by Logan Jacobs
“Yes, please!” she chirped. “Here it goes!”
She clicked the button without any fanfare.
The security footage from the cameras outside the prison exploded into nothing but white static at first, but as the lenses came back into focus, we could see the damage we had done to Grayville’s overflow prison. The entire building had erupted into flames and smoke so instantly that the walls had almost immediately collapsed inward on top of all the cells. If the initial explosion hadn’t been enough to kill every prisoner inside, then the building collapse would have definitely been enough to finish them off.
None of them should be able to live, thanks to the strategic placement of all four bombs. Sure, Norma was only average at demolitions, but average was all you needed when a bunch of bombs were concerned.
“Look!” Norma pointed out the window as a puff of smoke drifted into the air in the distance.
“Well, it’s not fireworks,” I snickered, “but it’s something, anyway.”
“We did the right thing,” Elizabeth sighed. “No one in there deserved to live, and I know they would have just all escaped again, anyway.”
“Exactly,” I said. “Overall, this is way better for Grayville and its people.”
“It went off like a dream,” Norma giggled as she watched the remnants of the prison collapse into a pile of smoldering rubble.
“I did tell the Shadow Knight that they would never escape their cells again.” I leaned back and rested my hands behind my head. “Maybe he should have been a little more specific with his demands.”
“He should have known better than to think he could outsmart you,” Elizabeth said with a smile. “You’ve done it again, Miles.”
“I know.” I grinned. “But please, go on.”
My girlfriend just rolled her eyes, and I took the remote again to flip away from the crater the prison had become to see if any of the news stations had covered it yet.
Most of them were already on it, but since everyone was covering it as an emergency breaking news alert, none of them had a full story, so it was difficult to tell what the general opinion of it was. We’d probably have to wait a few hours for opinion pieces to come out, but I had to hope that at least part of the city of Grayville would see the deaths of all those supervillains as a good thing.
After all, the escaped supervillains had rampaged all over the city for the past few days, and even though we had been able to keep casualties to a minimum, a lot of people had still died in the chaos. More would have died without us, and a lot more would have died if the Shadow Knight had been the only game in town, but there had been enough people hurt that I thought the citizens might appreciate the swift justice.
“You know, Miles, we’ve made a lot of enemies with this,” Elizabeth said.
“I know,” I said. “We’ll just have to be ready for them.”
I was well aware that this would put us in the crosshairs of a hell of a lot of people. We’d managed to keep our identities a secret during the encounter with Mayhem, but this had been a lot more publicized. Our faces weren’t exactly plastered everywhere, but the remaining criminals of Grayville at least had an idea of who we were now.
And they knew the kid gloves were off.
“Have you told her yet?” Norma asked me. “That we know who released the prisoners in the first place?”
“Released?” Elizabeth’s turquoise-blue eyes went wide. “What do you mean, released?”
“It was a setup,” I said. “The prison’s security was deliberately compromised. I found traces of that within the program I was allowed to access, but Aileen found even more.”
“The Shadow Knight’s systems were vandalized with cheshire-cat smiles,” my sultry robotic assistant added.
“Cheshire-cat smiles?” Elizabeth frowned. “So you mean-- so that means it was the Maniac?”
“Quick as ever,” I smirked.
She just rolled her eyes at me.
“The smiling icons that Aileen found in Slade’s systems just confirmed it,” Norma said, “but Miles--”
“I came to the conclusion that it was the Maniac on my own,” I finished. “I just noticed that the prison security had obviously been tampered with, and the Maniac is the only choice that makes sense.”
“Even the prison staff knew the security system hadn’t failed on its own,” Norma said. “And that means that Dan Slade knew for sure.”
“They even said they alerted him,” I added. “So he knew all along that it was the Maniac.”
“Why didn’t he tell us?” Elizabeth shook her head. “That’s a pretty big secret to keep to himself.”
Each new bit of information she learned about the guy must have taken another hammer to her rosy view of the kind of hero the Shadow Knight was.
“To protect him, or something like that,” I replied. “From what Beacon was saying, Slade has some kind of weird back-and-forth game he plays with the Maniac.”
“A game?” my dark-haired girlfriend growled. “Really?”
“I don’t think it’s all a game to him,” I said. “The Shadow Knight is fucked up, but I don’t think he’s that fucked up.”
“But then…” Elizabeth trailed off.
“I think he genuinely wants to protect Grayville,” I said. “That’s a big part of him, but he’s also just…”
“Crazy?” Norma suggested.
“I’d probably say obsessed,” I said. “He’s especially obsessed with the Maniac, to the point where Beacon got uncomfortable talking about it.”
“So, he protected the Maniac so we wouldn’t go after him as the source of all this,” Elizabeth sighed. “It just figures that the one hero I actually thought was worth something turned out to be a crazy asshole. From what Penumbra said, he also treated his sidekicks like shit.”
“Beacon said something like that, too,” Norma said. “But while we’re on the subject, what do you think we should do about the Maniac, Miles? Do you think we can handle him?”
“I’m not sure,” I admitted, since we hadn’t ever gone after a supervillain of the Maniac’s caliber before. “But he won’t be very happy that we blew up the prison.”
“That probably wasn’t part of his plan,” Norma smirked.
“If he even had a plan,” I laughed. “His name is the Maniac, after all, so maybe he was just doing all this for the sake of chaos or something.”
“We should keep our guards up,” Elizabeth warned. “He’ll probably be after us now.”
“Let him try,” I said with a shrug. “We’ve already got the Shadow Knight up our asses, so why not throw one more supervillain into the mix?”
“Should I work on this mansion’s security?” Norma asked with a little too much excitement in her eyes.
“Sure,” I said. “The last security system you came up with was beautiful-- or beautifully vicious, anyway, so do your worst. You can spend as much money as you need to make it just as successful as the one back home.”
Norma flushed at my praise and then nodded. She pulled out her tablet and immediately started to tap away at it to design plans and schematics for the Grayville mansion’s beefed up security.
What we already had installed was pretty basic since I hadn’t expected to stay in Grayville for any length of time. No one knew who we were when we first arrived, but that was all about to change, and to be honest, I was pretty excited for the challenge.
“Creator,” Aileen said suddenly, “the Shadow Knight is now on a direct course back to the mansion.”
“Of course he is,” I said with a yawn. “He’s certainly predictable, I’ll give him that much.”
“Can you pull up the cameras outside the mansion?” Elizabeth asked.
Aileen switched the screens from news broadcasts to the view of our front door and driveway. It would be a few minutes before Slade was able to drive back here, but at least this way, we would have a clear view of the situation when he did.
“Shall I activate our defense protocols?” Ai
leen asked.
“Nah,” I said. “He’s alone, right?”
“Beacon and Penumbra do not appear to have changed their courses,” Aileen confirmed.
“Are you sure?” Elizabeth asked as she looked to me for guidance.
“Yeah, I’m not afraid of him,” I replied. “He’s impulsive, alone, and angry. I’m not going to show our cards immediately.”
“Dynamo, you can take him, can’t you?” Norma asked.
“I probably can,” Elizabeth said, but she seemed a little hesitant. “I mean, since all of you are here, too, I think we can definitely take him together.”
It might have been dangerous and a little bit careless to let the Shadow Knight barge his way back into my mansion, but I really wasn’t afraid of him. I didn’t think he would be capable of doing anything but yell at me.
Besides, I really did want to see his face up close now that my plan to bomb the prison had been successful.
“It’ll be fine,” I said. “Aileen, you’ll need to hide yourself again. For backup, you know. Just in case.”
My AI assistant gave me a look that was close to annoyance, but she obediently marched her exquisite chrome ass back down into the basement.
“The Shadow Knight will arrive in less than one minute,” her voice announced through the speakers again.
I glanced at the screens to see his teched-out armored car at the far end of the driveway, so I just leaned back on the sofa, relaxed as much as possible, sipped on my drink, and mentally counted down the seconds in my head.
My count was a little off.
The Shadow Knight burst through the front door with a slam that echoed throughout the entire mansion.
“Miles Nelson!” he bellowed as he stomped into the living room.
I stood up and stretched my arms above my head for effect. Elizabeth flanked me with Norma not far behind her, as I casually made my way across the living room to face Dan Slade head-on.
My expression was nothing more than a calm smirk as I observed the rage on the other billionaire’s face. There was a pulsating vein in his neck that was particularly unpleasant to look at, and his eyes were dark with fury.
“You lied to me,” the Shadow Knight snarled.
“I never lied,” I said. “I told you that I would ensure they never escaped their cells again, didn’t I?”
“I told you not to kill them,” he ground out.
“I only told you that I would return them to their cells alive,” I said with a smile, since I knew there was no flaw in my logic. “I never said what would happen afterwards, remember?”
“You’re a murderer!” he growled, and a little bit of spit pooled in the corner of his mouth.
“Actually, I only kill murderers,” I said with a shrug. “Like you should. Now none of those people will cause harm to Grayville, and your city is all the safer for it. Really, you should be thanking me.”
“Fucking bastard!” he shouted.
“I prefer ‘evil genius,’ but thanks,” I snickered.
With a wordless shout of rage, the Shadow Knight launched forward to attack me, but Elizabeth intercepted him before he could get anywhere near me. She had her fingers wrapped around his wrist so tightly that she would probably break all his bones if he so much as moved, so Slade just stood there helplessly.
As soon as my super-powered girlfriend stopped him, Norma stepped forward to aim a high-powered pistol at the Shadow Knight, and I recognized it as one that we usually loaded with armor-piercing rounds.
“Do you really think you can take on all three of us?” I demanded.
Shadow Knight glanced between Elizabeth’s death grip on him and Norma’s high-powered pistol, and even though he didn’t say anything, the furious vein in his neck just kept pulsing with rage.
I doubted he would try to continue his assault, but even if he somehow managed to take out both Elizabeth and Norma, we still had Aileen for backup, and he didn’t even know about her.
I was completely untouchable.
“Go on, take your shot,” I smirked as I crossed my arms over my chest.
I knew the Shadow Knight was trying to figure out his odds of survival. They were remarkably low, and since Dan Slade wasn’t a complete idiot, he had to recognize that he stood no chance against even just Elizabeth’s super strength, and that meant he definitely didn’t stand a chance against all three of us.
Slade took one final look at Elizabeth’s fierce turquoise-blue eyes, at the gun Norma held expertly in her hands, and at my smug expression, and then he finally opened his fists in surrender.
“Fine,” he growled. “But mark my words, Nelson. I will bring you in.”
“I’m looking forward to it,” I said with a grin. “Really.”
I saw the rage pulsate through the vein in his neck again, and I thought the Shadow Knight might just damn the odds and attack me anyway. But I had faith in both of the women at my sides, so I stood my ground and kept the grin on my face.
“Get out,” Elizabeth snapped.
My super-powered girlfriend shoved Slade backward, and my new crow-masked enemy staggered away toward the front door. Just before he left, Shadow Knight turned back toward me one last time, and then he stormed out of the mansion with a swirl of his feathered cape.
“I don’t think he’ll come back,” I announced, “but Aileen, go ahead and activate the defense protocols anyway. Oh, and you can come out now.”
The basement door opened immediately, and when Aileen emerged right away, I knew that she had been waiting just on the other side of the door in case we needed her.
“Certainly, Creator,” she said. “Shall I also begin to scramble the Shadow Knight’s inferior AI?”
“Sure,” I said and then glanced at my beautiful girlfriend. “You can relax now, Elizabeth.”
“That was intense,” she sighed as she turned her turquoise-blue gaze on me. “Are you sure it was a good idea to let him go?”
“I don’t think he’ll be back any time soon,” I said. “He knows he can’t take on all of us at once, let alone just you. We have some time to prepare before our next confrontation with him, and that’s good since I bet he’ll be prepared, too.”
“Um, so… can I take a nap now?” Norma fought off a yawn.
“I feel the same way, Norma,” I laughed.
“You know, it’s a shame,” Elizabeth said as she glanced at the door. “He could have been a really good ally.”
“He could have been,” I said, “but it’s his own fault that he isn’t. Even Beacon and Penumbra realized that the Shadow Knight’s ‘code’ is bullshit. Hell, he just lost his Silver Squire, and I bet he didn’t even really fire the kid. The Silver Squire probably just wised up and quit.”
“You’re probably right,” Elizabeth sighed.
“He’s in serious need of allies,” I said, “but he can’t pull the stick out of his ass long enough to see that what we’re doing is for the good of Grayville.”
“I guess this was the first and only alliance we’ll ever have with him,” Norma said. “But um, I’d say it was worth it?”
“It was definitely worth it,” I agreed. “We’ll have to see if Beacon and Penumbra return to the Shadow Knight’s side after seeing what we did, but I kind of doubt they will.”
“I guess he’s just another enemy now,” Elizabeth said. “He’s probably going to get in our way, especially if we go after the Maniac next.”
“We can start small before we go after the Maniac, anyway,” I said with a shrug. “But let’s not worry ourselves about that for now. We saved a lot of people, so we deserve a break.”
“I’m definitely taking a nap, then!” Norma yawned again and then stumbled toward her bedroom for some much-deserved rest.
“Me, too, Miles,” Elizabeth said with a wink. “Maybe I’ll see you up there.”
“You can count on it,” I smirked.
After the beautiful superheroine left, I turned my attention back to the screens in front of me. I woul
d join Elizabeth in our shared bedroom soon, but before I pleasured her, I wanted to make sure that the mansion was sufficiently locked down. I doubted the Shadow Knight would come after us again anytime soon, but I didn’t trust the Maniac or any of the other supervillains we might have pissed off.
“You should rest, Creator,” Aileen crooned.
“No rest for an evil genius,” I laughed.
“I will ensure that the mansion is well-protected,” her sultry voice whispered. “Relax, Creator. You deserve it.”
Aileen walked over to the couch and started to rub my shoulders with the massage programming I had installed on her, and I let myself relax against her nimble robotic fingers.
My AI system was right. Everything had gone exactly as I’d wanted, our plan had been executed flawlessly, and I had known all along that there would be no further alliances with the Shadow Knight. Grayville was one full prison lighter, and soon I knew I would be able to kill the worst supervillain of them all: the Maniac.
And although I didn’t want to tell Norma or Elizabeth just yet, I knew that eventually we were going to end up in a confrontation where we’d have to kill the Shadow Knight, too.
But I was already prepared for that.
The Shadow Knight, the Maniac, and all the rest of them would have to wait for another day. Right now, I had a beautiful superheroine who needed me to fuck her, and I wasn’t about to disappoint.
I left Aileen to double-down on the mansion’s security and headed upstairs to our shared bedroom. When I entered it, Elizabeth was nowhere to be seen, but I heard the shower running and I saw my girlfriend’s clothes piled on the floor, so I slipped out of my own clothes and went to join her in the shower. At first, I just stood by the bathroom door as I watched the beautiful black-haired woman in the shower, but as I looked at the water running down every inch of her creamy skin, I felt my cock already begin to stiffen with how much I wanted her.
I stepped into the shower silently behind her and slid my arms around her taut waist.
“You didn’t think you were gonna be able to shower without me, did you?” I smirked.
“I was hoping you would join me,” Elizabeth purred as she glanced over her shoulder at me. “I feel like it’s been a while.”