Supervillain, Me

by Gentry Race

  She pulled herself off of me, holding the dripping cum inside until she could put on her panties. I lay there lifelessly, shocked at what had just happened and why it needed to. Fleeting was the anger that I had felt almost continuously since Tessa had gotten her hands on me. I was reveling in the knowledge that I had finally had sex, real sex. My first time, and it was with my best friend.

  I wondered where Hera would land on the Sexy-Evil Matrix if she was evil. Then I thought about which zone Jessica would fall into. She was evil now, and I wasn’t. I felt conflicted, a villain who had been converted to a hero, but still had remnants of each inside him.

  CRASH!

  I shot to my feet, throwing on my pants and peeking out the trailer window. Shining in from above, I saw daylight and what looked like a giant hole ripped through the convention center roof.

  What kind of thing has the strength —

  Then I heard it. Like a deep bellow from a reptilian monster that attacked a Japanese city on the regular. When I finally saw the culprit, I saw not a gojira, but Ari, now a menacing, giant, kosher, alligator monster from Florida. He must have been a hundred feet tall.

  The beast slammed his long, sharp claws down on the convention center again, crushing more of the roof in. The halls and ballrooms of the upper floor came caving in, and plumes of smoke filled the desolate building. Thank goodness everyone had been evacuated.

  I looked at Hera. She had no sign of fear on her face, only concern for what needed to be done.

  “We have to stop him,” she said.

  I knew what that meant. To stop Ari, we would most likely have to kill him. Kill my friend who only came down here to support me.

  “I don’t think I can kill him, Hera,” I said.

  “Neither can I,” she said. “Either way, it’s time to suit up.”

  Hera raised her hands and sparked electricity down over her naked body, leaving a skin-tight suit of silver and red. The bottom half of her face was now covered.

  “How did you do that?” I asked, looking at my thin scraps of clothing that were nowhere close to a superhero suit.

  “You will learn in time how to hide your identity from the public,” she said. “And what powers you embody.”

  I looked around the trailer for something to use or wear. I needed to hide my face and protect my identity from the public. I bet the news was having a hay day outside. The trailer was full of nostalgic trinkets from the cable TV show it was promoting. Next to the bed was a drawer full of items the main hero in the show would use against zombies: a high-altitude training mask, hockey pads, and a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire.

  I smiled at Hera and quoted one of my favorite villains in an older sounding English voice. “ ‘No one cared who I was until I put on the mask’.”

  She shook her head and readied for battle. “Get that on.”

  My heart raced from the excitement and the dread. It was like being in the game, but real. No Gatica. Real consequences. And a one-hundred-foot, gruesome alligator monster that used to be my best friend, attacking the San Diego Convention Center.

  When I was outfitted, Hera gave me a nod and then looked up at the trailer’s ceiling. She lowered herself into a squat, contracting her thick, toned thighs, and sprang into a burst of motion. With two fists up, she ripped through the trailer roof and landed on a movie studio high-rise rafter overlooking the main exhibit hall.

  I followed, lunging up, and realized the small amount of effort it took to make a bound of such great height. My trajectory arc was short, and I just barely caught the ledge. Hera grabbed me, pulling me up.

  “You need to work on your jumps,” she said. “Feel different yet?”

  When I had been corrupted by Tessa, the change seemed to follow getting sick or angry. But I was changed now by Hera’s goodness. My emotions were did feel slightly different. As if I were spirited with hope instead of despair. How would I know when it comes?

  “No,” I said.

  More of the roof and second floor of the convention center caved in as the giant alligator monster broke its way inward, kicking through the walls. His feet were mammoth-sized and tipped with sharp, extruded claws.

  “I smell your superpowers,” the giant Gator said. “Gator don’t take no shit from superheroes.”

  “You’d better stay back, then, and watch a pro,” Hera said to me, flipping off the platform.

  She landed on her feet like a cat-like woman, and I watched the reptilian beast tower over her against the bright blue San Diego sky. It screamed in rage when shots from the surrounding SWAT team hit him in the back.

  “No,” I yelled. “They are going to kill him!”

  Hera saw this and dashed between the beast’s legs. She was fast to get out into the open. One by one, she took out the attacking SWAT team, snapping their assault weapons in half and smashing in their vehicles. It was a sight to see her work. I gripped the metal studio rafter with my hand in suspense.

  The giant Gator beast turned back around and spotted me. I could see the hate, the menace, and the villainy in its heart. The same feelings of hate I had. It took a giant step forward, instantly smashing five booths filled with trinkets and collectibles. The beast swung its arm down, bringing more of the roof down with it as it made its way toward me.

  The rail I held onto so intently snapped, and I fell forward.

  THUNK!

  I hit the ground hard, but I didn’t feel the pain so much as I noticed the faulty railing. It was broken off and bent with two identifying hand marks; I must have squeezed it hard for it to just break off like that. I looked at my arms.

  Adam Antium’s signature paneling began to outline and contour my metallic skin — I was becoming who I was meant to be. Who I had been inside all this time. Strength surged through my body.

  BOOM!

  I felt the pressure of a five-ton reptile slam its foot on top of me. I grabbed the sole of its foot with my newly formed metal arms and caught the devastating step in mid-air. The Gator was strong, but I managed to hold him up. Hera was not far now. She plowed into the Gator’s other leg with all her might.

  The creature’s leg swung out from beneath him, and he hit the ground, crushing more of the convention center and wiping out some nearby police vehicles.

  The Gator was still for a moment, then I watched him wiggle back to consciousness. How were we going to stop the behemoth monster? I thought back to my arsenal. I hand’t developed anything like a City Leveler yet; besides, that would take out a lot of civilians.

  I looked around; there was no one in sight. The police were gone. The SWAT were gone. The echoing gunfire had all stopped. Hera took notice of me pausing as the creature came to.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked while climbing the scaly creature. “Come on, we need to get him out of here before—”

  And then I heard the screeching alarms of a city in panic, the sound of a city that had access to a large Pacific Naval Fleet. The alarms almost sounded like the tsunami warning drills I used to hear in school. But this was no drill. There was a monster attacking the city. Once panic began, the next logical step toward victory for any villain was to just obliterate everything — level the playing field; literally.

  I had been there before when I used my City Leveler ability in my game. Now, I just wish it didn’t need to happen like this.

  Roaring jets ripped through the sky above like we were at a baseball game. Something came crashing through the roof behind me and landed smack in the center of the convention space.

  BOOOOOOOM!

  I saw the light blast outward, and heat followed from the artillery shell. As it engulfed Hera and I, I watched the giant monster, who used to be my friend, get battered by the percussion blast. The Gator was blown to pieces, showering us in chunks of flesh.

  Hera and I were knocked to the ground. The booths, the merch, posters and everything comic-related was all decimated and now on fire. I got up, looking for Hera. She was about twenty feet away, having been th
rown into a large array of gaming televisions.

  I ran to her as she picked herself up, unharmed. She truly is a superhero. I brushed off the raw alligator flesh and small bits of paper that clung to her, still smoldering.

  Ari was gone. A deep sadness came over me. Never again would I hear him ribbing on me. Gone were the vague Floridian references that only showed his inner trailer trashiness. I smiled, thinking of his jokes, then winced a bit. I felt the tears running down my cheek. I brushed them away as if I was trying to wipe away the pain.

  Large, colorful Supervillain, Me posters were burning slowly, the crinkling, printed paper dissolving into black ash. Burning bits fluttered down around us.

  I paused for a second to watch the block-style superhero lettering on a poster burn up, a metaphor for what was happening to us. Below, Tessa’s gorgeous face looked up at me, smiling in all her villainy, only to be consumed by the fire.

  “We need to end this,” I said. “We need to stop her.”

  “But where did she go?” Hera asked.

  I remembered the run-down tower on Sigsbee Row, where Tessa had taken me the night of our first real encounter.

  “I might know a place.”

  15

  Towering Inferno

  After the smoke and dust cleared from the devastated convention center, Hera and I easily avoided the mass of troops, barreling in to annihilate whatever else came out. It wasn’t hard slipping past their defenses, equipped with Hera’s superpowers. We were more concerned with what lie ahead, at the top of the run-down tower.

  We stood at its base, steadily eyeing each floor as it ascended to a half-constructed skeleton of a building, I-beams jutting from the top like teeth. Hera looked at me with hesitation in her eyes. I could see her in the reflection of charred glass before us. I knew she was strong, but for a second, I thought I saw fear in her.

  “ ‘Fear is the path to the dark side’,” I said, looking her dead in her eyes. “ ‘Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.’ I still have a little dark side within me, Hera, and she is going to suffer for turning Ari and taking Jess.”

  Hera smiled at my newfound confidence. She grabbed my hand.

  “Promise me,” she said, “that after all this, you won’t forget me. I know you and Jess are together.”

  “Promise,” I said, clasping her hand with my metal fist.

  I punched the glass door in, shattering it to pieces. Hera kicked in and around, clearing any remaining soot covered jagged edges. We stepped into the building. The desk, chairs, sofas and lamps were freshly charred, like an arsonist had had a field day in here.

  Hera pointed to the elevator. “Going up?”

  We stepped inside. The rickety contraption still looked the same: half-assed put together, just like the other night. Seeing it for what it really was now — a run-down building being refurbished after a fire — I felt like an idiot for not picking up on the signs the first time I was here. It was clear Tessa was using the new ARMOR tech to change the appearance of her surroundings.

  The cage clicked and swayed as it made its way past each decrepit floor. Finally, a light came on and a bell sounded. The doors opened to a brick wall.

  “What the fuck?” Hera said, sticking her hands out to stop the elevator doors from closing.

  “She’s built a fortress,” I said.

  I stepped back and thrust my metal shoulder forward, moving at a sprint, slamming into the brick and pushing through to the other side.

  The room I came into was dark, sealed off from all light except what crept in from the elevator shaft. Hera and I felt around for a door or other opening, but the walls were solid. A single room, bricked in. It carried a vile, acidic odor, tinged with the scent of charred hair.

  “What the hell did she build?” Hera asked. “Some kind of maze?”

  My gut told me what she had done. I had studied my fair share of bad guys, serial killers, and villains in my quest to create her, and there was only one person that had created something similar to this in the past: H. H. Holmes. I hoped my gut was wrong.

  I tried punching through the brick, but to no avail. It must have been reinforced with twenty layers of brick behind it.

  “Look for loose bricks or grout,” I suggested, feeling around.

  “What?” she asked

  “A secret lever or door,” I explained.

  I ran my fingers along the insets of each brick, having remembered reading something about the escape rooms of H.H. Holmes having secret triggers that led into different ‘death’ rooms, each one getting progressively harder.

  “Got it,” Hera said, pushing in a discolored brick that didn’t match the rest.

  A mist began spraying in from above. It smelled foul, and we stepped away from it. As it pooled on the floor, plumes of smoke rose up from the puddles that etched into the ground.

  “Acid,” Hera said.

  “She is emulating H. H. Holmes of Chicago,” I said.

  “Who’s that?” She asked.

  “H. H. Holmes was America’s first serial killer. He devised a hotel of trap doors and stairways that led to furnaces and gas chambers,” I said.

  “Jesus, why?” she asked.

  “He sold the cadavers and acid-etched skeletons to sell to the medical universities,” I said.

  “What other kinds of shit do you think she’s got going on in here?” Hera asked, more concerned.

  “I don’t know, but this could be our chance to find out,” I said, pointing to the large hole that had opened in the floor from the acid burning through.

  Below, I could see a dimly lit room with a table and a large iron door. I watched the floor disintegrate until the hole was large enough for me to jump through without coming in contact with the potent acid.

  In the lower room, the smell of burnt human remains was putrid and vile. Hera covered her mouth, trying not to breathe in the corpse odor that filled the air. I read the inscription above the large iron door: ‘Furnace’.

  I looked around for another way out, but we were trapped. The acid had to began to slow its dissolving reaction. I looked at Hera and shook my head, then pointed to the furnace door.

  “What?” she asked. “You want to go that way?”

  “There’s no other way,” I said. “And if she constructed these floors based on H. H. Holmes’s famous Murder Castle Hotel, then there is one place where all these ‘death rooms’ lead. The basement.”

  “The basement?” she asked.

  “That is where Holmes would dissolve the flesh of his victims with acid and lye, and then polish and clean up the skeletons,” I said.

  I could tell Hera was feeling nauseous at the thought, but she gritted her teeth and crept around to the large iron door. She braced her thick leg against the wall and grabbed the door. The iron cracked and creaked as she pulled the large rivets from their seating. I was in awe of her super strength.

  The door to the chute finally flung open, and a plume of grey ash flew out, drifting in the air. We both coughed in the human remains. Hera grabbed the top of the entrance to the furnace, preparing to swing herself down. The declining slide was near vertical. She paused in her action, looking back at me.

  “Hey, it’s probably not even on,” I said lightheartedly. “Besides, we just survived getting blown up by the US military; I think we can handle a little fire.”

  She smiled and swooped into the chute, sliding down. I followed shortly after, giving her a little time to clear out of the way once she reached the bottom. I slid down and plopped out onto a soft, bouncy material. The room was pitch black.

  “Hera, can you find a light?” I asked, pushing off the spongy surface. As I tried to get upright, my foot buckled due to the unevenness. What the hell is under me?

  I heard Hera running her hand along the wall, and then she hit something.

  “Found a lever,” she said, throwing down what sounded like a large switch.

  Five small pilot lights lit up, revealing that w
e were in a funnel-shaped room. Under my feet, hundreds of cadavers dressed in cosplay blocked the opening below.

  I saw her. The brave girl from Wire Cafe. Clad in her brilliant red, high-waisted coat and cape, smudged now with dirt. Her ranged weapon, a bow and arrow, was as broken as her body.

  An eerie feeling came over me, as it had when I lost Ari. It was terrible to see it up close… Real people losing their lives.

  Hera almost threw up as she jumped off another poor soul. His leather airman jacket ripped to shreds, and his American bald eagle mask was shattered. James’ favorite hero no more.

  “Jesus,” I yelled out.

  “What the fuck is wrong with her, Michael?!” Hera screamed out.

  “I created a monster,” I finally said.

  The pilot lights grew larger in flame, illuminating a series of vents just above.

  “There, we can climb up and through those exhaust ports,” I said.

  A slight gust of rotten eggs and garlic began to fill the room. Gas. The flames of the pilot lights flickered and then reignited, flaring brighter.

  From under the dead bodies, smoke billowed up as if the incinerator was starting a cycle. I crouched down and clasped my hands together, motioning for Hera to step into them.

  She shook her head and said, “Men.”

  She grabbed me from behind, by the back of my neck and under my armpits, and then she twisted her body and threw me like a rag doll. I flew over the costumed bodies and sank my metal hands deep into the grates. One by one I ripped the bolts from the grating. I looked back at Hera, concerned for her safety, only to see her lunge with accuracy next to me.

  We climbed in and inched our way through the ventilation, away from the dark plumes of smoke that rose from the bright fire of burning bodies. I saw a light creeping in from grates ahead. I made my way over to the first one.

  Muffled screams and cries echoed inside the room. I angled myself to get a better view and saw a group of cosplaying women. Each one was bound and gagged. What the hell is she going to do with them?