by Logan Jacobs
The slightly higher purchasing frequency of products in the color purple during the few months before I hired her had just been a matter of chance, as it turned out. Just about every color suited Norma equally well, and she had somewhat of a penchant for busy floral prints and “cute” heart and animal designs that I was really going to have to speak to her about sometime. But most of the time I guessed it didn’t really matter if she looked like she’d just taken the outfit off a mannikin in the juniors’ section of a department store, since it just encouraged everyone’s tendency to underestimate her drastically.
“Is something wrong?” Norma blinked behind her oversized glasses. She was sensitive to my attention, and it was rare that I could sneak a glance at her without getting caught.
“I like your outfit,” I lied, and then say Dynamo glance over at me. Perhaps her less obvious truth sensing superpower activated, but she didn’t betray me.
Norma blushed and said, “Thanks.”
We feasted that night just as I had hoped, and the meal was even more elaborate than the last time my two assistants had teamed up to cook together. Aileen had hands now, and could operate manual kitchen appliances herself while continuing to boss Norma around rudely at the same time. I thought my assistant would have gotten upset by Aileen’s orders, but the mousy brunette giggled when Dynamo complimented her chicken parmigiana as the best she’d ever tasted.
Despite all the hot food filling my belly, there was too much anticipation buzzing through my veins for me to get a good night’s sleep, and the hours crawled by until the break of dawn.
Then I woke my teammates, and we drove over and got into position next to the lake outside the hidden entrance of the car tunnel. The plan was that Dynamo and I would stay by the entrance and take out any villains that exited, while Norma would go around to the ventilation system to dispense the poison gas that she had acquired for “government research purposes.”
Before Norma headed off to her position about fifty yards away, I motioned for her to step close to me.
“What’s up, Boss?”
“Are you sure about this?” I asked. “It wasn’t in the job description. And if you want to wait in the car, I won’t--”
“You know what?” Norma interrupted me. “Maybe I used to just be a totally normal girl, but spending so much time around you has changed that, for better or worse, and I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”
She flashed me a dorky grin like someone cheesing for a picture at Disneyland, and then eagerly lugged off her tank of poison gas.
“Well then,” I said to myself as I shook my head in wonderment.
“She’s not like any superhero I’ve ever met,” Dynamo said with amusement, since she’d overheard our conversation.
“No, she’s something special,” I agreed. “And so are you.”
“Ha, I don’t have any powers that are that special, I’m really just the stereotypical physically gifted superhero,” Dynamo said. “I just try really hard to be good at my job, that’s all. Well, I’m not a Warden anymore, but you know what I mean. The job that I was born to do, which is helping people.”
“You’re not stereotypical, you’re archetypal,” I said. “There’s a difference. It doesn’t mean you’re boring or commonplace. It just means that you truly embody the ideal of what it means to be a superhero. You have the courage, the nobility, and the sincerity. Which are rarer than they should be in our day and age.”
“Hmm, I probably should take that with a grain of salt coming from a guy who’s about to asphyxiate a den of his unsuspecting enemies,” Dynamo remarked, “but, I’ll take it.”
“They have it coming,” I replied nonchalantly. “By the way, in case you’ve changed your mind in the last twenty-four hours, this is your last chance to arrest me before I commit premeditated vigilante murder.”
Her only reply was a sly grin.
“Aileen, you ready?” I asked.
She was manning the communications back at The Cellar, because I mostly just needed her in a tech support role for this mission, and her body gleamed so brightly with even the tiniest bit of sun that it would be hard for her to remain inconspicuous. And after we had turned off their guard shark, it was possible that The Chief and his crew had figured out that someone had been lurking around. I didn’t know what kind of security systems they had in place within the lair exactly, but they might be more on the alert than usual.
“Ready,” Aileen purred in my earpiece.
“Norma?” I asked.
“Yup,” my human assistant replied, also over the radio. She wasn’t standing far from Elizabeth and me, but she was out of sight.
“Norma, go,” I said. “Aileen, hold.”
“Activating the pump,” Norma replied.
We had calculated based on the dispersion rate of the gas and the size of the car tunnel that it would take about twelve minutes to fill completely. And it took about five minutes of exposure for an average-sized human male to die. Of course, some of the supervillains didn’t have the same kind of respiratory systems as humans or for other physiological reasons would not be affected that way by the gas, but we expected that the majority of them would succumb if all went according to plan. That was the only way, without causing damage to the current car tunnel above anyway, that my team of four could feasibly defeat all of them.
The gas was colorless, odorless, and unfortunately, one that would cause the victim to fall unconscious before death, instead of suffering agony. I would have prefered that they suffer, but screaming tended to get attention, and having them just pass out would probably buy us an extra quarter of a minute before they started to realize something was amiss.
My hope was that the gas would fill most of the lair before the supervillains inside realized that something was wrong and started evacuating. To complicate their escape, I was going to have Aileen shut the power off in five minutes. That timing would coincide with when the first one or two would probably collapse and maximize the level of chaos as well as preventing the occupants from utilizing a fan or air filtration system.
“They would never air a sequence like this on Warden channels,” Dynamo muttered. The dark-haired beauty was gazing into space, and I guessed that she was probably envisioning the fates of the poison gas victims inside.
“No,” I agreed. “They’d air a sequence of Optimo working out in a gym with his cape on with a wind machine to make it billow. And the Killer Kitten applying lipstick and sticking out her ass for the camera. Do you think that’s what it takes to reduce the amount of evil that exists in Pinnacle City?”
“Fair enough.” Dynamo smirked. “I knew this plan beforehand, and I agreed to it. I don’t want you to think I’m getting cold feet, because I’m not. I saw what The Chief’s hitmen did at The Gala. And I never want them to have the chance to do anything like that again. But, I just want you to know that I do have boundaries, and I won’t always accept that the ends justify the means.”
“Fair enough,” I repeated. “I’m not trying to collect minions, I’m trying to assemble teammates. People who won’t be afraid to argue with me and can bring another valuable perspective to the table. You can be the good angel on my shoulder.”
“Who’s the devil on your other shoulder then?” Dynamo asked.
I turned off our four-way radio for a second and shrugged. “Probably Aileen, who is naturally heartless and incapable of comprehending human pain through no fault of her own, but I get the feeling Norma might start turning in that direction too. Don’t think the poor girl ever really had much fun before she became my assistant. So you see, you’ll have your work cut out for you if you want to be the team’s conscience.”
“I have never been deterred by hard work,” she replied proudly.
“That is one of the many things I like about you,” I said as I turned the radio back on.
“Many?” Elizabeth asked as she raised an eyebrow. “Speaking of which, it’s absurd how some people think that superheroes don’t ha
ve to work out or train.”
I blinked. I knew that superheroes trained in tactics, of course, especially Wardens. And I knew that they loved sponsoring gyms, athletic equipment, and athletic supplements that they probably didn’t even actually use. But I’d just never really thought much about whether they did conditioning exercises or strength training.
“Er, but you’re roughly five times stronger than an athletic human male,” I said. “Don’t try to tell me that you got there through willpower and discipline.”
“I did,” she said seriously. “If I led a sedentary lifestyle and ate chips on the couch all day, then I’d probably only be about twice as strong as an athletic human male, and I wouldn’t know any hand to hand combat or gymnastic techniques, so I wouldn’t be nearly as useful in a fight even if I were somehow magically just as strong and fast. That’s true for all supers. We might be genetically gifted, but the gifts are still only as good as what we make of them.”
“Okay, I guess that makes sense for things like super strength and super speed, but what about supers like The Evil Eye?” I asked. “What about supers who can make themselves invisible or fly?”
“Same deal, to a lesser extent,” she replied. “Most superpowers aren’t absolute. The Evil Eye, for example, had that laser that could cut through people, but he could only sustain it for a certain amount of time before he had to recharge it. A very brief period of time. If he had trained more, then he probably could have gained more stamina, but cyclopses aren’t really known for being motivated or disciplined. Invisibility isn’t a physical ability from what I’ve been told, but it’s sort of a matter of mental concentration, so I’ve seen invisible supers practice by trying to play dodgeball or ride a unicycle or get pelted with paintballs or something without going visible. No one’s perfect. No one’s invincible. If they were, they wouldn’t be a super. They’d be a god.”
I wondered if that meant that Dynamo’s lie detection ability wasn’t infallible either, but before I could think up a tactful way to ask about that that wouldn’t make her suspicious, my watch vibrated on my wrist to signal that the five minutes were up.
Aileen also received the same alert on her end.
“Request to confirm the takedown of the power grid sector--” she began.
“Go for it,” I interrupted.
“Power takedown successful,” Aileen reported.
Since the car tunnel was sealed off and soundproof with no windows except for the underwater one that we had spied on the other night, there weren’t any immediate visual or audible signs of this, but I suspected there would be soon.
From our position of concealment behind some trees near the abandoned car tunnel, Dynamo and I remained intently focused on the hidden hatch that we had located through binoculars upon arrival. We couldn’t go up too close to investigate, because more than likely The Chief would have some kind of surveillance cams up near the entrance to his lair.
This early in the morning, several hours prior to rush hour, there were very few cars entering the new car tunnel above. They just whizzed by silently and the drivers never had any idea that my team and I were present, or that The Chief and his henchmen were scheming more terrorist attacks just a few feet of reinforced concrete beneath them.
Well, they weren’t actually “scheming” at the moment. They were dying.
For a few minutes, I started to worry that something had failed, either the gas or the power outage, or that the supervillains knew we were out there waiting for them and had some other kind of exit route and were going to sneak up behind us.
Then, the hatch banged open, and the first supervillain emerged.
He gleamed like chrome in the sunlight. I didn’t know whether he had originally been human and had been transplanted into a robotic or partially robotic body, or if he was a one hundred percent AI entity, but he looked like the big, mean, less sexy version of Aileen. And he had powerful, complete legs for running on, which is what he proceeded to do.
A robot, of course, wouldn’t be vulnerable to poison gas, but I guessed that this one had been sent out first because The Chief’s crew had come to the obvious conclusion that they were under attack and wanted someone not made of flesh to be the first target. And preferably, from their point of view, take out the attackers so that it was safe for the rest of them to emerge.
He paused in his sprint and swiveled his head, not the way a human would, but the way a camera would. I guessed that he must be using some kind of mechanism to detect life forms in the area. Then my guess proved correct in the next second as he changed his direction toward Dynamo and me and resumed his sprint.
“Wait till he gets closer,” I whispered over the sound of my heart slamming into my ribs. This was actually my first major face off with a supervillain. Yes, there had been the Gala, but I was ignored by the attackers. Then there had been The Virus, but he’d been weakened by the gas and damage he’d already taken.
This quickly moving machine looked fully capable and intent on killing me.
“No problem,” Elizabeth whispered as the metal beast zoomed toward us like a freight train.
She waited until he got within about fifty yards of us, then fired off several shots in quick succession. If this robot was made of materials similar to Aileen’s, then he wouldn’t have been harmed by standard rounds. But the ones that were fired had been created specifically with supervillains in mind.
And my design was quickly proven to be more than capable.
Dynamo’s first three shots went through his center of mass and then through his head. The results should have delighted me, but all the shots didn’t stop his sprint or seem to affect him, even though they left visible gaping holes in the metal.
“Kneecaps?” she asked with a surprisingly calm voice.
“Sure,” I cleared my throat and tried to pretend that every muscle in my body wasn’t telling me to run.
She hit him on the right, and he started limping, and then another shot slammed into his left knee. The robo killer fell over and thrashed uselessly, unable to get back up.
“Looks like you missed the off switch, but I guess that’ll do,” I said with a chuckle.
“Wonder how many more there are still alive?” she asked, but then we both noticed movement at the hatch and we turned to face it.
The next one was more human-looking, although bald with skin the color of a tomato and a bumpy skull like a really bad allergic reaction that had calcified, so I motioned to Dynamo to save her ammo and fired on him with my assault rifle. The weapon was unmodified, but the bullets were jacketed in a special tungsten alloy that I developed for smashing through armor, so his head exploded like a crushed tomato.
“Think there are any more left alive?” Dynamo asked.
At that point, a third supervillain flew out of the hatch, in a much more spectacular fashion than the first two. He was wreathed in flame like he had doused himself in gasoline, but instead of staggering around like he was getting burned in flame, he was running like the wind. Or to be more precise, someone with low-level super speed. He matched up with Aileen’s profile of a supervillain called Turbo Torch and I knew that his powers could only stay activated for a small amount of time.
Both Dynamo and I opened fire, but from what I could tell, it seemed like the rounds were getting incinerated, like objects trying to reenter Earth’s atmosphere too fast. This was a whole different kind of flame then, and I doubted that a kiddie pool of water would have done much good against it.
He wasn’t even heading for our position, he just seemed to be trying to escape, and given his apparent powers, part of me wondered if we should just let him go and maybe hunt him down another day when we had enhanced our technological capabilities and maybe added more supers to the team.
But before I could make up my mind or say anything, a dark blur crossed my field of vision and I realized that Dynamo was already on her way to intercept him.
He was faster than her, but he was running in a blind panic,
and she could already read his route and strategically cut him off. She tackled him like an NFL linebacker would sack a ten-year-old child. They went to the ground rolling over each other in a dizzying, surreal blur of blinding orange-white and what looked like a meteor turning somersaults. In that moment with their human traits erased by their speed the two supers were distilled down to a sort of elemental fury that took my breath away.
I knew that Dynamo’s suit had a space suit level of heat proofing that would protect her body from getting burnt, but my concern was for her face, which like mine and Norma’s was covered by just a ski mask with eyeholes. As a Warden, she had only been permitted to wear domino masks, which of course were useless even for disguise purposes, so the ski mask was an upgrade in that sense, but it wouldn’t offer any protection beyond maybe from sun exposure. So masks were another item I would have to add to my list of future projects. For now, Dynamo, equally aware of her vulnerability in this situation, used her arms and hands to block any incoming blows to her face. The flaming supervillain didn’t seem to be using any weapon other than his body, since the fire itself was his best weapon.
It wasn’t until the two of them came to a momentary stop with Dynamo pinned beneath her opponent that I was able to see them clearly as individuals again.
I instinctively jumped up ready to go to her aid even though physically I wasn’t a fraction of the fighter that she was, but then Dynamo got her leg hooked behind Turbo Torch’s leg, flipped him over to attain the dominant position, and got him into some sort of kimura type hold.
She was stronger than he was since he didn’t have super strength, so now that she had a submission hold, I knew it would soon be over for him. It had just been hard for her to gain control in the first place because he was so much faster, and because she had to take care to keep her face farther back than usual in order not to get it burnt off.