Orange, flickering light presaged flames, hot and roaring, sheathing a high school boy in a red and black superhero costume as he walked calmly around the corner. Oh boy. Fire-based powers. This had gotten dangerous, fast.
“I don’t know if you keep up with the other team, but this young man’s called Ifrit. I think he’s Marvelous’s younger brother,” Miss A explained with a sadistic grin.
“She’s wrong about that,” Ifrit sighed. Apparently Marcia got on everyone’s nerves. “But she was right that we’d catch you here this weekend.” Fire powers, and the look he gave me was way more serious than Miss A’s.
“We’re barely a block from the school, and the ego that put on a show there just had to return to the scene of the crime. Oh, and have you met Gabriel?” Marcia got more venomous every second. Wait, didn’t I know that name, Gabriel?
White wings fluttered, six of them, as Gabriel landed. His white suit made him look like an inverse of Ray, except Ray didn’t have those six huge wings that could do way more than fly. This wasn’t fair. This wasn’t even close to fair. Gabriel was new to the superhero scene, but he certainly wasn’t a sidekick. Those wings were scary. I knew because—
“Gabriel! I read your blog! What are you doing here?!” Claire squealed. She was a high-speed, brown blur skating around from the opposite entrance to the parking lot. Of course, she’d been watching, and now she zoomed up to the white-winged young hero, grabbed both his hands, and they spun like dancers as he dragged her to a skidding stop.
He chuckled. I might have, too, despite the seriousness of the moment. “I’m doing my job. Fighting supervillains. Supervillains like you, young lady,” he answered her.
Claire gave him a knowing look, her head tilted to one side. “Kind of my point, isn’t it? How did Little Miss Sore Loser rope you into an obvious grudge match like this?”
Claire was obviously laying it on thick. I mean, she was wearing bear hoodie pajamas! Still, she had a point, and Marcia didn’t like that.
“Grudge match?” Marcia screeched. Ha! Claire had hit a nerve.
At that, Ray stepped forward and bowed floridly to Marcia, arm curving underneath his body and then lifting up and back. She spun around her baton, bared her teeth, and marched on him. He lunged for her, fist raised, and, exactly like Thursday night she twisted, but, this time, they both fell, then back-flipped to their feet like twins.
It was on. Gabriel’s wings extended, but Claire gave his hands a tug. “Seriously, Gabriel, look at that. Will you be proud of yourself when you post online that you took part in this? Right after the video of you talking down Lucyfar?”
“You really read my blog?” Gabriel asked her, the dumbfounded tone telling me she’d scored a point. I turned my head. I couldn’t tell who was scoring points between Ray and Miss A. As I watched, she jabbed the end of her baton at his throat. He grabbed it, and she swung the baton and her whole body, tossing him past her into the wall. Except he climbed back to his feet easily and she crouched, wheezing. He’d hit her, and I’d missed it.
“Does the name E-Claire ring a bell?” Claire asked Gabriel as Ray grabbed for Miss A, got his arm twisted into a painfully awkward looking angle, then yanked her off her feet and threw her over the next car. Had he been trapping her with his strength, or had he barely escaped a trap himself?
“Yes. Yes, it does. So that’s your online and your supervillain handle?” Gabriel asked her as fire roared up all around me.
Oops. I heard Ifrit’s voice outside the not quite opaque flames. “I don’t know what’s going on, but we can figure it out after you three are under control.” He held both hands out toward me, controlling the cage of snapping flame I’d been trapped in. Let myself be trapped in.
I’d just made a bigger fool of myself than anyone else here. Ifrit had been right. Business first. The walls might not be physical, but walking through them would put me in the hospital. I could feel the flames, muted by my jumpsuit. I clenched my fists.
“E-Claire is right, Ifrit. Miss A’s lost a screw. We shouldn’t get involved in this. We don’t know what’s really going on,” Gabriel chided him.
“Seeing supervillains in costume is usually good enough,” Ifrit answered.
I heard Claire’s voice next. “Come on. I know you can’t trust me, but look at Miss A and tell me this is on the level.” Everyone was a vague shape through flickering orange and yellow to me, but the fast moving shadows would be Ray and Marcia, and I could hear Marcia’s grunts and snarls of anger with no difficulty.
“If we don’t win, it won’t matter who we decide is right,” Ifrit shot back.
Okay, I’d let him argue enough. I took two quick steps forward, eyes and mouth shut, and tried not to yell at the feeling like I’d stepped into an oven, then out of an oven. I felt like I’d gotten a sunburn on my face and wrists, but my burn resistant jumpsuit had done its job. I lifted my hands and opened them so that the charge I’d built up arced out and grounded itself in Ifrit before I announced, “I agree.”
The lightning wouldn’t hurt, but surprise made him jump a step back, and when his first foot touched the asphalt I had him. I raised my air cannon and fired a couple of merely stunning shots. The cage next to me disappeared, and instead he swung his hands up and spun arcs of fire that exploded every time one of my blasts hit.
I deliberately and visibly thumbed the levers of my cannon higher. “Nice shields. I guess I can turn up the juice without worrying I’ll kill you.”
His eyes narrowed. He looked and sounded very serious. “Nice fireproof suit. Looks like I can do the same.”
I saw the flicker around his hands and threw myself down. I fired a shot somewhere in there, but it didn’t have a prayer of hitting. My jumpsuit was really not sufficiently padded, and I got a jolt of pain when my shoulder hit the asphalt. The flame that swept past me hurt even though it didn’t touch me. I needed to get behind a car, but I wouldn’t have the time. I swung up my cannon instead.
Miss A and Ray spun past Ifrit in their latest grapple, and Ray’s elbow shot out and hit the back of Ifrit’s head.
The little devil. “Reviled!” I yelled, hoping Ray would know who I meant. He did. He dropped and pushed Miss A up and into the open, and instead of blasting Ifrit I blew Miss A off her feet.
She hit hard, but she got her feet under her and tried to flip up. Ray hooked his foot behind hers, and she smacked onto her back again. Ifrit was more of a threat. Flames gusted up around him, but the blow to the head left him too muddled. I had a half-second to point my cannon at his face.
I didn’t have time to fire, because a huge, white wing extended and wrapped itself around Ifrit like a blanket. Another scooped up Miss A.
“Just give up.” Gabriel scolded both of them. “You lost, and the whole fight was stupid from the start. I can’t believe the adult here is the supervillainess in pajamas.”
“So that’s it? The fight’s over, and you’re not getting involved?” I asked, more sharply than I wanted. I couldn’t take anything for granted, and if Claire couldn’t hold him I’d need the first shot.
“I don’t like grudge matches, and I won’t let myself be dragged into one. The only person I saw committing a real crime is the chump on the ground. He’s had his beating.” One of his free wings gestured behind me. Oh, yeah. Sharky.
“Leave him. I’m hoping he’ll figure out he’s not cut out for this.” That sounded more like a demand than a request. I lowered my cannon arm, so at least it didn’t sound like a threat.
He didn’t like it. He watched me. He had the greenest eyes. It seemed odd to notice right now, but with his white hair and white clothes and white wings, they stood out. He chewed over his words, then finally told me, “It’s a cliché, but… when next we meet, we meet as enemies. I’m hoping that won’t happen.”
From inside Gabriel’s wing, Marcia growled. “It’ll happen. I’ve met supervillains like her. She’ll turn up like a bad penny.”
If I’d spent the rest of the day te
lling her I wasn’t a supervillain, she wouldn’t have listened. I might as well get in a dig back. “Aren’t sour grapes delicious? E-Claire. Reviled. Let’s get out of here.”
I slapped the control on my chest, and a bike made of blue light spat out in front of me. I climbed on, grabbed the handlebars, and pushed with one foot. The bike and I leapt forward, curling smoothly around the edge of the building and down the street. Claire caught up with me before I hit the next intersection, feet pumping like a speed skater. Ray just ran, keeping up like we were both dawdling.
“That was so cool! I met Gabriel, and I got to cloud his mind, and Ray, by the end there you were mopping the floor with Miss A!” Claire yelled.
“Once I learned her tricks, she had nothing. It was great!” Ray crowed back.
I corrected them as sternly as I could manage. “Okay, it was cool, but it was not great. I was as clumsy as a penguin out there. I need better defensive gear, and they still think we’re supervillains.”
“At least I’ve got a great supervillain name. ‘Reviled’. I love it. Thanks!” Ray laughed.
Marcia’s last words came back to me. “I’m glad you’re happy, but I think I just got stuck with the dumbest supervillain name ever. Worse than Sharky.”
jingled the bracelets in my pockets as I walked up the street toward my house. I’d stowed everything else away. A bike of light made it pretty easy to visit the lair and drop off my supervillain gear. I really had to get that redefined as “superhero” gear!
I’d kept the bracelets. They didn’t look like anything much, and, even if Ray didn’t want to figure out how they worked, I did.
Anyway, I needed more toys. Way more toys. I’d been a useless lump back there—although I had to admit, Ray and me taking out each other’s opponents had been pretty cool!
I wandered up the driveway and stepped up to the side door and heard my parents’ voices in the kitchen.
“We have two video samples now. I can work out their height and approximate weight. There’s an eighty-five percent chance at least one of them is the child of a known superhuman. Someone on the team has technology powers, most likely the girl who keeps her face hidden. I’ll get my figures. At least seventy percent of tech supervillains use their own equipment. I have the exact number. Brian, I can identify these children!” That was my Mom. Her voice came fast and clipped, but kept derailing into little spikes of emotion. She was wobbling between being my mother and The Audit, and it made chills creep down my spine.
“Let it go, Beebee,” I heard Dad insist. His voice was calm, at least, but so serious. I was in so much trouble.
“It’s not the eighties anymore. It’s not even the nineties. This won’t take me a week. All the information I need is online, or our friends still working have it. I could have The Inscrutable Machine’s secret identities in an hour,” Mom begged him. That’s what she sounded like. She was begging him to let her catch us. She could. If she said an hour, I’d set my watch.
I had an hour to figure out how to get out of this mess.
“Absolutely not. This is not going to get personal.” My knees wobbled, I relaxed so much. Dad sounded firm, and my Mom was a wreck. He was going to win this argument. I really hoped he was going to win this argument.
“They’re just kids, Brian. We’re not stalking real supervillains back to their homes,” she argued with the desperate tone of someone losing a fight.
Dad’s voice stayed level. “No, we’d be stripping a supervillain’s children of their secret identity and stalking them back to their homes. Most likely three supervillains. This will get way beyond personal; the whole supervillain community will explode. How would you react if a villain tracked down Penny’s identity?”
“Everyone already knows Penny’s identity.” Mom voice sounded hoarse. Was she crying? “The Machine just attacked and defeated three superheroes’ children—”
“Two superheroes’ children. Gabriel didn’t attack them, so they didn’t attack him,” Dad corrected her.
“And Gabriel’s behavior makes sense to you? The difference from normal was too subtle for mind control, but it was there. Probably a chemical agent the girl in the bear suit delivered,” my mother babbled, slipping back into The Audit’s rapid speech.
A little louder, Dad warned, “Beebee—”
“It just happened!” Mom shouted suddenly. “Penny is out there right now in the same part of town they’re hunting, and she’s got a giant target painted on her because we didn’t want to keep who we were a secret!”
Everything got real quiet for a few seconds. I could hear my heart and my breathing, and the traffic a block away, but nothing from inside. Finally my Dad said in a really low voice, “Penny is in no danger unless we put her in danger by making this personal. These kids aren’t Spider or Winnow. They’re joyriders with super powers. What percentage of the community, the adult community, is just in it for the brawl? On both sides?”
Mom didn’t answer. When that became clear, Dad kept talking. “I don’t like that middle-schoolers are getting into the business either, but this will sort itself out. They’ll be defeated, or they’ll get scared or bored and give up, or, most likely, they’ll see what supervillains are really like and switch sides.”
That was exactly what I wanted to do. It was just easier said than done! I didn’t hear a response from Mom. Well, I heard a sigh, but that was it.
I was out of the woods again. News had gotten out about the fight already, but my folks just didn’t want to put two and two together.
Still, not a great time to go home. I wanted to experiment with these bracelets, and, especially with my Mom keyed up, “‘at home was not a great place to do that. Being spotted by random strangers would be way safer. I didn’t know which was more common in LA, goofy performance artist stunts or superheroes showing off with their powers. Being out in public suddenly sounded way, way safer than being at home. Maybe I could walk down to Griffith Park.
Walk down there? Yeah, right. Bike, maybe. Or maybe these bracelets. I’d made them for transportation.
No time like the present. I pulled all six out of my pockets and slipped three up onto each forearm.
They did nothing. They might not even work for me. That super-powered thing in the back of my head had Ray’s powers in mind when it built this.
No, they had to do something. I walked down the block, trying to figure out how to activate the bands. No obvious controls. Pads on the inner surfaces. Maybe it was in how I moved my arms? I just wanted to teleport to the end of the block.
My next step took me to the end of the block. My knees about gave out underneath me, and I looked back over my shoulder. Had I traveled a hundred yards in one step? How had I activated the bracelets? I’d taken a step, and here I was, as tired as if I’d run the whole distance. My heart pounded, not from fear but effort. I took a few deep breaths as an alternative to sitting down.
Was every teleport going to knock the wind out of me like this? How did I activate the rings, anyway? Maybe I’d try something easier. I’d walk down to the next mailbox and pay very careful attention to what I was doing until it activated and see if—
The first step. The very first step, and I ended up leaning against the mailbox I’d aimed at. I’d held my arms out a little, yeah, but not in the same position as when I’d teleported the first time. Man, I felt tired, but that was still mostly from the first jump. I’d felt this one, but not too bad. So distance made a difference. And were these things thought activated? Let’s say I thought about moving into that square of sidewalk two cracks down.
Nada. But if I took a step, everything jumped and my foot came down in that spot. I’d made high-tech seven-league boots. No wonder I’d made them for Ray, if the wearer’s body had to power them. With his slimly muscled, superhuman physique, he wouldn’t even notice the exertion. Kind of weird to think of Ray as being muscular, but I guess super powers have fringe benefits.
It really felt like I’d run these three or four pa
ces. Maybe I had, and what the bracelets did was mess with time? Easiest way to test this was to try and teleport somewhere I couldn’t walk or run. Let’s see. Inside that SUV in the driveway next to me.
I took a step, and that’s all that happened. I took a step. Maybe the problem was I still didn’t understand the controls? Trial Number Two. The top of that house. I took a step… and lost my balance and sat down on my butt hard on the rough shingles. I wasn’t in shape for this. While I caught my breath, I looked out over the rooftop at the street. There was the SUV I hadn’t been able to get into, and the mailbox I’d been standing next to a moment ago. A tree blocked the street lights. Probably somebody saw me up here, but nobody seemed to care.
I might love these bracelets more than anything I’d made since The Machine. Plus, they blended in with the segmented hunk of metal on my wrist. It’d be nice if he was a little less recognizable.
My phone beeped. I wasn’t going anywhere for a second, so I pulled it out and flipped it open.
I’d gotten a text message from Claire. “You won’t believe the invitation we just got. Meet me at the Red Line down by the library ASAP.”
I sent back “That’s downtown! Now is not a good time to ask my folks for a ride!”
A few seconds later, my phone beeped again. “Don’t tell me the mad genius girl can’t find a way to get to a Red Line station.”
She had a point. There was a station, like, a mile away tops. I had a bicycle. And teleport bands.
I wanted to ask Claire a million questions, but one question was way more important. Would the bands and the bike work together?
I typed in “You win this round, E-Claire.”
If my parents were freaking out about this Inscrutable Machine thing, would they start setting times I had to be home? This situation was awkward enough as it was. That was the kind of nervous thought that plagued me as I wheeled my bike out from beside the house.
Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm a Supervillain Page 14