The Other Eight (22 page)

#

“You’ll never defeat the devious Chicken
Scratch,” proclaimed the chicken-masked madman.

“We’ll just see about that!” Phosphor
countered.

The thugs who had jumped to their employer’s
defense each received a bulb to the side of the head. With a burst
of light, glass, and glowing powder the tubes shattered and
staggered their targets. It was more than enough for Phosphor to
deliver a ham-sized fist or size fourteen boot to send the minions
to the ground. None of them seemed terribly motivated to rise
again. Additional minions poured into the fight, but when Phosphor
pulled additional tubes from his bag, they eyed up the towering foe
and decided to join in on one of the other battles. Chicken Scratch
was left to fend for himself.

“Next time I’m springing for the two-hundred
dollar minions,” he growled.

#

“Come one, come all!” announced Gracias,
prancing from one foot to the other. “Won’t someone please come and
get a piece of Gracias? Come on! Over here! Look over here!”

Thus far the minions had their hands full
with the other heroes, leaving Chloroplast and Gracias to do little
more than stand menacingly between the villains and their
vehicles.

“Ignore me! Grassy ass!” he attempted, to no
effect. “I guess they have to do it on purpose. Worth a shot,
though.”

“Screw this. I’m getting in on one of the
real fights,” Chloroplast said.

“But the sun isn’t out! Your powers are
useless right now!”

“
All
of our powers are useless
all
the time, Gracias. Or hadn’t you noticed?”

“But… Phosphor said—”

“Who elected him the leader? I’m getting in
there,” Chloroplast stated.

He rushed into the fray. After a moment of
indecision, Gracias followed. “You can’t do it without your
partner!”

The duo sprinted away from the vehicles.
Phosphor seemed to have things well in hand, and likewise
Nonsensica was doing well. As a result of the wholesale butt
kicking that each of them was handing out, most of the spare
minions had jumped ship to fight The Number and Bomb Sniffer. Non
Sequitur noticed it as well and joined the fight. Things quickly
devolved into a total free-for-all.

“Whoohoo! I’m contributing to society! By
hitting things! It is a dream come true!” Gracias cried.

Dentata cried out, stumbling back. Bomb
Sniffer had finally managed to scratch the white-clad villain.

“That fat little girl scratched me! I think
she drew blood,” Dentata wailed.

“Fat?! Little girl?! Get over here!” Bomb
Sniffer screeched.

#

“Tell me what you are up to, villain,”
Phosphor demanded.

“You really think the man in charge would
have given me all of the answers? You’ll never have the whole
picture, even if you capture and interrogate each and every one of
us. We are working for a man of such devious cunning you couldn’t
begin to understand the workings of his plot,” he taunted, his
words having an unnatural rehearsed quality.

Phosphor gritted his teeth and lurched toward
Chicken Scratch, who stepped back and pulled a gun from his
suit.

“Everyone freeze!” Chicken Scratch demanded.
In the face of a genuinely lethal weapon, they obeyed. Nonsensica
climbed off of the still-downed and nearly beaten Pollinatrix. Bomb
Sniffer reluctantly backed away from Dentata, and the thugs took
the chance to retreat behind their leader.

“Well, well, well. Look who has the upper
hand now,” taunted Chicken Scratch. “Don’t even think about using
those flinch powers of yours, Nonsensica. A twitch is still a
pulled trigger.”

“A gun? Really?” Gracias protested with his
hands held high. “That’s so conventional.”

“Don’t think I don’t realize that,” Chicken
Scratch snapped. “I was hoping that my first hero kill would be
with some manner of torture device, but everyone needs to start
somewhere.” The thugs who had ventured into the building returned,
a red box tucked under one of their arms. “Ah, right on time. I
suppose I could just make my escape, but it seems a waste to
squander such a lovely audience.”

The heroes glanced around to discover that
many of the motorists at the edge of the highway had left their
cars and were recording the events with a legion of cell phones.
Among them was the documentary crew, who, it would appear, had
managed to cross the crowded highway just a few steps behind them
to capture the action. Johnny On the Spot shouldered his way
through the crowd and struck a heroic pose.

“Stop right there!” he announced, pointing a
finger at Chicken Scratch. A flurry of camera flashes accompanied
the announcement. When he noticed the gun his eyes widened and he
retreated back through the crowd.

“Pff.
Heroes
,” Chicken Scratch said.
“Best take advantage of these cameras while they’re still here.
Now, who will it be? The one in the fancy costume?”

“Uniform!”

“Maybe the blabbermouth back there? Or the
deadpan snarker?”

“Hurry up, Chicken Scratch. Bottleneck can’t
keep the cops off of us forever,” Pollinatrix warned.

“True enough. Very well. I suppose the only
proper target is the leader. That will send a message, I
think.”

Phosphor stood tall, eyes locked on Chicken
Scratch as the unhinged villain extended the gun, pointing it
squarely at the hero’s chest. Behind his undignified mask, the
madman began to laugh again, the same practiced evil laugh he’d
attempted before. This time he nailed it.

“Good-bye, hero,” he pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened.

“What?” he growled.

He pulled again and again. Suddenly Non
Sequitur bolted toward him. In the surprise, he was able to wrench
the gun from the villain’s hand and flip the safety on, thus
retroactively preventing it from firing. With the danger removed,
chaos erupted. First to act was Bomb Sniffer. The young hero balled
up her fist and delivered a punishing blow to Dentata’s chin. As
the heroes each picked a thug to tangle with, the stricken woman in
white stumbled backward before turning and running to cower behind
Pollinatrix.

“You might want to pick a different spot,
honey,” Pollinatrix said.

She raised both of her hands and snapped.

“No! No, no, no, I’m not sticking around for
this!” Dentata objected, sprinting for the car as an ominous hum
filled the air.

Pollinatrix laughed in demented glee as a
swarm of stinging insects descended from above. Heroes and villains
alike scattered, along with both the amateur and professional film
crews. With nerves of steel and a steady hand, in spite of the
bees, Phosphor hurled his bulb like a spear, skewering the red box
and sending it sliding across the ground.

“Curses and blast!” Chicken Scratch cried,
but he knew better than to go after it. He made it to the car and
popped the locks for the others to pile in.

Without a decent running start to get ahead
of the bees she’d attracted, Pollinatrix ended up bringing a
considerable amount along with her in the car. Due to the sheer
number of them, the bees weren’t quite as focused on their summoner
as they had been during the last heist. The three villains swatted
and slapped madly at the residual swarm that slipped inside. To his
credit, the dozen or so stings thus far were not enough to make
Chicken Scratch break character.

“You win this round, heroes,” he said,
lowering the window just enough to toss out a scribbled note. “But
you haven’t seen the last of Chicken Scratch.”

Most of the thugs had already fled the scene
after deciding that their bargain-basement rates did not include
enduring several hundred bee stings. The rest of them, as well as
all of the heroes, ran about and tried to chase away the tiny
attackers until whatever influence Pollinatrix had used to attract
them finally wore off and they decided to return to their hives.
When the chaos settled down, Nonsensica, Chloroplast, Phosphor, and
Non Sequitur had managed to subdue a minion each, and The Number
had gathered up the package and the note.

“Hah! It looks like bees can’t or don’t sting
through latex… mostly. That’s another vote in favor of the
uniform,” Nonsensica said, her boot resting on the back of one of
the largest of the hired muscle. “Anyone else need tie wraps to
secure the baddies? I brought a bunch.”

“Yeah, toss ’em over,” Chloroplast said,
snatching one and restraining his own conquest.

“No one’s allergic to bee stings, are they?”
asked Non Sequitur.

All replied negatively.

“What’s the note say, Number?”

“It… uh,” he said, turning it every which
way. “It says… this is definitely ‘the’…”

“Never mind. What’s in the box?” Phosphor
asked.

The trip to the ground had torn the top of
the box, revealing its contents. Inside was a small black box with
a few switches on it and a threaded jack. Folded beside it was a
piece of paper. The Number fished the paper out.

“Operations manual for the Jacobs
high-sensitivity electronic squib remote activator. Does that mean
anything to anyone?” The Number asked.

“A squib is one of those little charges they
use in movies to simulate bullet impacts,” Bomb Sniffer said.

“So what? The bad guys were going to make a
movie?” Gracias said.

“Chloroplast, Gracias, I realize I’m not the
formal leader of the group, but I really wish you two would have
stayed where I positioned you. If you’d been blocking the cars,
they might not have gotten away.”

“Yeah, but if we’d stayed put, Bomb Sniffer
would have got wrecked by the thugs!” Chloroplast defended.

“Look, the important thing is they didn’t get
what they were after, we bagged ourselves some baddies, and the
worst to come of it was a few bee stings. Piece of cake! See, Non
Sequitur. The hero biz isn’t that dangerous,” Nonsensica said.

“Not that dangerous?!” Non Sequitur objected,
shaking the gun that was still in his hand. “Phosphor almost got
shot!”

“Key word ‘almost.’ We’re all good. This is a
victory. Good job, everybody! Now let’s get the police out here and
head back to the… oh, they’re here already.”

During the panic brought about by the bees,
the traffic snarl had dissipated as mysteriously as it had
appeared, and in doing so had finally opened the way for the police
to respond to the alarm that had been tripped. There were three
cars total. The first skidded to a stop, and out burst a very
serious-looking officer of the law, gun in hand.

“Hold it right there! Drop the gun!” barked
the officer.

“Oh, jeez!” Non Sequitur exclaimed. He
dropped the gun at his feet.

“Quick! The men responsible for this are—”
began Phosphor.

“Get down on the ground!” the officer
ordered.

The heroes quickly complied.

“This never happens to Batman,” grumbled
Gracias.

The seven
heroes sat, in a decidedly unheroic manner, in a large holding cell
in the Dumfries police station. Conveniently, Johnny had managed to
slip away and thus had not joined them in one of only two cells in
the room, each occupying one corner and sectioned off with bars,
such that half of the cell was cinder-block wall and the other half
was an iron cage. The only other notable features were a row of
toilets with sinks built into the their tops and the words “Cary
was here” cryptically written on one wall. Sharing the cell with
them were all four thugs, as well as a drunk with a fresh stain on
his pants that had certainly been food at one point. Whether it had
ended up a stain before or after being eaten was something that no
one was interested in learning. Adhesive bandages had been
liberally applied to the many bee stings suffered, and the worst
injury, a busted lip attained by one of the thugs, had been
butterfly stitched together. Now they all simply waited as a few of
the arresting officers discussed something loudly on the other side
of a frosted-glass door.

Not one to cope well with silence or boredom,
Gracias had been running his mouth for most of their
incarceration.

“Really? So you just stand around in a Home
Depot parking lot and wait for people to hire you? I thought that
sort of thing only happened on TV,” Gracias said to one of the
thugs. “And you took the job even though it was a guy in a chicken
mask?”

“You take the money where you can get it,”
the thug said with a shrug.

Gracias nodded appreciatively. After three
seconds of silence, his brain veered in another direction. “So,
Number. I never really got your name, anyway. You’d think with a
name like The Number you’d have some kind of math powers.”

“Number, as in dance number.”

“Oh… well, that’s not exactly obvious. You
probably should have picked a name that makes a little more sense.
Like Primadonna did.”

“Primadonna’s name
doesn’t
make sense.
A prima donna is a singer. She doesn’t sing, she dances. For her
name to make sense she’d have to be prima ballerina.”

Gracias considered this. “Nah. That sounds
dainty. Dainty doesn’t inspire fear and respect.” Again, a brief
silence. “So, Nonsensica. That suit is pretty much airtight, right?
What happens if you have to—?”

“All right, up and out. You are not being
charged,” announced the surly officer in charge.

“Not being charged? How merciful. Any chance
we’re, say, being
rewarded
? I figure seeing as how we did
your job for you it is the least—” Chloroplast jabbed before
Phosphor covered his mouth.

“Thank you for your hospitality. We are much
obliged for the medical treatment,” Phosphor said
diplomatically.

They filed out of the station and into a
waiting troop carrier. A short time later they found themselves
sitting in a much smaller room with a
much
angrier host—the
on-site interview room at the testing camp. The host was General
Siegel. All seven of the heroes clustered shoulder to shoulder on
one side of the interview table. On the other side stood the
general, and in an almost unprecedented event, he was out of his
uniform. Rather than his crisp shirt, carefully arranged tie, and
immaculate jacket, he wore a wrinkled shirt with the top button
open, an untied tie, and no jacket at all. He had been staring at
them silently, the temperature in the room seeming to tick up a few
degrees with each seething breath.