by Matt Carter
“Showing that you’re just like everyone else. I like it.”
“Still better than them, but, yeah, that’s the idea.”
There was blood and dust on my hands. I rubbed them on my cape, not that that helped terribly much. I stared at the refrigerator, at the statue. Something nagging just pulled at me, something I had to get out.
“Hey Adam? What were you guys fighting about?”
“We’re pals, Aidan, right?”
“Of course.”
“Then don’t ask me that question again.”
“Sure,” I said, not sure if I should be worried or calmed by his smile.
“Cool. Thanks. It’s just… it’s rough. It’s love. It’s life. It’s all so complicated.”
Even with that nagging uncertainty, I knew that was all I’d get.
“Come on, let’s get into character,” he said.
I nodded, closing the visor of my helmet and running down his driveway.
I wondered what this would look like in the morning. Though I knew I was sad about what had happened to Adriana, I couldn’t help but feel that my career was back on track.
#Supervillainy101: The Stereotypes
In the early 70s, when the War on Villainy really started to kick into gear, the Protectors began receiving criticism for their lack of diversity, in that most of it—and its subteams—membership were made up of heroes from the United States, the British Empire, and the Soviet Union. Seeking to improve public relations on this front, a new subteam, “The Worldwide Protectors,” was created. Consisting of Zulu Warrior, Comanche Princess, Dark Djinn, Miss Mekong, Lady Jaguar, and Maui, these teenaged heroes dressed in costumes based on their traditional heritages were supposed to usher in a new, “globally conscious era of heroism,” according to their press releases.
Not long after they were introduced, the public gave them a new nickname: the Stereotypes.
Their costumes were bad jokes, their stage personalities were poorly written, and with all the money and time put into promoting the team, the Protectors kept them far away from the front lines, making them the punchline of pretty much every tabloid and late night host. After two years of this, and rumors that the team might be disbanded, the Worldwide Protectors went vigilante and started fighting crime on their own time.
Of course, with vigilantism outlawed, they were quickly branded as villains and were all promptly taken down by the Protectors.
Ever since, the Protectors have tried to pretend that this team never existed.
#LessonLearned: Sometimes, even superheroes make mistakes.
19
PUBLIC RELATIONS
I’d forgotten how bright the War Room could get. Dozens of small holographic projectors lined the walls, allowing heroes on the other side of the world to walk among us and explain our missions while transporting us to an almost video game quality recreation of where these missions would take place. As usual, Fifty-Fifty gave the main portion of our briefing, while today he was backed up by Helios and Shooting Star.
We had a unique opportunity coming up, Fifty-Fifty told us. Word through the grapevine was that one of our old teammates had some high-powered liberal lawyer who wanted to give them their day in court. While there wasn’t word on just which teammate it was, with the hearing set in the Old Amber City Courthouse (a nine-story, 50s-style office building that would make an easy target), the chance to free them would make for great publicity. Security there was poor, and aside from the SWAT team escorting the prisoner, resistance would be minimal. It would probably be the easiest Black Cape Job we would ever have; a perfect way to get back in the game before working us up to some of the big plans they had ahead.
Easy. I liked the sound of that.
Now that we’d mostly succeeded in detoxing, the itch to do something big was coming back.
I wanted to be Apex Strike and play supervillain with my friends again. But, as usual, leave it to Trojan Fox to throw a wrench in things.
Right as Fifty-Fifty was finishing up, she raised her hand. This wasn’t unusual; Trojan Fox was a stickler for details and would always ask at least a dozen more questions than any of us would think of. They always turned out to be good questions, but it still got annoying.
“What are we going to do about Jimmy?” she asked.
This made the heroes chuckle, slightly. Fifty-Fifty said, “Jimmy’s been dealt with.”
“Dealt with like he’s stuck in the Tower dealt with, or dealt with like buried in a shallow grave dealt with?” she asked.
“The Tower, ’course,” Shooting Star said.
“We’re not animals,” Helios added.
“That’s up for debate,” Trojan Fox muttered, glaring at him. She wasn’t the only Offender who hated Helios for making me take the fall for Adriana’s death, but she was the one who hid her contempt the worst.
“Excuse me?” Fifty-Fifty asked.
“Nothing,” she said, toying around with her tablet until one of the walls exploded with pictures of a burning school, charred skeletons, and an idiot with a grin on his face screaming how awesome he was.
I was really getting sick of seeing him.
Adam, Adriana, and I were the top trending news story for four days after her death. There was another wave of stories about how terrible Apex Strike was, more mourning for a superhero’s lost girlfriend, her funeral, and lots of footage of a teary Adam, mourning her and vowing to bring me to justice.
And then Jimmy had to knock us out of the top spot.
Jimmy Janks was a high school freshman from Pensacola, Florida. Everybody said he was a quiet kid who mostly kept to himself and played a lot of video games. Nobody expected him to come to school with his newfound pyrokinetic abilities and burn it to the ground. Almost three hundred people (299 to be exact) died in the inferno. He waited on the school’s front lawn, occasionally tossing fireballs at emergency personnel and giving interviews to the media until the Protectors opened a Tri-Hole and took him down. At the end, he was screaming and laughing and smiling so wide, you’d have thought he was crazy if his words weren’t so clear.
“THE NEW OFFENDERS KICK ASS! WOOO! IF YOU GUYS ARE RECRUITIN’, I AM SO IN! LOOK ME UP!”
After that, Adam, Adriana, and I were replaced by memorials to the lost kids and commentaries wondering if we, as supervillains, had gone too far in inspiring such a catastrophe. Talking heads argued that it was our duty to turn ourselves in to prevent further incidents, while others argued for more media responsibility, saying that the sensationalizing and glorification of our actions was the true danger (these voices were quickly shot down, since who wants to hear something that depressing?).
Trojan Fox followed up with another question. “I was wondering if there was anything we could do. Maybe put out a video denouncing Jimmy Janks’ actions, try and discourage other dipshits from attempting something similar again?”
The heroes got a good laugh at this.
“Now why would we want to do that?” asked Fifty-Fifty.
“Well, first off, because it makes us look bad. By saying nothing, we implicitly approve of what happened. And second, we do want to discourage uncontrolled villainy, don’t we? I mean, every act of supervillainy that is not perpetrated under your intelligent leadership runs a greater risk for tragedy than is acceptable, doesn’t it?”
“Yes and no,” Helios said.
Fifty-Fifty elaborated, speaking like he was reading off a script, “We do mourn for the unfortunate loss of life in this case, but we cannot have you trying to prevent it, because acts like this show the world how truly insidious your influence is. We need them to see that you are contagious, that you affect even the most innocent of children and transform them into monsters. So yes, their loss is tragic. We will shed our tears and we will throw benefit concerts. And we will be grateful, for they further remind people how desperately their heroes are needed to prevent things like this from happening again.”
“Even though you won’t,” Trojan Fox said.
“I suppose,” Trojan Fox said. The heroes looked like they would rather be rid of her. Then again, they always looked that way. If it wasn’t for her way with that mech suit, I’m sure they’d have gone drummer on her ages ago.
One by one the holographic projectors flickered out as the others left the room, studying their tablets. I was hoping Ghost Girl would wait up for me, but she was gone. She was still upset with me for what had happened at Helios’s mansion, but thankfully seemed even more pissed with him, so I was pretty sure she’d get over it if given enough time.
Them leaving early did give me one opportunity, though.
I ran up to Adam’s projection before it disappeared.
“Helios!” I called out to him.
“Hey Aidan, what’s up?” It was just the two of us now in the room.
We’d only talked a few times since that night at his estate. He’d always sounded calm, relieved, and occasionally even a bit giddy, in stark contrast to how he appeared on the news. He was a good actor. I doubted he was having trouble sleeping. He didn’t see Adriana joining the ever-growing list of dead people he’d known in his nightmares.
“I just… I just wanted to see how you were.”
“I’m great,” he said without hesitation. “Kind of glad for the media circus to move on. And I’ve already begun looking for a new place, so the timing on this worked out well.”
“How was the funeral?”
He shrugged. “It was a funeral. A lot of tears. A lot of black. You remember Venera, from Archnemesis Day? Yeah, we hooked up afterward.”
I had to be honest with him. “Adam?”
“Yeah?”
“Something about this… just doesn’t feel right to me. It’s like, eating me up inside even though I didn’t do anything, really, this time. You got any advice?”
He put a digital arm around my shoulder. “Aidan, Adriana was a great girl, really, and I had a lot of fun with her, but what’s done is done. She died. We gotta move on. And besides, she had her problems which you never saw. She was nosy as hell and damn near destroyed everything we’d worked for.”
“She did?” I asked. That was certainly news to me.
“Yeah, but she didn’t, so don’t go worrying your pretty little head off about it. Is there anything else?”
“I guess not.”
He smiled. “Good, ’cause I got a date with an Atlantean.”
His hologram blinked out, and suddenly I was in an empty, dark room. What he said should have comforted me; he was usually good at doing so. But why wasn’t it working this time? Why did I still have that nagging feeling of emptiness? Why didn’t his answers seem like enough?
Most importantly, when the hell did I become so curious?
Curiosity is a lot like syphilis. You only need to introduce the smallest dose into your body before it spreads everywhere, eventually taking over your mind and your life before driving you insane. Of course, curiosity doesn’t end up with your body rotting to pieces (usually) and can’t be cured with a few rounds of antibiotics, but that’s the real insidious thing about it.
The only cure for curiosity is to look into it.
Getting Showstopper to agree to the plan I had in mind was easy. Getting Ghost Girl to agree wasn’t.
I started trying to mend fences with the ever-classic chocolate and flowers. When that didn’t work, I tried the even more classic getting down on my knees and begging. When that didn’t work, I offered to eat her pussy. This got her to laugh, and to say that she might’ve taken me up on the offer if she was convinced that I’d be any good at it. Still, this must have been enough, because it got her to read my aura and agree to my field trip.
So, dressed in black and bearing bouquets of flowers, we got Odigjod to teleport us to the Forest Lawn Cemetery in Hollywood.
We had to teleport in at the far edge so no one would see us, but aside from some huffing and puffing on Showstopper’s part, we were clear.
“Angelique’s gonna be jealous; she loves cemeteries,” Showstopper said.
“It’s better if we keep this small. If all seven of us showed up, they might get suspicious,” I said.
“Should Odigjod go?” Odigjod asked. As usual on field trips, it felt strange to see him in human form.
“Nah, stick around, Odigjod,” I said. “Take in the sights if you want; I don’t think we’ll need you till we leave.”
Smiling, he pulled a camera from his pocket and took off running down the road, looking for celebrity graves.
“Well, he’s gonna sleep well tonight,” Showstopper laughed.
“You know, if he actually slept,” I said.
“Figure of speech.”
“I hate to be the voice of reason here, but do either of you know where we’re going?” Ghost Girl asked. I looked to Showstopper. He shrugged.
“Dunno, but I can find out,” he said, bounding off towards a greenskeeper not too far away. He turned on the waterworks, throwing his arms into the air and ultimately getting a hug from the confused-looking workman. He bounded on back to us with a folded napkin in his hand.
“Got a map!” he said enthusiastically. “Now if my services are no longer needed…”
“They are,” I said.
“Well, shit, are you sure?”
“Positive,” Ghost Girl said. “We need you on crowd control.”
“But if you’re really good, we’ll take you grave hunting afterward,” I added.
“And perhaps buy you some ice cream,” Ghost Girl said, without missing a beat.
“You know, you guys can really be cocks sometimes,” Showstopper said.
“Supervillains,” Ghost Girl added.
“Can you guys at least tell me why we’re here?”
Ghost Girl and I exchanged looks, but didn’t say anything. According to what Trojan Fox and Odigjod said, the abilities of our Creepers were greatly overstated by Blackjack. They weren’t really listening devices, but they could get a good read on our emotions and intentions, apparently, so long as we didn’t feel too outwardly traitorous, we probably wouldn’t get in any trouble. That being said…
“It’s better you don’t know,” I said.
“Awww, come on!” he pleaded. “I can keep a secret!”
“No you can’t,” Ghost Girl said.
Showstopper grumbled, “You know, if I had a secret plan, I’d tell you guys.”
“Next time,” I said, though I sincerely hoped there wouldn’t be a next time like this. I wasn’t really into running around in secret, it felt too much like I’d get caught. I much preferred the straight-up, costume battle side of supervillainy where I was guaranteed an easy getaway.
Still, despite his bitching and grumbling, he led us to the gravesite. There were dozens of bouquets and wreaths around her tombstone, pictures, teddy bears, everything you’d expect from a hurried memorial. There were a few tourists taking pictures there, and a few mourners for other gravesites within eyeshot.
“Can you take care of them?” I asked.
“Please,” Showstopper said. “Watch and learn.”
My heart skipped a beat as he clapped his hands. I almost expected him to stage one of his elaborate musical numbers, which wouldn’t have made for a very subtle visit. He behaved himself, though. Raising his hands only slightly, he got each and every single person within eyesight of us to walk away.
He explained, “The trick is not making them go away, because if that’s all you’re doin’, then they’re gonna come back and probably find themselves wonderin, Hey, why’d I go over here again? No, you need to make them go away with a purpose. Make them think there’s something they ought be doin’ somewhere else more important than what they were doin’ here. Like in this case, remindin’ those tourists that there’s some far more interesting superhero graves over yonder hill, or those mourners rememberin’ that they left the lights on in their car, or that groundskeeper over there remember he’s got a break com
in’ up and a pretty good porno on his phone he’d rather watch.”
“You are an artist,” I said.
“Damn right I’m an artist.”
“Think you can stay one while we take care of this?” Ghost Girl asked.
“Are you kidding? This is the most fun I’ve had since I got out of my tube,” he said, putting in his earbuds as he ambled a short distance away.
She looked at me. “Are you sure you want to do this? I can go in on my own.”
No, I wasn’t sure. She’d told me that people had seriously freaked out when she tried sharing her power with them, and I didn’t want to lose my mind any more than I already had.
More than that, I was afraid of what I’d see.
“No,” I said. “I’m not sure.”
She sighed. “Aidan… do I have to force you to make the choice you already know you want to make?”
“Would you?”
“With pleasure,” she said, grabbing me by the wrist, shortly before the world around me exploded.
Well, not really, but all the colors went crazy. The grass took a shade of bright blue, swirling as if it were underwater. The sky became a pale, empty pink. Ghost Girl herself was glowing a bright gold, with thousands of strands of auras of every color of the rainbow hanging off her back, some of them lazy, some of them darting about as if trying to escape or grab my attention. So many came straight out of her front that it appeared she had a double, a double that moved in ways she hadn’t yet moved.
Then there were the five thick, black strands that floated just above her shoulders, each bearing the faintest hint of a face locked in an angry scream.
“Don’t look over your shoulder,” she said. Naturally, I did. Icicle Man’s screaming, half-skinned face stared back at me, all black and darting at me like a snake.
I screamed. I looked away. That was even worse. The ground was covered in dead bodies, or at least what looked like dead bodies. Brown outlines of what were once people, writhing with still living strands of auras, some vibrant and active, others faded and sluggish from time underground. Adriana’s dead, brown aura lay down in front of us, her hands crossed under her breasts as her body writhed violently with aura strings.