by Matt Carter
“Dear God…” I said, trying to hold back my breakfast.
“Yeah, you thought they looked bad when they were just bodies,” she said, waving a hand over the aura and making the strings dance, pushing some to the side while others grew and lengthened. “Ah, here we are…”
A small handful of glowing brown strings arced up from Adriana’s head, chest, hands, and knees, swirling together to form an image that looked almost like her, sitting on a couch. She was looking at a tablet—shopping maybe, or perhaps looking at tabloid stories about herself by the way she was laughing. She looked up. Then she was at the front door, accepting a thick envelope from a messenger. Back on the couch, she tore open the envelope, spilling out papers. She looked confused.
The aura jumped.
It was some time later. She was hugging, kissing Helios, welcoming him home. They shared some drinks, some food, some drugs, had sex. They were getting ready for a night out when she mentioned the messenger and the paperwork. In a rage, he turned on her, yelled at her for going through his personal things. She was confused. She was crying. He hit her once.
That was all he needed.
She was folded in half.
She died.
She never knew why.
I wrenched free from Ghost Girl, doubling over and spilling my breakfast on the still-blue grass. My powers flickered, flattening the grass around me, then making me feel as weak as a kitten.
She patted me on the back. “It’s a lot to take in the first time. When I first manifested this power, I screamed for nearly a day.”
“Did you throw up too?”
“No,” she said. “Did you get what you wanted?”
“Not really. He just turned on her like that. I mean… I don’t think he meant to kill her, he was crying way too much, but… what the hell was in that envelope?”
“One moment,” Ghost Girl said, her eyes again flashing gold. “She didn’t get a good look at what was inside, but she did get a good look at the outer label: SITUS CONSTRUCTION. Does that name mean anything to you?”
Strangely enough, it did. “My dad did some consulting work with them. They’re one of the biggest urban renewal companies in the country.”
“Why the hell would that set Helios off?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But we know someone who could find out.”
#Supervillainy101: Otis Shylock
Though the official War on Villainy was declared in the United States, other world powers had been fighting their own versions for some time. In the early Silver Age, higher-ups in the British Empire created the Ministry of Loyalty & Security for the sole purpose of rooting out subversive superhuman elements within the government.
They may have even succeeded, too, if they hadn’t hired Otis Shylock to head the Ministry.
On paper he sounded like the ideal candidate. A decorated veteran of World War II (having fought across France, India, and the Pacific) and an experienced MI5 operative, he was charming, handsome, intelligent, and unquestionably loyal to the crown.
Unbeknownst to his superiors, he was also a superhuman sociopath with mind control powers and the ambition to make himself into a modern day Moriarty. While he did his job well, he used his influence and powers to create a network of human and superhuman operatives with a near cult-like devotion throughout the Empire. While they spent these earliest years setting up a number of criminal enterprises to build capital and influence, his ultimate goal was nothing shy of global domination.
And he would have gotten away with it too, if it hadn’t been for a joint intelligence operation between the Soviets and Atlantis. Their spies within the Empire exposed Shylock’s dealings, forcing him to go underground (though not before making nearly one thousand of his followers commit suicide). The Empire was embarrassed and paranoid, the Ministry of Loyalty & Security was disbanded, and despite his failure, Shylock had the infrastructure in place to make him one of the world’s greatest supervillains for decades to come.
#LessonLearned: Nothing sets people on edge like a good conspiracy.
20
THE AMBER CITY CAPER
We usually stayed out of Professor Death’s old laboratory, partly because Trojan Fox had claimed it, partly because it was one of the island’s creepier corners. Aside from the heroes taking some of Professor Death’s more creative toys, it was mostly left like they found it: full of half-built robots, torture devices, and shattered genetic experiment tubes. The giant death ray that held a place of pride in the center of the expansive chamber was supposed to have been deactivated, but I’d seen Trojan Fox tinkering with it in her spare time.
She’d installed more lights since I’d last been in, put in some carpeting and removed all the cobwebs, so it seemed about as homey as an old cave could get.
Ghost Girl, now wearing her doll mask, and I went to see her right after we got back from the cemetery. As usual, she was working in the small, enclosed workshop off to the lab’s far end. She said she liked it in there because it was quiet.
She was dressed up nicer than usual and, if I wasn’t mistaken, was wearing makeup.
“What do you want?” she asked, irritated.
I smirked. “Were you expecting someone else?”
Ghost Girl chuckled, lightly. “We’re in the way of a hot date.”
“Really?” I asked.
“No!” Trojan Fox said defensively, then looking at Ghost Girl, “Yes, fine. What’s going on? Make it fast.”
I looked up around the workshop’s walls. “So… you say you like it because it’s quiet in here?”
She got my meaning quickly enough, crossing the room and closing the door.
“These walls don’t hide everything, but I’ve made them so they put our Creeper signals on a feedback loop. Talk.”
And so I did. I told her about what I’d seen the night Adam killed Adriana and the things he’d said that made me curious.
Ghost Girl then told her about what we’d seen at the cemetery.
“So you came to me because you want to use my technological aptitude and utter hatred for the superhero fucks who put us here to find out why Helios killed his girlfriend based on the paperwork from this construction company, and why he believes that this information, if leaked, could ruin us all?”
“Pretty much, yeah,” I said.
She smiled. “Of course I’ll help! You do want me to dig up info to blackmail or disgrace him, don’t you, because if so I could really work something up with Adriana’s mur—”
I cut her off, “NO! I don’t want to hurt him, I just… I just have to know why he asked me to do what I did.”
Reaching for an earring on the table, she looked like a kid who’d been told she couldn’t go to Disneyworld. “So, all I get for this is your peace of mind?”
“You’ll get my peace of mind too, if that helps,” Ghost Girl said.
“That’s better,” Trojan Fox said as she put her earring on.
“And if you ask really nice, he’ll probably eat your pussy,” Ghost Girl joked.
“Hey!” I exclaimed.
“Ew,” Trojan Fox said, shuddering.
“HEY!” I exclaimed, even louder.
“I’m sorry, but that’s just gross,” Trojan Fox said.
“Oh come on, he’s not that bad,” Ghost Girl added.
“You do know I’m still here, right?” I said, ready for them to change the subject.
“Peace of mind, got it,” Trojan Fox said. “Now get the hell out of here, all right?”
I started to feel better the moment we walked out of the workshop. Despite her personality and volatility and, well, pretty much everything else about her, I really respected Trojan Fox. She was easily the smartest person on this island, was more invested in keeping the team alive and together than just about anyone, and was a strong contender for the second best showman on our team after myself. She gave me a lot of shit, but she smiled enough after doing it that I knew she liked me.
I could hear Odig
jod teleport into the workshop behind us.
“Sounds like her ride’s here,” I said.
Ghost Girl looked over her shoulder, her eyes gold. “In more ways than one.”
It took a second for this to sink in. “Odigjod?”
“Oh yeah.”
“And her?”
“Yes.”
“Ew.”
If Trojan Fox found anything in those next few days, she didn’t tell us. It was business as usual around the mansion as we hung out, attended therapy (which was a mixed bag, since therapy had Nevermore on something of an abstinence bend while she tried to rediscover herself), and spent every available moment planning for our Amber City job. It may have been an easy Black Cape Job, but in our state we didn’t want to fuck it up.
There was a lot of talk about which one of our old teammates we’d be rescuing. Circus seemed the most likely, given his age, but odds were that it was probably some drummer we wouldn’t even remember from our Montage binge.
Finally, the day came.
It felt good to see everyone back in costume as we entered the Green Room. Even better to see Showstopper and Ghost Girl in their new, professional uniforms. True to form, Showstopper’s was gaudy and colorful, with a domino mask that looked like it shouldn’t even fit on his wide, smiling face, and a wild, heavy wig that would have put him at home in an 80s hair metal band. Ghost Girl’s was similar to her old one, with a black hooded cloak and a tight white bodysuit with some armor and tech built in. They wanted to give her a newer, higher-tech mask, but she flat-out refused.
She looked good. We all did. We were happier, we were healthier, we were ready to be supervillains again.
“All right people, it’s showtime,” Fifty-Fifty said over our radios. “This is gonna be easy. They’ve got only one SWAT team guarding the prisoner, they’ve only got a skeleton crew on duty at the courthouse itself, and it seems they’ve evacuated a few surrounding blocks in case there were any surprises in store. You’re gonna give them that surprise.”
“Got it,” I said, looking to my team as our radios cut out. My team.
I knew, as their leader, I should make a speech, and though I didn’t really have one planned out, I did my best. “You all know what you’re supposed to do, and where you’re supposed to be. Just follow the script and have fun. You’re the best team a supervillain could hope for.”
“Thanks, boss,” Trojan Fox said, sarcastically.
“Hey, come on, he’s just trying to be nice,” Geode said.
“Yeah, do we all get a hug and a kiss to send us off too?” Showstopper joked.
“Odigjod would enjoy a hug,” Odigjod said, transforming into his bigger, furrier, villainous form.
“And he is not that bad a kisser,” Nevermore added.
“Thank you, Nevermore. But like Fifty-Fifty said, it’s showtime. Hellspawn, see us off.”
Tapping a clawed finger to his forehead, Odigjod grabbed Nevermore tight and disappeared. He popped back and forth every thirty seconds, taking Geode, Ghost Girl, Showstopper, and Trojan Fox, leaving me for last. The brief gaps gave me a moment to think and be hopeful. Hopeful that the whole Helios thing… that’d turn out to be nothing. We would work fine as a team. So fine that they’d see that maybe the whole drummer idea was a bad one, or that maybe the eighth member of our team (if we were adding one on after this caper) would be a more suitable drummer than any of our seven. We would have to talk to the heroes, but I was sure that we could make them see—
There was static in my earpiece, and a voice I hadn’t heard in a long time.
“New Offenders, Apex Strike, is anyone there?”
“Blackjack?” I asked.
“Thank Christ,” she said over the radio. “Abort the mission! The others, they don’t know!”
“Know what?”
“Abort! Repeat, abort! They don’t know it’s a tr—”
Odigjod was at my side, grabbing me, taking me with him to a dingy, empty hallway, before teleporting away to his position. I couldn’t hear Blackjack anymore. In fact, I couldn’t hear much of anything but the other confused voices in my ear.
“My sensors are on the fritz, I can’t read anything,” Trojan Fox said.
“This place is a ruin, there is no way this is an active courthouse,” Geode said.
“I’m getting no auras here. Something’s very wrong,” Ghost Girl said.
Everything they said set off alarms that Blackjack had just started ringing. But…
“We’ve got a job to do,” I said, my voice shaky. There was no way we could back out. Blackjack didn’t have the authority to abort missions, only Fifty-Fifty, Helios, and Everywhere Man could, and they weren’t saying a thing. This felt wrong, as wrong as anything had ever felt, but I didn’t want to disappoint the heroes, not when we were just getting back on our feet.
“Let’s just do what we came here to do and get out. No showboating, just get our man and get the hell out of here,” I said, regaining some strength in my voice. We could hear them coming down the hallway in front of us.
Showtime.
I peeked out into the hallway. There were at least twenty of them, flanking a large steel coffin on a dolly that had to hold our prisoner. They all wore heavy body armor, face-concealing helmets, and carried automatic weapons.
We could handle them.
“Shock and awe,” I said into the radio.
Nevermore and I stepped into the wide, long hallway from our hiding places. I aimed high, blasting out the lights and ceiling panels while she filled the air with ravens, disorienting the SWAT team. This allowed Odigjod to teleport in and take all their guns before Showstopper took over the crowd, put them into a quick dance number, and dropped them to the floor. Geode and Ghost Girl knocked down the few left standing while Trojan Fox rushed in to secure the steel coffin.
It took us only sixteen seconds.
“Now that’s what I’m talking about!” I exclaimed. This even seemed to set the others at ease, enough that I was beginning to relax. Maybe there was something wrong, but maybe, just maybe…
Surprisingly, one of the SWAT guys near me stood back up. He was a big guy, taller than all of us and built like a linebacker. He stepped toward me, slowly, with one hand raised calmingly.
“Step down, young man. You don’t want this to get any worse,” he said. That voice…
“Step down?” I laughed. “Don’t you know who we are?”
“I do. Do you know who we are?”
“That’s… that’s a weird fucking thing to say.”
I raised a hand, let loose with a blast of focus to his chest, just enough to knock him off his feet.
But it didn’t. He stood his ground. Didn’t even stumble. I gave him a stronger blast. It just made a tear in his SWAT outfit. There was no blood, no flesh. Just… gold and green spandex?
“Oh shit… oh no no no no no FUCK!”
He tore off his SWAT outfit to reveal a tight, muscle-hugging suit of green and gold, a bright red cape unfurling behind him. As if the logo on his chest weren’t enough, him pulling off his helmet to reveal that green and red luchador mask confirmed his identity.
El Capitán.
“Surrender now, and no one will be hurt,” he said firmly, calmly. I was staring down the greatest superhero in the world, the guy I’d idolized before I could even talk, the guy whose posters decorated my bedroom wall until the day I became a supervillain. The guy who could—
There was a high-pitched, warbling scream somewhere down the hall. It took me a second to realize it was Odigjod. A glowing tree had sprouted in the hallway, nooses dangling from one of its limbs, tying around Odigjod and lifting him off the ground. His powers could do nothing against this as he tried to fight his way loose. Seeing the swirl of glowing tarot cards nearby, I knew what was happening.
At once, the SWAT team members all got to their feet and ripped off their costumes like novelty strippers, though instead of naked bodies beneath, there were at least twenty of the world�
��s greatest superheroes.
El Capitán
Arcana
The Gamemaster III
Minuteman IV
Locust Man
Shield Maiden
ATHENA
Horus
None of them were Kayfabe.
None of them would show us any mercy.
“Your escape route is gone. Surrender,” El Capitán said, levitating off the ground, his eyes glowing red with energy that would surely cut through me.
“What do we do?” Nevermore asked.
“I don’t know.”
Showstopper started, “How are we going to—”
“I don’t know!”
“COVER YOUR EARS!” Trojan Fox yelled over the radio. Before I could ask why, a piercing shriek filled the air, forcing heroes and villains alike to their knees. One of her suit modifications, no doubt. My helmet kept the worst of it out, but that didn’t help things make any more sense.
“Free Odigjod and get us the hell out of here!” she yelled at me, making a beeline for Odigjod in his magical tree. I followed. He squealed and fought, looking at us pitifully.
Before we could get him, Horus and Arcana stood in our way. Arcana slammed a card into Trojan Fox’s chest, cutting the shrieking sound her suit made. Trojan Fox blasted Arcana through the air with energy from her gauntlets while I surrounded my fist with focus and smashed it into Horus’s falcon head. He slammed hard into the wall.
I’d never hit an actual god before. It’d have felt better if we weren’t so royally fucked in every other way.
The heroes were on us as soon as they could stand, attacking in groups of three and four simultaneously and never letting up.
This isn’t how it works in the cartoons!
It was madness. I was punched, kicked, and blasted with multiple powers all at once. Someone hit my suit’s sound system hard enough to start a song. No, Lou, this isn’t a “Perfect Day.”