Evil Genius 3: Becoming the Apex Supervillain

by Logan Jacobs

  “Impressive, Penny,” Beacon said as he gave a little whistle.

  “Don’t call me that,” Penumbra said as she aimed the statue toward Beacon’s head.

  “Whoa!” he said as he raised his hands in surrender. “Yeah, yeah, sorry. Hey, Miles, do you have anything you could lend me? Those electric batons you let me borrow were sick.”

  “Sure,” I said. “I’ll take a look after we figure out who we’re going after. Since we don’t have actual superpowers, we need to tailor our equipment based on who we’re fighting, right Slade?”

  The Shadow Knight grunted in acknowledgement, but he didn’t seem very happy about it, and I had to fight the urge to smile at how irritated Slade was by this whole situation.

  Penumbra continued to play with her new control of her powers and placed the statue carefully back down where it belonged.

  “You’re really amazing, Miles!” she crooned and reached out to grab my hands again. “If there’s anything I can ever do, um, to repay you…”

  She looked at me from beneath her full lashes, and I had to admit that she was pretty hot. There was nothing show-stoppingly gorgeous about her like there was with Elizabeth, and she wasn’t really hot in the way all the supermodels I’d slept with were, but she had a cute girl-next-door look about her that was pretty appealing, and I guessed she would squeal with joy when I fucked her.

  “As long as it helps you capture our targets to put them back into jail, I’ll be satisfied,” I assured her.

  “Aww, but I bet I could do a lot more to satisfy you,” Penumbra pouted.

  “Alright, that’s enough of that,” Elizabeth said as she cleared her throat.

  “She’s right, unfortunately,” I said with a grin as I pulled my hands away from the flirty blonde.

  The Silver Squire, meanwhile, had slowly made his way over to the couch in a way he apparently thought was casual. Penumbra had vacated the spot next to Elizabeth, and he seemed to think that this was the prime opportunity for him to sit next to her. The kid brushed his dark brown hair away from his face, but it resulted in a cowlick effect.

  “How’d your fight go, Miss Dynamo?” he asked with a lilt to his words.

  “It went well,” she replied, “and please don’t call me that. Just Dynamo is fine.”

  “Well-- ah-- okay,” he stammered for words. “It must be cool to have powers. I’ve always wanted them myself.”

  “It’s cool,” she agreed, but she purposefully didn’t contribute any more to the conversation.

  “I’ve been training though, so I’m pretty strong myself,” the Silver Squire continued anyway, and then he held up his arm to flex a moderate amount of muscle. “You can feel it if you want!”

  “Um, no, thanks,” Elizabeth said.

  I made an attempt to start forward and interrupt them to rescue my poor girlfriend from the teenaged hero’s attention, but Penumbra latched herself onto my arm again.

  “C’mon, Miles,” she giggled as she pressed her breasts up against my arm. “We completed our missions and now we deserve a break, don’t we? And I know just what you deserve.”

  “No, there’s still too many supervillains out there,” I sighed. “We should really get back to work.”

  “Can I be on your team, then?” She kept her arms curled around mine, and now she practically rubbed herself up against me. “Please? You gave me these awesome new gauntlets, and I might need some help on how to figure out how to use them.”

  “Elizabeth knows how they work.” I smirked.

  “But I think that’s a really great idea,” the Silver Squire called out from the couch. “We can mix up the teams a little to see if it’s more effective that way. Penumbra can go with you, Miles, Beacon can go with the Shadow Knight, and I can go with Dynamo.”

  “Uh, I’m not sure that’s the best idea,” Beacon said as he rubbed the back of his neck.

  I couldn’t blame him since if I’d just worked with me, I wouldn’t want to be paired up with the Shadow Knight either.

  “But we’ll all work a lot better if we mix it up a little,” the blonde insisted as she tightened her grip on my arm.

  “What do you think, Dynamo?” the Silver Squire asked.

  “Come on, Miles!” Penumbra begged.

  “No reshuffling,” I exhaled and then untangled my arm from Penumbra.

  “Absolutely not,” the Shadow Knight said immediately.

  I glanced over at him and we shared a single, rare moment of solidarity. Though I really didn’t mind it when girls flirted with me, I was a little annoyed with the lack of focus that Penumbra and Silver Squire seemed to have for our mission. There was no way she’d be able to work with me without getting distracted, and the Silver Squire was very likely to do something stupid to try to impress Elizabeth despite her very clear lack of interest in him.

  No, we were not going to allow the teams to be reshuffled.

  “We need to focus on the task at hand,” I continued.

  “Our current teams work just fine,” the Shadow Knight added.

  For once, I felt no need to contradict him. I guessed I’d enjoy that while it lasted.

  “Enough messing around,” I said as I stepped forward to join Elizabeth by the couch.

  I picked up the remote to switch on the rotating screens of supervillains we had left to capture. Aileen had already crossed out the ones already safely placed into prison, so the Golem, Morpho, and the Toxinator were marked out on the list. That still left quite a few villains for us to handle, but it felt good to see three of them already down.

  Penumbra pouted again, but now that the Shadow Knight had spoken up, she no longer seemed to want to argue. The Silver Squire had quieted down as well, though his arms were crossed as he sunk into the couch next to Elizabeth. Neither of them wanted to go against their mentor.

  “You’re in my spot,” Penumbra informed the Silver Squire as she leaned over the couch.

  “Get your own spot,” he snapped.

  Without another word, she tapped him on the shoulder and squeezed her eyes shut. Before any of us could stop her, the Silver Squire levitated up into the air for a split second before he was deposited on the other side of the couch.

  “You could have just asked him nicely to move,” Elizabeth snickered.

  “That would have taken too much time,” the blonde said with a shrug.

  “Stupid superpowered girls,” the Silver Squire grumbled.

  “Miles said to stop messing around,” the Shadow Knight barked as he came to stand next to me. “Don’t let one victory get to your heads-- we’ve got to stick to the mission.”

  I cast Slade a glance, and he met my gaze with an even stare. If this was his attempt to offer me an olive branch, I figured I might as well accept it.

  “Like Slade said,” I agreed, “let’s stick to the mission.”

  I flicked through the list of supervillains to get us started now that everyone was focused again.

  It didn’t take very long to decide our next targets. I assigned Elizabeth and Penumbra to a telekinetic duo that were powerful together, but weak when separated. I might not have given them this particular assignment if Penumbra was still a weak link, but now that she was a little more confident with her powers, I thought they would be able to handle it, and both women seemed happy with their assignment.

  For the Shadow Knight and Silver Squire, I assigned a supervillain whose only known power was superspeed, but he could only run in short bursts before getting tired. He also had claws and seemed to fashion himself after a cheetah, but I thought the spotted-cat pattern on his clothes was more than a little bit gaudy.

  Still, it would also make him easier to see, so since he didn’t seem too powerful, he should be another easy target for the Shadow Knight and his fresh squire. I knew it annoyed Slade that I was assigning him throwaway villains and simple capture targets, but for the sake of his new apprentice, the Shadow Knight seemed willing to put up with it.

  And finally, I assigned the
spider-powered villainess named Arachne to Norma, Beacon, and myself.

  “That’s so unfair!” the Silver Squire whined. “Why can’t we fight her?”

  “Are you certain you can handle her?” the Shadow Knight asked me like his apprentice hadn’t even spoken.

  “I don’t see why not,” I said with a shrug.

  I knew he had only asked that because Arachne was known for specifically targeting rich, charismatic men. Much like the black widow spider, she apparently liked to enjoy them physically before she disposed of them, but I didn’t think I had anything to worry about.

  In fact, it sounded pretty fun.

  “She’s deadly,” Beacon said, “but from what I’ve seen, Miles can take it. He was pretty resourceful with Morpho.”

  After Slade and I had finally agreed on something earlier, I didn’t want to ruin it by rubbing my success in his face, so I just shrugged again.

  “We’ll be fine,” I said. “No need to worry about me, Slade.”

  “I wasn’t worried about you,” the Shadow Knight growled.

  “So I take it you still haven’t warmed up to me at all?” I grinned.

  “I guess you got the job done,” Slade admitted.

  I wasn’t one to fish for compliments, but it was pretty satisfying to hear praise from someone I’d once considered an enemy, and it was made even sweeter by the fact that even though he clearly didn’t want to admit it, he still couldn’t deny that my methods were effective.

  “That’s all I wanted to hear,” I smirked as I switched off the screens. “Now, let’s get back to work.”

  Chapter 6 - Dynamo

  Our next target was the pair of supervillains that went by the predictable moniker of “Bonnie and Clyde.” They were rarely ever seen apart from each other, so for all intents and purposes it was essentially just hunting down a single supervillain.

  Aileen had scanned her facial recognition software, hacked the cameras of their usual haunts, and managed to track them down that way. Bonnie and Clyde had several restaurants and specific locations they liked to go to, all about as unoriginal as their names, so it wasn’t difficult for the AI system to narrow down where to look. It seemed silly to go out to dinner when you were wanted prison escapees, but I figured most supervillains probably didn’t think that being a fugitive was that big of a deal.

  And they didn’t realize I was hunting them with Miles Nelson tech.

  As Penumbra and I parked the car a few blocks down from the restaurant that the duo had last been spotted at, I glanced at the thin blonde in the passenger seat. She kept flexing her new gloves, like she still wasn’t used to her newfound super strength, and every time she did, she got this silly little smile on her face like it was Christmas morning.

  I understood the feeling, since I could still remember how I’d felt the first time I’d tried on one of Miles’ suits. It was life changing for a super to suddenly understand the full reach of what her powers could do, and I was glad to see that Penumbra was also starting to realize her potential.

  Even if I was sick of her constant flirting with Miles.

  We left the car and approached the courtyard of the swanky restaurant where Bonnie and Clyde had last been picked up by the city’s cameras, and I gritted my teeth as I saw that the restaurant was crowded enough that it had started to turn people away at the door. It was dinner time, so I shouldn’t have been surprised by the number of people there, but it still irritated me that all these bystanders might get in our way.

  “Ugh, of course there’s a crowd,” I said as we moved closer to the restaurant.

  “Do you really think Bonnie and Clyde are here?” Penumbra asked.

  “It’s their last known location, so it’s our best bet,” I said. “Do you really think those are their real names?”

  “Probably not,” the blonde said with a shrug, “but that’s what we know them by.”

  “They use telekinesis, right?” I asked.

  “Yep,” Penumbra answered. “Like, crazy telekinesis powers. They can take out a whole room, but I think it only works when they’re together.”

  “What do you mean?” I paused before we got too close to the restaurant, just in case there was something else I needed to know about the supervillains before they spotted us.

  “I mean, like, their powers are tied to each other, or something,” Penumbra said. “Hold on, I can’t really remember, so let me just…”

  The thin blonde trailed off as she pulled up the dossier for Bonnie and Clyde on her tablet. While she scanned the information on the duo, I glanced around the parking lot and the sidewalk that surrounded the restaurant. There were a lot of people, but so far, no one seemed to pay any attention to either of us, and that meant we should still be able to surprise our targets.

  “Okay,” Penumbra announced. “So, it says here that Clyde is the one with the psychic powers, but he can’t do anything without Bonnie. She’s like a human amplifier, kind of like the suits that Miles makes, only obviously not as good.”

  “So that makes Bonnie the ultimate support,” I said. “No wonder Clyde keeps her so close.”

  “Yeah, but she’s not even close to being on the same level as Miles,” Penumbra sighed. “Her power is coincidental, but Miles is a genius! He doesn’t even have to be here to help us, and--”

  “Come on,” I snapped. “We’re going to need to set up closer to stake them out. If Clyde is as powerful as you say, then we can’t just charge in with our guns blazing.”

  “Remember, Clyde is only powerful because of Bonnie,” Penumbra said again.

  “I got it,” I said as I suppressed an eye roll that Penumbra had repeated the information she’d told me only two seconds earlier.

  We had wandered into the edge of the crowd outside the restaurant, so I looked around for any cover that we could take. There was a decorative crop of topiary that would serve as a decent place to hide and watch the restaurant, especially since there was a bench right beside it that would make it look like we were just waiting for a table.

  As soon as we sat down on the bench, I scanned the crowd again, but this time, I made sure to look through the windows of the restaurant to see if I could spot our targets. Many of the diners were seated at outdoor tables, even though it was a little too cool outside for my tastes. Still, the sun had just begun to set, and since it wasn’t raining, the residents of Grayville considered it to be prime weather to eat dinner outside.

  Finally, I spotted our duo at a romantic, candle-lit dinner table just inside the restaurant beside a window. It would have been a lot easier if they’d had a table outside, but it had been a smart choice for them to eat indoors. They were probably well aware of the fact that someone would either have to plow through the outdoor seating area and barge through the side door to reach them, or someone would have to weave their way through the front door and all the tables inside before they could get to them.

  Both routes, of course, meant there would be a lot of people in our way.

  “We’re going to have to wait until they’re done,” I told Penumbra.

  “Yeah,” my blonde partner replied as she peered around the hedge to get a clearer look at the restaurant. “Clyde can do a lot of damage with his powers, and there’s a whole lot of people in there. He might even try to take hostages or something.”

  “I know,” I sighed.

  “But, like, did you see Clyde?” Penumbra asked. “Bonnie can do so much better! She’s probably only with him because of his superpowers.”

  I leaned closer to the hedge so I could also get a better look, and I had to agree with her. Clyde’s bleached-blonde hair was pulled back into a topknot, and he’d pushed aviator sunglasses up on top of his head. He wore khaki pants and a white button-down shirt with most of the front buttons undone, and he really didn’t even give off the air of a supervillain. Instead, he seemed more like the kind of tool that I wouldn’t give a second glance.

  Personally, I didn’t think Bonnie looked much better. She
had long black hair in a curled, coiffed style that she’d clearly used way too much hairspray on, and her makeup was so overdone that it looked like she had just come from a theatre performance.

  Unfortunately, I could also see now that they hadn’t even ordered yet, so I knew we might be in for quite a wait. As eager as I was to get in there and start fighting, I didn’t want to cause any collateral damage, and the longer I watched the supervillainous couple through the window, the more destruction I imagined they could cause to both the restaurant and all the patrons.

  “Well, settle in,” I said. “Looks like we’ve got a long wait ahead of us.”

  “That sucks,” Penumbra groaned.

  “It’s our only option,” I exhaled. “I know it seems like a waste of time, but it’s the only way we can keep everyone here safe.”

  “But this could take hours,” the blonde whined.

  I agreed with her, but I wasn’t going to whine about it like she was. After all, Bonnie and Clyde had just escaped from prison, so they would probably drag out their celebration meal as long as possible, and I was no more excited about the prospect of a long wait than my blonde partner.

  “It could,” I said with a shrug.

  “Well then, what should we do to kill time?” Penumbra asked.

  “We sit and wait,” I replied without taking my eyes off the supervillainous duo. “In silence.”

  “But that’s so boring!” she groaned.

  I shrugged again, but still didn’t move my gaze from Bonnie and Clyde. It might be boring to perform a stake out, but I didn’t exactly feel like taking any more of her questions about Miles, and I knew that was where the conversation would always end up going.

  Penumbra fidgeted constantly beside me, and I almost laughed at how anxious for action she seemed, since earlier with the Golem, she’d been so nervous to fight at all. Miles must have really given her a confidence boost with those gloves.

  Our silence lasted for a few minutes, and that was long enough for Bonnie and Clyde to both place their long and apparently very specific orders. On my own, I would have been able to wait it out with no problem at all, but Penumbra’s restlessness was as contagious as it was annoying, and I found myself adjusting my position on the bench every few seconds.