The Rise of Renegade X

F
OR
S
ÄNNY
M
C
S
ÄNPANTS,
MY SECRET NOVEL TWIN, WHO
READ THIS BOOK TO ME IN
HIS ATTIC AND HAS BEEN ITS
BIGGEST FAN EVER SINCE.

G
olden City isn’t your average tourist trap. Sure, it’s got its tall buildings, and the one street everyone knows the crazies hang out on—the teens with green hair and lip piercings that tourists think are an attraction somehow. Like they don’t have them at home. Traveling to see ordinary stuff like that is the same as going to a restaurant and ordering a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It’s a waste of time and money, and that’s
not
why people come to Golden City. Tourists aren’t here to throw pennies in old fountains or catch a play—they’re here in the hopes of spying some idiot in tights soaring past the skyscrapers. They want to visit superhero-themed diners and order Justice Burgers and Liberty Fries, served to them by an unhappy wage slave in a polyester cape. They want to visit the Heroes Walk in Golden City Park and see all the shining white statues of the superhero do-gooders who made the history books.

But they don’t come just to see the heroes. You don’t want to know how many tourists harbor the secret hope of getting accosted on the street by a supervillain with a raygun. As if we have time to go around mugging pointless, ordinary citizens. The
Golden City Daily News
did a report on it last year. Almost 70 percent of all tourists come here hoping for some danger, some excitement, and the chance to see a real-life bad guy. They figure with heroes making up a whole 21 percent of the city’s population, and villains only 14 percent—giving us the highest concentration of heroes and villains in the U.S.—a hero is bound to come along and stop the villain before things get out of hand.

They also come for nights like tonight. I’m Damien Locke, only son of the supervillain known as the Mistress of Mayhem, and what’s about to happen to me is something every tourist in Golden City is dying to see, and it’s invitation only. And let me tell you, most superheroes, despite their supposed generosity, don’t invite strangers to their sixteenth birthday parties. It’s a huge rite of passage, and they don’t want to share the big night with nobodies. Neither do I, but let me put it this way: at midnight tonight, my right thumbprint is going to rearrange itself to form a V. It only happens once, and at ten bucks a head—twenty for the whole family—I’m going to make a killing off it.

Seriously, there are over two hundred tourists at my birthday party, and more are pouring in. It’s amazing what out-of-towners will pay to watch a random villain’s thumb make the big change. Their admission charges will more than pay for the price of the party, which of course isn’t at our house. I rented a hall downtown, big enough to hold five hundred people before we become a fire hazard, and all I had to do to get this kind of turnout was post fliers downtown that said,
Supervillain birthday: danger, excitement, and cheap drinks guaranteed!

Strobe lights and a disco ball reflect off the multicolored tiles on the floor, and music blasts from speakers as tall as I am set up in front of the stage. There’s a bar, too, but the owners get the money from that, not me. I’ve got a camera set up so when the big event happens, people will be able to watch on the giant flat screens plastered along the walls.

I’m mingling and signing the occasional autograph—for a five-dollar fee, of course—and trying not to get bumped too hard by the crowd when someone pinches me on the ass, a privilege that was
not
included in the cover charge. But when I turn around, it’s just my friend Kat. Her costume’s bright purple with black sleeves and writing over her boobs that proclaims her “The Shapeshifter.” She has short black hair, and tonight it has purple streaks in it. Kat can change her shape and form at will. She might not really be wearing that costume. She could, in fact, be completely naked and no one would ever know. Kat’s had her power for a little over a year now, but I’m still waiting for mine to come in, even though it seems like all my friends have had theirs for forever. But I bet when I do get mine, it’ll be really cool. I’ll probably get laser eyes, like my mom, or be able to control lightning, like my grandpa.

“Hey, birthday boy,” Kat says. She’s holding a cup of punch, which my mom “made.” And by “made,” I mean she poured three containers of leftover juice from the fridge into a big bowl and added a packet of Kool-Aid. And homemade booze, of course. If you’re ever at a party with my mom, don’t drink the punch unless you want to wake up naked in a horse pasture with your underwear on your head and a hobo licking a banana split off your stomach. I warned Grandpa last Christmas, but he didn’t listen. You’d think he’d know better, being her father and all.

The punch isn’t for the tourists, just the real guests, and Kat must not have tasted hers yet because she sips it and makes a face. “Wow. Your mom drop one of her chemistry beakers in this stuff?”

Probably. “You look hot. In both senses of the word.” Did I mention my friend Kat is actually my
ex-girlfriend
Kat? I’d be seriously regretting breaking up with her right now if she hadn’t cheated on me last year. We might have grown pretty close lately, but there were a couple months when I wouldn’t even talk to her, and I have to keep reminding myself of that. “Thanks,” Kat says. She looks over the black spandex supervillain costume I’ve got on, ignoring the cool interlocked
M
s on the front and staring at the goggles I’m wearing. They’re round and make me look kind of like a bug. Kat raises one eyebrow and grins, and I can’t tell if she’s serious or teasing me when she says, “You look like a total loser in those.”

“All part of the act.”

“What? That you got hit by the ugly mad scientist stick?”

“Why, Kat,” I gasp, pretending to be offended, “that’s an insult to my mother.” My mom’s a mad scientist. It’s a lot like being a regular scientist, except without worrying about legal or moral limitations, and it’s a common profession for the scientifically inclined supervillain. You can even major in it at Vilmore, the local supervillain university. Kat and I have both applied for next fall. Ordinary citizens might not go to college until they’re eighteen, but that’s how your enemies get ahead. Villains have to work a lot harder than that and start as soon as we get our
Vs
. Especially since heroes have their own school, Heroesworth Academy, and start at about the same time, though I’m sure their coursework isn’t as rigorous.

Kat takes another sip of her punch and coughs. “It
is
hot in here,” she says. Then she freezes up, her eyes on the crowd. “Oh no, Pete’s here. He thinks it was worth ten bucks to come here and torment you? Crap, he’s already seen me.”

“Don’t be so hard on our dear pal Pete. He didn’t pay anything, not yet—I invited him.” When she says Pete’s here to torment me, she means his presence torments
her
. Which is a step up from my last birthday, when I caught her making out with him at my party. In my room. On my bed. And they couldn’t blame it on the punch because Mom was buried too deep in her work—an experiment in splicing goldfish genes with a shark’s—to go to the store for the Kool-Aid. Though Kat’s shapeshifting power coming in a couple weeks before that might have had something to do with it. I liked her how she was, and I
thought
she liked me. I guess she just didn’t think she could do any better, because as soon as she could turn herself into a supermodel, I was out of the picture.

I lean over and whisper in Kat’s ear, “Don’t shake hands with him.”

If Pete were smart, he would have burned his invitation. Instead he comes straight over to us. Ah, Pete, as thick as ever. Just like old times. Pete’s a year older than me and Kat, and he’s been going to Vilmore since last fall. His superpower is that he can broadcast signals, like to a radio or a TV. He doesn’t need a phone to call someone—it’s kind of creepy. He locks me in a quick embrace, clapping his hand against my shoulder. “Good to see you, man.” It’s not good to see him. He moves to Kat, but she’s too busy downing her punch in one gulp to notice.

“Happy birthday,” Pete says, shuffling his feet. He’s not sure if he should meet my eyes or not. Pete has dark skin, glasses, and a well-muscled torso, if you’re into that sort of thing. “When I got the invitation, I … I’m glad there’s no hard feelings.”

And I’m glad he’s been living at school the past six months and hasn’t been around. It’s made it easier not to accidentally run into him. Of course, it’s also made it harder to get revenge.

“Damien,” Kat says, her voice rough from the punch, “I’ll catch up with you later.” She looks at Pete, like she owes him some kind of explanation. “Big, um, bathroom emergency.”

Pete stares longingly after Kat. In a room with over two hundred people in it, I think the last thing he expected was to end up alone with me. “Listen, Damien, about last year—”

Mom dances over. She bumps her butt against Pete’s, startling him and possibly scarring him for life. “Whoo,” she says, tugging on her collar. Strands of wavy red hair cling to her neck, stuck with sweat. She was in the papers at least once a week before I was born. Now her supervillainy is more low-key, limited mostly to tinkering in her lab, making punch the FDA wouldn’t approve of, and extorting money from the government to make ends meet. “I hope midnight gets here soon—we’re running out of punch. Oh, look, sweetie, I knew you’d take my suggestion.” She smiles at the two silver Ms on my costume. “Master of Mayhem.”

“Midnight Marvel.” Not that Mom’s supervillain name isn’t cool, but naming myself after my mommy? Yeah, that would make me the lamest villain on the planet. “It’s a stage name, just for tonight.” I haven’t decided what my
real
villain name is going to be, but I figure I have two years at Vilmore to figure it out.

“Pete!” Mom says, as if she just noticed him—I guess she didn’t care whose butt she was bumping. “I haven’t seen you in ages!”

“Pete’s been busy,” I say, saving Pete from stupidly gaping at her for five minutes, struggling to come up with an excuse for why he never got invited back to our house.

“Very busy,” he repeats, sticking his hands in his pockets and avoiding Mom’s gaze. You can’t blame Pete for that one. Mom can shoot lasers out of her eyes.

“Oh, there’s Taylor!” Mom spots her boyfriend in the crowd. I don’t really like that she’s dating or that she brought him to my party without a cover charge, but he
is
the dean of Vilmore, so I suppose I can let it slide until the admissions process is over. “You boys have fun,” Mom says, getting ready to bounce her way across the dance floor again. “And don’t forget, honey, you’ve only got about twenty minutes before midnight.”

“I didn’t know if I was going to come,” Pete says after Mom leaves. “I only got your invitation today.” He takes his hands out of his pockets and relaxes his shoulders. “But we used to have a lot of good times, and I wanted to apologize.”

“You had a whole year to do that, Pete.”

He stiffens. “I was afraid you’d be mad.”

“Getting mad’s a waste of time.”