“There might be enough iffy stuff to make them open a case file and assign an investigation team to it if, oh, I don’t know, the whole country wasn’t in the toilet.”
“Maybe we could talk to Blackstone? If I—”
“You sure you want to go down the DSA rabbit hole? And all Blackstone knows about me is I’m…”
“A supervillain?”
“Yeah, that.”
I put the bottle against my forehead for the chill, resisted the urge to scream in frustration. Come on, Hope. Think it through. “So you can’t hack the foundation’s cybersecurity. How about if we got you inside?”
“Find their server and gain physical access? Hells yeah, nothing could stop me, then—I could copy and ghost-drive his entire system. Easier if it’s a public system.”
“It’s not, and I know where it is. I’ve been there. Sort of.”
Shelly was nodding hard. “And that could be enough for you, and for us to get the DSA onto him here. It won’t matter if the source of the information is ‘tainted’ since it will come from private parties—an anonymous drop and what’s one more crime to Cypher?”
“Okay.” I was smiling, and pretty sure I looked a lot more like Jacky than myself doing it. “Because I really do know where The Ascendancy kept their secret server before they went public back home.” I took a deep breath; I couldn’t believe I was saying this. “But it’s not something that you and I can do alone. We’re going to need to put together a supervillain crew.”
Shelly’s eyes went wide, and a matching grin spread across her face while I tried not to think about all the ways this could go so very, very wrong.
And now I was a supervillain mastermind. It’s official, this reality completely and truly sucks.
That night I used Shelly’s bed, and with everything that should have haunted me, I dreamed of Kitsune.
It started in my bedroom at home, where I sat in my sleepshirt watching the latest Sentinels movie with Greymalkin in my lap. Except it wasn’t Greymalkin, it was a silver haired and seven tailed fox I was scratching behind the ears. No, it was Yoshi, lying with his head in my lap while I ran my fingers through his silvered hair.
He stretched and sighed. “Miss me?”
“Hmm?” I could hear footsteps on the stairs.
“Did you miss me?”
Mom knocked on the door. “Honey? Don’t you think it’s about time you introduced us to your fiancé? You’re marrying him in the morning.”
I stood in front of my bedroom mirror, admiring myself in my wedding dress. “You really shouldn’t be here. It’s bad luck.”
“Don’t worry,” Yoshi said behind me. “I’m not. I’ll bring the rings.”
I woke up with a yell. I wasn’t in my bedroom, I wasn’t wearing a wedding dress, and I was sitting up and floating a few inches off the bed.
“What?” Shelly asked from the floor beside the bed, where she’d gone into sleep mode. “Bad dream?” I just breathed until my racing heart settled down to not-panicking rate.
“Not…exactly?” flopping back on the bed, I pulled the pillow over my face and screamed into it.
I hadn’t had a regular Kitsune-dream since before Japan, but this hadn’t been one of those; no goddess hiding in a cherry tree was pulling us together so he could pass messages. No, this had just been my luridly dreaming brain, like the fevered stuff I’d dreamed about Atlas and later Seven. It was one of my crush-symptoms.
I remembered that Shell knew perfectly well what pillow-screaming meant from me when I felt her tug on the pillow. I didn’t let go.
“Okay, who is he?” She stretched out on the bed beside me.
“Nobody.”
“Liar. Pillow-screams are always about boys.”
“No they’re not.”
“Give it up.” And she tickled me. I shrieked and brought my arms down—then panicked but she moved fast enough that my hit only pushed her hands away instead of snapping them off.
“Don’t do that!” I gasped. “I could have—”
“Damaged some molyfiber muscles or joints, maybe. Doubt you could break my carbon-weave bones that easily and Vulcan would fix it. So, give. We don’t have to go save the world until later and— There’s your smile.” Bright green and not at all artificial looking eyes twinkled down at me. I groaned again but didn’t replace the pillow. Sighing, I sat up and told her all about Kitsune. She listened with surprisingly few Shelly-type interruptions.
“Geez, Hope,” she said when I was done. “You never do anything by half, do you?”
“It’s not my fault! Everything was fine until the fairy woods!” Elbows on my knees, I wrapped my arms around my head. “It was just an arrangement!”
She laughed, nudging me hard enough I nearly fell over. “An arrangement where he was stalking your dates? And rescued you from the king of the fairies? You suck at arranging things and you’ve got feeeelings for him. Or her. Whatever.”
She was right. I shuddered just remembering what it had been like. I’d opened my eyes in the woods, seen Yoshi wearing Puck’s face, and had to have him. Then. There. Under any conditions. Love, lust, just the memory of that hot, desperate need rushing in my veins made me warm again, but at least the intoxication was gone. The love-juice hadn’t just screwed with my affections, it had been a drug stealing my reason. When Titania had countered it, I’d practically felt it evaporate from my brain to leave every thought and action after opening my eyes feeling like a dream. Someone else’s dream. It hadn’t been me.
Head against Shelly’s shoulder, I groaned and pulled into a tighter ball.
Because it had been me. A little. I had thought about Kitsune before—especially after we’d wound up kinda-sorta engaged. But it had never been in that pulse pounding and laser-focused way that signaled a serious crush. Now… This can’t be happening.
“Hey.” Shell poked my knee. “Did I break you?”
“No.” Uncurling, I flopped on my back and sniffed, wiping my eyes. “But this is so wrong.” On top of literally everything, I was crushing on a foreign superspy. Or a supervillain. Which was worse?
“Hey, don’t— Do I need to stock up on double-fudge?”
“No. I need to shower.”
“Okay…” She stood up. “And put your wig on, we’re going to go recruiting. I’ll get breakfast.”
I smelled the bacon when I came out of the shower—Applewood-smoked bacon, she was getting the good stuff from somewhere. She’d gotten fancy cheese from somewhere, too, and she knew me—launching into an explanation that while a lot of things were still messed up, food production and distribution was back to more or less normal and nobody was starving. The way she rolled her eyes when she said it got a smile out of me, and the omelet really was amazing.
She had an omelet, too; Vulcan had given her great taste-buds, and she said she never wasted them.
We hashed out our initial plan over breakfast. I’d been on the other side of these things often enough working with Fisher and the CPD that I knew generally what we were going to need. The most important thing was a driver—if the caper got noisy then we needed a speedster, teleporter, or other breakthrough who could either extract us quickly or hide us from detection while we left the scene of the crime on our own steam.
The scene of the crime. Am I really doing this?
Shelly didn’t see, or ignored, my stuttering attention as I tried to buck myself up. Because I was doing this; to get the Ascendant I’d do a lot more and pay whatever penance I had to after. Father Nolan would tell me how wrong that was. I knew how wrong it was. This time I didn’t care enough to stop.
I tapped the table with my fork. “We need at least one more muscle. And someone who can drop normals without hurting them is really, really important.” The best of all possible outcomes was a job where we got in, did our thing, and got out completely undetected and unopposed. Yeah, like that was going to happen.
She nodded seriously. “I can handle the unpowered opposition with my anti-rio
t stuff—I’ve got a suit for times I don’t want to look like Galatea, completely expendable and untraceable. For the rest, I know where to find them. Speaking of…”
A chime at the door turned up a package that Shelly presented to me with a “Ta-dah!” Opening it I found boots, tight black leather motorcycle pants, a black cotton shirt, a green and black motorcycle jacket with an anarchy symbol stitched into the back, several pairs of panties and sports bras, and the coolest pair of dark shades I’d ever seen, black with green details.
“I know, right?” Shelly was grinning ear to ear. She’d found me a villain-rap outfit; with it and the wig I’d be ready to go on stage. “Get dressed!”
Of course she had a suit too (black with red details, same symbol), and helmets for both of us. And a black and silver street bike with room for two in parking storage. Shelly’s supervillain-recruitment hunt wasn’t in Westcamp, but I hadn’t expected it to be; Shelly wasn’t going to do anything that might jam Vulcan up, and I respected that even if this reality’s Vulcan was sounding a little monomaniacal. Or more monomaniacal.
Did this Vulcan at least get out more? Maybe Shelly chauffeured him on her bike? Was this just a bike? Maybe it transformed into a backup for Shell? We passed through another Army checkpoint on our way to Southcamp.
“We’re going to a den of vice and supervillainy,” Shelly spoke in my head after the checkpoint. “It’s called Dante's, used to be a sports bar. Still is, just a different clientele.”
“Super!” I yelled over the wind. Her low-slung bike had me leaning far forward to get my arms around her waist, putting my helmet by her shoulder. “So they’re going to think we’re a couple of style-villain wannabes?”
“Maybe, but Dante keeps the place peaceful—the state would love any reason to shut it down. And I’m pretty sure the DSA actually pushes local law enforcement to keep it open so they’ve got all the poison apples in one tub where the damage can be contained, you know what I mean?”
“So we’re going to a public supervillain hangout the DSA is probably watching, to find people to contract a crime with?”
She laughed happily. “Dante does a good job of making sure the law doesn’t bug the place or get any ears inside—I’m pretty sure he pays a psychic and a witch or two to boost his security. This will be fun! Awesome Girl and Power Chick, rocking it old school!”
Yeah, if old school is the dark mirror-world where the good guys are the bad guys. This was feeling more and more like a bad idea. Our Japan adventure had started out a lot the same—and ended with me in government custody and doomed to be exposed if the Japanese government hadn’t been desperate to catch bigger fish than a trio of ronin. The problem was, I couldn’t think of a better idea—at least not one that involved my leaving here without getting what I needed.
Shelly drove us through the kinds of half-abandoned neighborhoods I’d seen on my way to Westcamp, but these streets got worse the further south we went. At last she turned us off the street and into a fenced-in parking lot. The building it was attached to looked like the only open business on the block, and a man in a muscle-shirt accepted a twenty and gave Shelly a numbered red ticket before letting us past his little booth.
As she coasted us into a space I removed my helmet, careful of the wig. “Nice security for a villain hangout.”
“Shapeshifters.”
“What?”
“Auto theft ring out of Southcamp. Uses at least one shapeshifter, so we get tickets we need to show to leave with our bike. I’m fine with that—my bike can take care of itself, but we don’t want them to know that.”
The secure lot was half full, with lots of pieces of junk but also some very high-end cars and bikes. Shelly tucked the ticket away in her jacket. “Come on.”
“Great. Two girls who look like they can’t legally drink yet and blew out Daddy’s credit card. This can’t possibly go wrong.” But I was smiling.
The smile dropped off my face when we stepped inside; my tactical mind took one look at the threat environment and replaced it with my warface. I’d learned it from Jacky, a straight-lipped Don’t mess with me and I won’t mess you up. I wasn’t Jacky and on me it was less than intimidating unless I was in uniform, but it was the best I had.
The bar was divided into three parts; the bar itself, a table area with a big-screen TV, and a playing area with pool tables and dartboards. The interesting bit was someone had removed one wall of the playing area to widen it into a new room that was built along the lines of the inside of a bunker. I saw a weight machine built for pressing tons, and a firing range with steel targets at the end.
Because if you’re a Projector-Type, why play with darts?
Except for that, it pretty much looked like a working-class sports bar—or at least what they looked like in TV shows, since silver spoon girl that I was, I’d never actually seen the inside of one. It also smelled like I’d imagined one would, like stale beer and men who weren’t that concerned about hygiene, but a lot of that was just my super-duper sense of smell. It was the occupants, some of them fragrant, that had me ready for action; maybe one in four was an obviously transformed breakthrough of some kind, and half of them dressed in the street-villain version of biker gang wear.
And from the looks thrown our way, I was pretty sure that half the bar patrons were wolves checking out the two stupid lambs who had just wandered bleating into their dark little cave. Shelly started to head for the bar, but I grabbed her arm and took us to a tall club table by the wall. We drew attention away from the soccer game on the big-screen, but most of them kept it covert.
“What can I get you girls?” Our muscled server’s arm tat said Mother. Seriously?
“A bottle of Jack and two glasses!” Shell replied before I could open my mouth to order a beer. “What?” she asked at my look. I just nodded and our server carded us and left.
I watched her go. “Do you think Mother is her, or her mother?”
“Does it matter? I’m sure she loves her mom.”
Maybe, but I was willing to bet it was her “villain” name. Two closer patrons were transformed breakthroughs; one had little licks of flame crawling along his shoulders and through his hair, the other had sharp bone spurs sticking out of rhino-tough skin and a huge knit hat that covered his misshapen head. Both of them were obviously more than a little “happy” as they watched the game, but Mother didn’t act scared or even cautious of either of them. Was she just really used to the clientele? Or was she an Ajax-Type?
Maybe, and a criminal record or lack of interest in military service or moving really heavy stuff around all day would explain why she worked in a supervillain bar.
She came back with the bottle and glasses, set them on our table. “Now,” she said to us, “Before I open this bottle, you girls are going to have to show me that you can take care of yourselves. If you can’t, you’re gone.”
I kicked Shelly lightly before she could protest. “That’s fine. It’s nice to meet you. Shake?” I held out my hand and when she took it I squeezed carefully, feeling for the strength in her muscles and bones. Her eyes widened but she squeezed back. Feeling what I’d half-expected to find, I squeezed harder before letting go. Ajax-Type. At least C Class, maybe B.
I hadn’t gone for the crush, but she flexed her fingers anyway. “And her?”
“El could drink the whole bar dry, it wouldn’t do a thing.”
“Okay, then. Enjoy.” She opened the bottle and walked away, gathering empties as she headed back to the bar.
Smart—we had Rich Victim written all over us, and she wouldn’t want it to happen here. Or maybe she just doesn’t want anything bad to happen to us at all. I caught a few eyes turned our way and stopped watching Mother. A wiry guy with a scarred and pinched face looked away when I stared back at him, and I almost laughed when I realized I was getting protective of Shelly. It was too easy to forget she was remote-operating a prosthetic body.
Watching her out of the corner of my eye, I hid a smile with my fi
ngers; her eyes were darting around the bar, stopping on each patron. She was having an adventure, but it was business too. “Can you give me a virtual report?” I whispered.
“Oh! Yeah, easy.” Virtual tags began popping up in my vision as I sipped my drink. I’d been far too optimistic; close to half of the bar had criminal records, and most of the rest had Public Safety and Security files. Shell supplemented those with notes from the Future Files on the ones whose breakthroughs predated three years ago. She obviously also had some kind of underworld connections; a few listed “known jobs and reps.”
Honor among thieves, my tiny white butt. I wanted to arrest half of them. I had no problem with thieves except in general principle, but most of what I saw here went way beyond that into all sorts of anti-social behavior. How were we going to find someone competent, trustworthy, and not vile in this place?
“Supervillain” was a tag the press applied to any superhuman who used their powers in a public, colorful, and criminal or anti-social manner. Villain meant the same thing in the cape community, but we drew distinctions. There were “professional villains,” who used their gifts to get money or power. Professional villains ranged from street-villains who controlled their own gangs to underworld mercenaries, thieves, and other sorts. We’d find a bunch of them here, and they’d do just about anything for money. But could we trust them and control them? It wouldn’t be their normal heist-job, there’d be restrictive rules of engagement.
Then there were “cause villains,” like superhuman green activists. They came with every flavor of cause—political, national, racial, ethnic, or religious—and they ranged from principled vigilantes to bloody-handed terrorists. I’d be amazed if we found any here, and they’d be unlikely to be recruitable if they were—though some might do it for money to advance their cause and they might be more trustworthy than a lot of professionals.
Wearing the Cape 6: Team-Ups and Crossovers Page 20