by Logan Jacobs
“When are we going to say enough is enough?” I asked. “Eventually, my new surveillance system is going to get good enough to alert us of an impending crime pretty much as soon as an individual decides to commit one. So, how are we going to use that? Are we going to ignore its potential? Are we going to allow this new tool to get strangled with bureaucratic red tape like every other crime-fighting asset that arises in Pinnacle City? Or are we going to use it to hunt down supervillains… and actually end them, once and for all?”
The crowd’s cheering rose to deafening levels. Optimo was glaring at me so hard that I was glad laser eyeballs weren’t among his particular powers.
“All I can do is hand you the tool, Pinnacle City,” I concluded. “The rest is up to you.”
I found Norma’s beaming face in the audience, smiled directly at her, and took a deep bow.
Then the world exploded before my eyes.
Miles Chapter Six
At least, that’s what it seemed like at first. I quickly realized that a bomb had just gone off in the middle of the country club’s main reception hall, amidst a huddled mass of Pinnacle City’s rich and famous. It wasn’t a typical bomb, either. It was some kind of sizzling ball of energy that gave off purple light and smelled like rotten bananas. But the effect was similar in that it reduced some people who were at the center of the blast radius to red mist and exploded others into dismembered body parts that flew across the hall like candy from a macabre pinata.
People who weren’t simply too petrified to make any sound or movement were screaming at the top of their lungs and running every which way. They tripped over evening gowns, high heels, and each other. There was so much chaos that it was hard for me to figure out at first where the purple bomb had come from.
Then I spotted him crouched on the rafters, in a black and purple unitard with devil horns. Of course. The Purple Menace. I recognized him from past similar incidents in the media and let out a sigh of frustration.
To their credit, the superheroes kicked into action, while the police who were present made themselves as useful as possible by attempting to shepherd the civilians toward the exits.
There were six superheroes in attendance that I had been able to identify, including Optimo and the Killer Kitten. One of them, Impervius, used his shield powers to project a bubble dome over the next group of people that the Purple Menace aimed at, and the violet energy blast burst on contact and streamed harmlessly through the air.
“You wanna play this game, huh?” Impervius yelled up at the Purple Menace. “You think I can’t guess where you’ll strike next? Well I can read your mind, bitch! So hit them with your best shot! I’ll always be way ahead of you!”
The Purple Menace shrugged his shoulders and obligingly dropped another bomb into the scattering crowd.
Impervius managed to project a protective shield in time and in approximately the correct location, but it was a tiny bit misaligned, or maybe not big enough, and a few people on the edge still got blasted.
“Why don’t you throw a bubble around him?” I screamed. “Throw a bubble around the Purple Menace so he can’t send out energy anywhere!”
I swear that Impervius turned at the sound of my voice and looked right at me, but then he immediately turned back and started taunting the Purple Menace in the same manner again as if he hadn’t heard anything I said.
By then there were other supervillains to worry about.
Everyone trying to flee through the west exit got repelled by supernaturally powerful winds that swept them off their feet and flung them through the air like rag dolls. Some people were getting clobbered by heavy objects like tables. Weapons were getting ripped out of cops’ hands, and I realized that this had to be the supervillainess who went by the name Gale Galore.
And over by the east exit, people were getting sliced up by red lasers a lot like the ones I’d used from my statues’ eyes, but I knew these probably weren’t powered by technology, they were probably getting shot from the single eye of the cyclops that had been dubbed the Evil Eye.
This wasn’t good, and I twisted my head around the hall so I could see exactly where the attackers were located. Superheroes and superheroines generally tended to fit a similar physical mold. They came in all ethnicities, but they all looked like they spent all their spare time in the gym, had strikingly symmetrical features, and million watt orthodontically perfected grins. Supervillains, on the other hand, came in all shapes and sizes, and deformities seemed to help rather than harm their careers, and they tended not to wear bright colorful costumes that screamed for attention.
So I couldn’t see them, so I ran for the east exit to try to help whoever I could. I had no idea where Norma was, but I didn’t want to think of her as dead, so I just told myself we would find each other in the crowd.
I knew that Gale Galore maintained a sort of wind tunnel around herself that sucked up bullets and other conventional missiles and prevented them from touching her, and that the Purple Menace absorbed kinetic energy so bullets just bounced harmlessly off his skin as if they’d been casually lobbed by hand instead of fired from a barrel. But as far as I knew, the Evil Eye didn’t have any such protection, so I figured he’d be the easiest for a non-super like me to deal with.
As I ran, I drew and cocked the pistol that I’d tucked into my waistband. Like I told Norma, I was always expecting trouble, tonight more than ever. I had been well aware that some people were disgruntled about the concept of the C.D.S., although I hadn’t expected the level of unspoken resentment that I observed from the superhero demographic. I also couldn’t say that I’d expected a terrorist attack by not one, not two, but at least three supervillains working together.
But that was the situation now, and I was going to have to make the best of it.
As I approached the east exit, I saw the Evil Eye. He was wearing a skin tight black suit, long black trench coat, and was taking cover behind the partially opened door of the exit as a cop shot at him. The sight was good, since it indicated that he was in fact vulnerable to gunfire like I suspected. He seemed able to sustain his laser for about a second at a time, and then it took him about five or six seconds to power it back up again. But during the intervals when it was active, he could slice right through multitudes of people and carve through wood, metal, or anything. He wasn’t very agile and seemed to have a somewhat stiff neck. If he’d had a super-swivelly neck, everyone in the room probably would have been dead within a minute, including the superheroes.
As soon as I got a clear line on the Evil Eye without a bunch of screaming people in the way, I started to fire alongside the cops. My shots were specially designed armor piercing rounds, so they went through the door like it was made of butter, but I couldn’t tell whether any of them hit him or not. I paused to reload, and Evil Eye poked his huge lumpy clay-looking head around the door again.
“Shit,” I hissed as I crouched beside an overturned table, but before the villain’s laser could activate, someone else hit him in the shoulder, and he toppled over with a scream.
I ran up and barged through the partially open door to find the giant cyclops lying on his back. He heard me coming and fired up his laser so that it streamed in a straight red line from his pupil up through the ceiling.
Then he started to carve crookedly through the ceiling as he pushed himself up to direct his lethal gaze at me.
I peppered his face with shots. It was, admittedly, a much larger target than an ordinary face, but several were a bull’s eye straight through his eyeball, and the armor piercing rounds spattered his skull like jelly.
“Nice work,” someone exclaimed as he ran up beside me.
I looked over and saw that it was Neville, the young cop I had met earlier along with his buddy.
“Was that first shot in his shoulder yours?” I asked him.
“Yup,” he said proudly.
“This was really mostly your kill then,” I said. “I’ll bet the Killer Kitten will be asking for your photo
now.”
I looked back toward the main hall area and saw that two beautiful women, one with long dark brown hair clad in a tight black leather outfit and matching cat ears and the other with long curly black hair in tight bright red bodysuit with matching thigh-high boots, fighting with a spider-body shaped supervillain I didn’t recognize. The Killer Kitten was pulling her usual acrobatic stunts and wielding the whip that she favored. The other superhero in red didn’t seem to have any weapon in hand at all, she was landing a flurry of blows with her fists, elbows, knees, and feet. As I watched, she punched one of the giant spider’s limbs so hard that it cracked at the joint and bent backwards, and then Killer Kitten wall-ran up a marble column, flipped head over ass, landed on top of the spider-villain's head, and then wrapped her long elegant legs around its thorax while she tried to use her whip like some sort of horse riding rein.
“I’m going to go back up them up,” Neville said as he moved away from the exit corridor where Evil Eye’s body was.
“Okay, I’m going to evacuate as many people as I can from this exit,” I said. “Where the hell are Optimo and the rest?”
“Impervius got pinned down by the Purple Menace I think, Optimo is up on the roof flying around with some other supervillain,” Neville called back to me as he ran off.
“I see,” I said as the spider-creature flung Killer Kitten free. The gorgeous woman in black leather spun through the air like a tossed coin, but then she landed with her legs in the splits, flipper her feet around like a break dancer, and then began to cartwheel back toward her opponent while her red-clad partner continued to smash her fists into him.
Just then, I heard a tremendous thud from the roof. Something heavy had struck near the crack that the Evil Eye carved in the ceiling a few moments ago and plaster rained down.
Ominous creaking commenced.
“Fuck!” I yelled. “The roof is collapsing!”
“Ooooohhhh nooo it’s noooot!” someone bellowed in an inappropriately singsong tone of voice, and the superhero who called himself Atlas came waltzing over in the caveman like leopard skin skirt that he preferred to wear. There was intense online debate over whether the trademark garment should really be defined as a kilt or as a skirt, but before he ran through the crowd that had gathered at the exit door, he paused and struck a pose with his muscular biceps flexed over his head. “Not if IIIIII have aaaaanything to do with it!”
“The roof is collapsing! Right there! See that crack?” I pointed to get my point across, but then I noticed that a few citizens had stopped moving forward so that they could pull out their phones and take pictures of Atlas flexing and Killer Kitten and her red-suited friend fight the spider-villain.
Holy shit, were people really this stupid?
“Indeed I do see the crack, my friend!” Atlas reassured me in a friendly tone as he shifted to another muscle pose. Then after a few more camera flashes he started strolling over to where I was pointing.
A rafter fell, crushed two people, and screaming ensued as part of the exit corridor filled with dust.
“Not to worry, Atlaaaaaas is heeeere,” the leopard-skirt wearing man yelled as if he were announcing a fighter entering the ring. Then he climbed up onto the mountainous corpse of the Evil Eye, placed his hands on the two sagging sides of the crack, grunted and pushed the ceiling back into place. Then he continued to hold it there as his skin turned bright red with effort and a network of veins popped out across his insanely muscular frame.
“Okay, everyone get out now!” I yelled as I pointed down the hallway that Atlas was occupying. There was a set of doors at the end that led outdoors. “He can’t hold up the building forever!”
“Yes I fucking can!” Atlas yelled and turned redder than before. “Who are you calling a weakling, you puny mortal?”
“What?” I groaned.
“Of course I can hold up the building forever!” Atlas yelled. “There’s no rush! Take your time! Watch how long I can hold up this building! In fact, someone go pile more weight on the roof! This is too easy! Are you filming this? I need proof for my Supergram account!”
“Ignore the lunatic and fucking get out!” I yelled, and the mob of terrified people streamed past me and Atlas.
“Miles!” Norma yelled as she breathlessly rushed up to me. “What can I do to help?”
“Thank God you’re safe,” I said. “You should get outside too. This building could give at any moment, and we only have one Atlas to prop up the damaged ceiling, so if another structural weakness comes up-- ”
She shook her head. “I want to help.”
“Then help me guide everyone over here,” I said. “Gale Galore isn’t letting anyone leave through the other exit.”
And the other exit was the initially more popular choice, since people pretty quickly figured out that getting blown around a bit didn’t seem as bad as getting cut in half by a laser beam. No one was actually succeeding in getting through, but at least they could pick themselves back up and keep trying. So, I needed to spread the word that the Evil Eye was dead now and it was safe to pass.
Norma nodded and went off to try to guide the panicking and busily cellphone-filming crowd my way.
“Over here!” I tried to shout over the screaming confusion. “Over here! The exit is this way. The Evil Eye is down, it’s safe to pass. Hurry up!”
Some of the cops helped me, and we got most of the crowd out that way while the battle between the supervillains and superheroes continued to rage on, and I turned around to see if there was anything I could do to help.
Impervius was trapped inside one of his own shields like an idiot, and he couldn’t let the barrier down because the Purple Menace was standing on top of it unleashing a continuous barrage of purple energy blasts. Impervius pounded the inside of the shield furiously and yelled what I was willing to bet were obscenities at the supervillain keeping him pinned down, but I couldn’t read lips and the barrier was soundproof, so pretty much everyone at this point had started ignoring both combatants since they were no longer affecting anyone else.
The Killer Kitten and her friend had crippled all the giant spider supervillain’s legs, although they hadn’t killed it, so now it just laid there helplessly with eight broken or severed legs and gnashed its mandibles at any of the guests who got too close. Which you’d think would be none, considering that this was a giant mutant spider; pretty hard to miss and not the kind of creature you’d want to go up to and pet, but of course, some partygoers felt irresistibly compelled to snap photos of and with it. I saw two selfie-takers get eaten alive and felt no sympathy for them.
I could also still hear ceiling thuds from Optimo’s brutal battle on the roof with some unseen supervillain. The struggle made me pretty nervous considering the already weakened state of the roof, and now that there were significant numbers of gala guests who had made it outside, I could also hear a chorus of jubilant cheers and screams of panic in reaction to how the fight was going. From the sound of things, one would gain the upper hand, and then the other would turn the tables, and sometimes one would appear to be dead or unconscious, but then miraculously cough back to life.
“Get it over with, Optimo,” I groaned. “Don’t hold back. Don’t try to be merciful. Just fucking end him already.”
There were still a few battles going on in the main hall, and I noticed that the only superhero who wasn’t pausing to take pictures or do dramatic poses was the woman in the lipstick-red bodysuit. I hadn’t met her and hadn’t heard of her, so I guessed she must be a new recruit to The Wardens, but she impressed me by aggressively jumping into the fray and attacking a few of the new super villians that arrived. Her super power seemed to be strength, since the few villains I saw her battle went down with only a few punches from her gloved fists or kicks from her long toned legs. She was the one to take out Gale Galore finally and free up the west exit as well, but from my position shepherding people out the east exit, I couldn’t see how exactly she did it. I just heard the loud cheers
and saw the winds stop swirling through that section of the hall. After that, I caught glimpses of the bright red figure guiding the straggling remnants of the gala to safety on her side.
Finally Atlas yelled, “Can we get someone else over there to hold up the middle of the roof? I can feel from here that it’s about to give!”
“Norma!” I yelled.
“Yes, Miles?” She yelled as she sprinted toward me from the other exit.
“We are getting the fuck out of here.” I grabbed her hand and dragged her along with me past Atlas and the Evil Eye, down the hallway, and outside
Then the entire country club collapsed into rubble, and a small tornado of dust sprayed into the night sky.
Optimo was left standing atop the pile of rubble, miraculously unscathed, and he stared at the protruding foot of his buried opponent with what could only be described as childish rage. “Hey, I wasn’t done with him yet,” he snarled, but then he seemed to realize that some people were watching him, so he put on a wide smile and turned to them. “Er, I mean, did all the good guys get out okay?”
There was a movement in the rubble, and a huge chunk of concrete the size of a small car erupted out of the pile, sailed through the air, and squashed an elderly woman. Her friends started shrieking and wailing, but there was already so much shrieking and wailing going on that most of the crowd didn’t even notice.
Then Atlas shoved his hand into the air out of the hole that the car-sized piece of rubble left, and the big man started climbing up. The crowd let out a gasp of surprise, and then they started to cheer when the leopard skirt wearing superhero heaved himself heroically from the wreckage of the building.
I saw that the silver-haired master of ceremonies in his tux had survived, and he shakily stepped forward to a prominent place on the rubble where the whole crowd could see him.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he announced at the top of his lungs. “The Wardens have once again saved the day!”