by Logan Jacobs
I tightened my hold around him and didn’t respond, but he wasn’t trying to escape.
“Just… a little… bit… more,” he breathed out each word with a shudder of pleasure as he siphoned power from Bonnie, who was still too close even though Penumbra had tackled her.
Shit. This was bad.
There was no time left for hesitation, so before anyone could even blink, I braced one hand against the back of Clyde’s head and placed my other hand against his chin, and then I snapped his neck with a sickening crack.
All the silverware stopped vibrating, and I could no longer feel a latent pulse of telekinetic energy in the air.
I let his body drop to the floor, and Bonnie’s panicked shriek cut through the silence. Penumbra must have figured out how to manipulate the mass of Bonnie’s clothing to hold her down, because the black-haired villainess’ struggles were slow and barely effective even against Penumbra’s petite frame.
“What have you done?” she shrieked as she clawed uselessly against her own now-heavy clothes. “What have you done to Clyde?”
“D- Dynamo?” Penumbra stammered as she tightened her hold around Bonnie’s middle. “Did you… did you kill him?”
“I had no choice,” I said as I glanced down at the corpse. “Let’s go outside-- we’ve caused enough panic in here.”
Penumbra glanced around the restaurant, looked down at the hysterical Bonnie, and then gave me a single, silent nod in response. I could tell she was shocked by the fact that I’d killed someone in front of her, but I knew I’d done the right thing. Maybe she hadn’t noticed the steak knives begin to rattle and hover. But I knew what I had seen.
I slung Clyde’s corpse over my shoulder, Penumbra dragged Bonnie along behind her, and together, we left the stunned patrons of the restaurant behind and headed out into the back alley where our original plan had intended to take us. As soon as we were outside, I set Clyde’s body down so that I could call the prison van, but Penumbra kept her hold on Bonnie.
“He was a cheating bastard, but you didn’t have to kill him!” Bonnie spluttered. “He was mine to kill, you hear me? Mine!”
She struggled harder against her heavy, constricting clothes as she tried to kick at Clyde’s body.
“Mine!” she shrieked again. “Miiine!”
Bonnie didn’t stop shrieking, but at least it didn’t take long for the van to arrive, take Clyde’s body off our hands, and then cart the villain back to prison. Even after she was gone, her shrieks still rang in my ears, and I shook my head to try to clear the noise away.
After the van left, I leaned up against the wall of the alley and studied Penumbra. The blonde hadn’t been able to take her eyes off of Clyde’s body, and I wondered if this was the first time she’d ever seen a supervillain killed. I knew I was going to have to explain myself, but she’d been indoctrinated her whole life into the Shadow Knight’s way of thinking, so I had to choose my words carefully.
“You reacted really quickly in there,” I said finally. “Good work.”
“Yeah…” Penumbra trailed off as she watched the prison van disappear down the road.
“Penumbra, I could feel him starting to use his powers,” I explained as I turned to face her. “I felt the energy, and it was getting stronger by the second.”
“I did, too, but…” she trailed off again and shook her head. “But I don’t know. I mean, I was getting Bonnie out of there.”
“You wouldn’t have been able to get her far enough away in time,” I sighed. “I don’t like to kill, Penumbra. I really don’t. But he was going to murder everyone in the restaurant, and I had no choice.”
She nodded, but didn’t say anything else. She didn’t seem angry, so that was a good sign, but she was so unusually quiet that I knew Clyde’s death had bothered her. It would probably take her a little while to come to terms with what I’d done, but I hoped she would be able to understand.
I also knew that Miles would see this as a good opportunity to draw her further to our side, but I wanted Penumbra to reach that conclusion on her own. I wanted her to recognize that what I’d done was really to protect the innocent. I wanted her to realize that the world would be a better place without someone like Clyde in it.
After what felt like ages of us standing in the road together, she sighed and straightened her posture.
“I guess you didn’t have any other choice,” Penumbra admitted. “If only I could have gotten Bonnie away faster, then maybe you wouldn’t have had to--”
“Don’t blame yourself,” I cut her off. “It was no one’s fault but Clyde’s for being a murderous asshole in the first place.”
I hadn’t expected her to turn the blame on herself, but her confidence was even lower than I’d thought it was. I placed a tentative hand on her shoulder and gave her a gentle squeeze.
“But…” she trailed off again and glanced over at me with a forlorn expression. “I could have…”
“There was nothing else we could have done,” I said. “Clyde was going to kill everyone in there, and we stopped him. You got Bonnie far enough away that his powers weren’t able to work immediately, and that gave me the opening to stop him for good.”
“I don’t know if the Shadow Knight would accept that as a good enough reason,” Penumbra said.
Finally, we’d come to the real reason for her hesitation.
“He’ll have to,” I replied. “It was either the life of every single patron in that restaurant, or Clyde’s life.”
“Right,” she said, and that explanation seemed to reach her as she nodded to herself. “Then… I think you made the right decision.”
“Yeah, I do, too,” I said with a smile. “We saved a lot of lives tonight, Penumbra. You should feel proud, not upset.”
“You’re right,” she exhaled. “Clyde was a creep, anyway. I could hear his sleezy whispers through your earpiece.”
“He was also a mass murderer, and he would have probably killed everyone in the restaurant if we hadn’t shown up,” I said.
“Yeah, that, too,” Penumbra said. “I feel a little better about being a hero now. Thanks, Dynamo.”
I smiled at the thought that Penumbra seemed more upset by how sleazy Clyde was than the mass murders he had committed, but I figured she was on the right track.
As we headed back to our car to go back to the mansion, a worrisome thought did linger in my head about how we were going to explain our actions to the others.
The Shadow Knight wouldn’t be nearly as easy to convince as Penumbra had been, and I knew he was going to be furious when he found out that I’d killed someone. It was difficult for me to come to terms with the fact that a hero I’d once looked up to had become such a thorn in my side, but the more I learned about him and the abusive tactics he’d used to brainwash his trainees, the less I respected him anyway.
Guess that old saying was true, after all.
Never meet your heroes.
Chapter 7
There were several locations where our next supervillain target, Arachne, could be hiding out. She might have named herself after a spider, but none of her hideouts were in dark, damp locations. The list of potential locations Aileen had supplied me with mostly consisted of penthouse apartments and the occasional mansion, but we hadn’t narrowed down her likeliest location yet since we were still at my own mansion.
The other two teams had already left to capture their supervillains, but I still wanted to prepare us some technology specifically to combat Arachne’s web spinning, so we hadn’t gone after her just yet. First, we needed to get all the facts and all the tech lined up.
“So, she seduces her way into some rich guy’s bed, kills him there, and then hangs out in his house until she’s caught?” I repeated what I knew about our next target so far. “Not exactly the smartest, is she?”
“She has her own place, too,” Norma added as she scrolled through the dossier on her tablet. “She could be hiding there.”
“Maybe, but she prefers t
o live with her prey after she kills them,” Beacon said with a shrug. “Must be part of the thrill for her. She sleeps next to the webbed-up body, too.”
“So she gets off on killing?” I asked.
I couldn’t deny that I got a thrill out of ending a supervillain’s life, but at least I chose my targets properly, and it definitely wasn’t sexual. I wouldn’t get the same sort of excitement from killing an innocent old rich guy that I would from killing a known mass-murderer, after all.
“Seems that way,” Beacon replied. “She cuts off their heads while she’s in the middle of fucking them, too. What a psycho bitch.”
“Hopefully they get to cum first,” I laughed.
Of all the different ways that I’d seen supervillains kill, Arachne’s method certainly wasn’t the worst. Of course, it was reprehensible regardless of what way she committed murder, but as far as murder methods went, hers wasn’t so bad.
Still, I had to admit that it definitely helped that Arachne was incredibly hot, at least for a supervillain. She was easily the most attractive villainess that had escaped from the overflow prison. With long, thick legs wrapped up in spiderweb-patterned, translucent tights and a backless leotard that barely seemed able to contain her huge breasts, she managed to look hot even in her prison mugshot. Her lips were full and painted dark red, and they were pursed in a sexy pout even as she posed for her mugshot pictures.
“I guess there are worse ways to go,” Norma said, “but it seems really horrible to me. Besides, isn’t she pretty well-known for this? Why do men keep falling for it? Her track record is really long, and she keeps going in and out of prison.”
“She’s hot,” I laughed. “I bet she makes empty promises and ensures the men she seduces that they’re different from all the rest. Either that, or she disguises herself just enough that even if they suspect something, they overlook it.”
The prospect of sex with a hot woman could cloud a lot of minds, and that included my own on very rare occasions, although I liked to think that I was more rational than the average man when it came to being driven by sex. I recognized it as something my body needed and wanted, but I didn’t let it cloud my judgement entirely when I saw a hot, obviously evil woman.
“Men will ignore a lot of warning signs just to have sex, huh?” Norma sighed and shut off the screen of her tablet, probably so she wouldn’t have to look at Arachne’s sexed-up face anymore.
“Hey, don’t lump us all together,” Beacon said. “Women will ignore a lot of warning signs in a man, too. Sex drives all of us.”
“Well, that’s true,” I smirked. “So, we’ll need a good plan. What else do you know about her powers?”
“As her name implies, she’s spidery,” the ex-sidekick explained. “Sticky fingers that can spin and shoot webs. I believe the power comes from her veins, where some mutation allows her to manipulate her body chemistry to spin webs in the same way a spider can. She doesn’t have a spinnerette on her ass or anything gross like that, so the webs just fire out of her fingers.”
“On closer inspection, her ass does seem fantastic,” I snickered.
Norma gave a very heavy sigh as she rolled her eyes at me.
“Yeah, so her fingers are her main weapon,” Beacon continued as if he’d entirely missed my implication.
“What if we just cut off her hands?” I suggested.
“Uh, well, I guess, uh…” he trailed off and rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t know if Slade would-- well, I guess that could work, but you’d have to get close enough to do that.”
Beacon seemed surprised by my violent suggestion, even though I’d hoped that he might have gotten over some of his Shadow Knight conditioning after what we’d gone through with Morpho, but I guessed dismemberment was still too much for him to handle.
“I’m assuming that means she’s hard to get close to?” Norma asked.
“Yeah, you could say that,” Beacon answered. “She has super quick reflexes and can move her limbs at incredible speeds. She also has an innate version of the kind of sensor system my suit uses, so she can sense when someone gets too close to her.”
He gestured idly to the glowing light on his chest. Unlike with Penumbra, I hadn’t had the chance to come up with something new for Beacon to wear, so I’d just tuned up his suit so it sensed motion as well as heat.
“So, she can tell when we’re approaching and can stop us before we get close,” Norma said and jotted down the information on her tablet. “How strong are her webs?”
“Strong,” Beacon replied. “And they’re resistant to heat, so I don’t think your blasters will help much there.”
Unless I just blew her up on the spot, but I still intended to keep the promise I made to the Shadow Knight, so I would do what I could to try and capture her alive. As much as I enjoyed my newest, explosive toy, I had other weapons in my arsenal besides just my blasters.
“What about something sharp?” Norma asked. “Like if we used a chainsaw or something.”
“I, uh, don’t think we’ve ever tried a chainsaw against her,” Beacon stuttered. “Maybe it’d work?”
“We don’t have a chainsaw on hand,” I replied as I thought about what we did have that I could use.
“We do have plenty of blades, though,” Norma suggested. “You can probably modify one to work like a chainsaw might, Miles.”
“Or we could, uh, maybe go to a hardware store?” Beacon asked.
Maybe he was warming up to the idea of chopping off a supervillain’s hands.
“Nah,” I replied. “Chainsaws like that are too noisy and way too big to carry around without being seen. There are a lot of other blades we can use that are way more subtle.”
“We do have those knives,” Norma said, but she didn’t elaborate on where we’d gotten them from.
I knew it was probably because she didn’t want to let Beacon know that we’d stolen that technology from Mayhem, one of Grayville’s most notorious villains, and I was as content as she was to keep that knowledge a secret for now.
“I’m still not sure if I like the idea of cutting off her hands,” the ex-apprentice of the Shadow Knight finally said.
“Blades will be necessary to counter her webs, anyway,” I explained. “If it comes down to it, we can also use them to cut off her hands in self-defense, but that’ll only be if it’s absolutely necessary to our survival.”
“Okay,” Beacon sighed. “I guess that’s acceptable.”
In my basement workshop, I came up with three different weapons that we could use. I gave Beacon two incredibly sharp blades that I’d modified from the weapons Mayhem’s thugs had used. The blades had almost been sharp enough to cut through Elizabeth’s suit when thrown, and I doubted that Arachne’s webs were made of a more powerful material than my suits were.
I gave Norma a modified spinning blade that could be held with a handle, as well as a small handgun that could shoot a slimy, silicone-like substance that would coat Arachne’s hands and prevent her from using her web-slingers. It was a long shot to assume that Norma would be able to coat every wall in the substance, but if she aimed for Arachne’s hands and cut off her ability to use webs at all, that would make capturing her a lot easier.
As for myself, I had one of everything minus the silicone gun. I also kept on my gauntlets with the blasters in them because there was still a chance that they might come in handy.
But before we got started, I had one more thing to do.
“Oh, Norma,” I addressed my assistant as she hooked her weapons onto her suit’s belt and then looked over to me. “I have one more thing for you. Come with me.”
“Sure,” she said.
I led her down into the basement so Beacon wouldn’t be able to overhear us, and as soon as the door shut behind us, Norma sighed.
“You want to seduce Arachne, don’t you?” she demanded.
“Of course,” I said with a grin. “She’s beautiful, and it’d be an easy way to get her alone.”
“It
’s a dangerous idea, but I know you have a plan for it,” my assistant replied, but then glanced at the stairs up to the living room. “But what about Beacon?”
“That’s why I called you down here, so we can figure something out,” I said with a shrug.
“We could send him somewhere else,” Norma suggested as she joined me by the computer screens.
“Like on a wild goose chase?” I mused. “Good idea, but what excuse could we use?”
“Maybe Aileen can say she found her somewhere else?” the mousy brunette asked. “I’m sure we can think of an excuse to send him away.”
“If I may interrupt…” the Shadow Knight’s voice suddenly crackled through my speakers, and both me and Norma jumped in surprise.
My fingers began to fly over the keyboard to double-check my security, but I could see no invasion from any of Slade’s technology.
“How are you contacting us?” I demanded aloud as I lifted my head to observe the screen.
A feminine, seductive laugh came from behind us, and we turned to see Aileen as she sauntered out of hiding and over toward us.
“Convincing, isn’t it?” she said in her own distinctly sexy voice, and I breathed out a sigh of relief.
“You’re fucking brilliant, you know that?” I purred to my robotic creation before I looked back at my assistant. “All we need to do is have Aileen send an alert to Beacon using the Shadow Knight’s voice. Then it gets him off our backs, and it also gives us a convenient excuse if anything happens to Arachne.”
“Because we didn’t have him to back us up, so we had to handle her on our own,” Norma added. “It really is pretty clever.”
“Thank you,” Aileen said as she bowed in a sweeping gesture that I wasn’t sure was meant to be some kind of joke or not. “I will perform as my Creator demands.”
“Send the message to Beacon once we arrive at wherever Arachne is hiding,” I instructed. “Make sure to send him to the other side of town and make it sound urgent. I’m sure he’ll leave immediately.”
“As you wish,” my AI assistant replied.