of the van.
It might be a dry heat outside, but the air conditioning worked plenty fine in here. Scanner is picking up a live power source straight ahead. I guess that old barn isn’t nearly as dilapidated on the inside.

The guard led me in and there were numerous lab-coat-wearing flunkies running around the well-lit, modern interior. Over at the main table, I spotted Vicky speaking with several of them and enjoying being the center of attention. She was wearing a tight skirt and a blouse that flattered her.
The woman has some really nice legs.

One of the lab coats directed me to another table with a metal cradle on top. I did as the douchebag instructed and set my prototype down to let the man hook up their instruments to it.

Amateurs! Like I haven’t already done all of this.

“Cal, get your butt over here,” Vicky yelled. “There’s someone I want you to meet.”

Since I was in direction following mode, I complied and made my way over to the perky power broker.

The man next to her turned around and I damn near shit myself.

“Joe? Joe Ducie! What the hell? Is this some kind of Promethia trap? Activate shields! Power to weapons!”

I wasn’t going out without a fight!
I started scanning for Ultraweapon.
Where is he? Where is he?