Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm a Supervillain

by Richard Roberts

  Levers and gears twisted in new directions. Bits withdrew. The centipede shape of The Machine crawled out of the mass and up my arm. I sagged back again, cradling it in relief. Maybe he wasn’t alive like me, but he was alive and he was mine.

  On the other side of the tower, rolls of sod fell away, and Ray helped a very dirty Claire to her feet. A pang of guilt hit me for my priorities, but everyone looked okay, although they leaned against each other as they limped over to me.

  Ray sat down on one of the now-motionless mini-Machines. Claire leaned against the remaining shell of the tower.

  “Losing is no fun,” she informed us. It wasn’t really a joke.

  I ran my hand over The Machine, making sure it looked and felt completely intact. “We didn’t lose.”

  Ray grunted. “I got my butt handed to me. We weren’t ready. Not for a professional with that kind of power.”

  “We didn’t lose,” I repeated. “She won the fight, but she left us with the prize.”

  They stared at me hazily. Ray got it first and turned to look at the tower. I tossed The Machine back into its guts and told it, “We’re done here. Gather the mini-Machines and take all the supplies you gathered back to the lab separately. Recycle all the mechanisms inside the tower, but leave the shell intact.” Clockwork moved again. The Machine burrowed into the mass.

  “Can you two get home safely?” I asked Claire and Ray.

  “Sure. I’m not hurt. Just dirty and sore,” Claire promised.

  Ray stood up slowly. He paused to think before answering. “I don’t think I have a concussion. I’ll take it easy on the way back, just to be sure.”

  “Good. We’re not going to be outpowered again.” I didn’t mean to snap, but I must have sounded like it. Turning, I teleported down to the next terrace, then the next, one by one to the ground and then out to the sidewalk. It left my body screaming from the ache, but I cared more about the bilious resentment burning in my guts. That was what made my hand shake as I summoned up my light bike. Throwing myself into the seat, I pumped the pedal and zipped on down the freeway.

  I wasn’t in police custody right now because of the penny. I was sure of that. I didn’t know what it did, but the fight changed the moment I stuck it to her.

  That wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough. We needed more weapons, better tricks, more force and different ways to attack. Claudia had been good, but we’d been smarter, better organized. There just hadn’t been anything we could do with that advantage. Now that our overconfidence had been bruised, we’d be faster to run away when out of our league, but what we really needed was to make sure we were never out of our league ever again.

  That was my job. Ray and Claire’s powers were incredible, but I was the mad scientist and I gave us the edge. I knew the first thing I wanted to build. It wouldn’t have helped against Claudia, but we’d have bullets fired at us a hundred times as often as we’d face anyone with that level of power. I knew what to do about that. I could finally focus on the picture in my head. It wasn’t the same as I remembered. It had grown, become more complicated. Wildly complicated.

  The headache hit, pain spiking up from the back of my head worse than ever before. The light bike knew how to avoid obstacles. I bowed my head forward and closed my eyes, letting the pain pass.

  I opened my eyes to see The Machine spit a sphere of quartz the size of a tennis ball onto the work bench in front of me. The bench? I looked around. I was in my lab. I’d blacked out again. Worse than ever before. My head felt fine now, at least. The picture had disappeared because whatever it was, I’d made it.

  New lesson, Penny. My power really, really did not like being frustrated. Pushing this inspiration into the background over and over had forced it to build until it took me over. And now I had this thing, this ball of crystal.

  My new weapon was certainly pretty. Cloudy pink painted the interior of the sphere, swirling around delicate traceries of gold. Gold? I looked around. Blocks of raw materials lay all over the place, including the bar of gold. As I watched, a mini-Machine crawled through the air vent and dumped a cube of gooey fat on the floor. Ew. I’d recycled some raw materials I didn’t want.

  Forget my surroundings. What had I made? Ceramic chips lay scattered around the table, curved in complicated ways. What did they do? I couldn’t remember the picture, but I’d been left with the impression they didn’t do anything. They were just decoration for the sphere that lit up faintly as I watched.

  The glow came from deep within, subtle, really bringing out the pink color. I picked up the sphere, placed it in the middle of the chips, and tapped the crystal surface. Slowly, the ball levitated up off the surface of the table. Bits of ceramic slid across the surface, sucked toward the sphere until they darted up and took their places floating around the ball. Mostly beneath the ball. None of the ceramic tips touched the sphere or each other, but the end result looked like a very artsy foot tall pixie. Those six triangular shapes were wings, for example.

  Yes, three of the longer chips lifted as the fairy extended her arm. She drifted over and touched her little hand to the top of The Machine. Then she turned, and I saw for the first time the swirling, black smudge like a pupil where the ball focused. Hovering up to my face, she touched that smooth, tiny hand to my forehead.

  I’d created life again. Yes, I’d gotten my toy to stop bullets, but she came with a personality. Oh, boy. The Machine just sat there, but as I straightened up this creation watched me, clearly alive enough to pay attention.

  I lifted my own hand and touched a fingertip to her outstretched hand. “I’ll call you Vera,” I told her.

  The sphere turned, looked down at my finger, looked up at my face, and Vera answered with a noise like a faintly chiming, silver bell.

  got home around 12:30 a.m. I had to take my regular bike, since the light bike is attached to my supervillain jumpsuit and I sure wasn’t taking that home. I couldn’t even use my teleport rings—I skipped one intersection and nearly fell off my bicycle. Too tired.

  No car in the driveway, and the only lights in the house were the ones I’d left. My parents hadn’t gotten home yet. I stumbled into the house and fell into bed. Discomfort made me undress, and a faint ache in my heart made me scoop Vera out of my belt pouch. Apparently, my power could sometimes sacrifice enough dignity to make something simple and practical, because I’d been wearing this pouch when I finished Vera and I certainly hadn’t when I started.

  I’d put Vera to sleep before I left the lair. Now she was only a pink crystal ball with a white ceramic case. After I unwrapped The Machine from my wrist, I put my arms around them both, curled up tightly in my bed, and fell asleep.

  I’m usually eager to get up and about, but, when I woke up the next morning, I just lay there for a while. I didn’t even try to go back to sleep. I propped up my pillows against the head of the bed, stared at the daylight outside my bedroom curtains, and petted The Machine with one hand while I rolled Vera around in the other.

  What had I made, anyway? As a practical question, I needed to know what she could do. I was not going to lose again, so I needed to know what tools I had at my disposal.

  There was another side to that question. A more important side, as reluctant as I was to admit it. What did she want to do?

  I put Vera down in my lap and tapped her. “Wake up.” Her shell cracked, sliding off into its individual pieces only to be scooped up as she rose into the air. Fairy-shaped again, her glowing, pink head turned until the black pupil faced me.

  And that was it. So much for what she wanted. Maybe I’d misread her behavior last night?

  Naturally, the moment I thought that, she turned and floated away from me. She hovered over my computer, which beeped and hummed as it abruptly switched on. Okay, that was one thing Vera could do.

  She didn’t follow up. Instead, she turned and drifted over to my statue of The Apparition. Circling it slowly, her eye darted up and down the illusionary figure in the mirrored case. A detached hand reach
ed out and tapped the case, then tapped again.

  I slid out of bed and wandered over as Vera continued to stare. The Apparition floated inside that jar, or at least a convincing duplicate. Transparent, gray, a sad girl in a loose dress. Perhaps a hospital gown? Did she die on-site from what Mourning Dove did to her, or did her life bleed away as doctors struggled to even find a wound?

  “Yeah, there’s something about her, isn’t there?” Vera didn’t even turn to look at me. She was hypnotized. I gave her another tap. “Sleep.”

  She did, dropping slowly down onto my desk as the ceramic parts closed up into a shell. She was easy to turn on and off, at least.

  I dropped her on my bed, fastened The Machine back onto my wrist, and went to take my shower and get dressed. It was only when Dad’s gizmo was braiding my hair out of my way that I put those thoughts together. I’d showered wearing The Machine. Had I been doing that for days now?

  I stepped out to meet my parents. Dad was in his office. A timer dinged, and Mom slid some eggs and bacon and toast onto the table, but I walked in to see what Dad was doing first.

  His office computer was covered in photos and diagrams of the tower I’d left in the landfill. Of course.

  Might as well find out. “What’s that?” I asked him.

  “I’m not sure. Passersby reported lights in the Puente Hills Landfill last night. Police were worried it might be dangerous, but Echo sent me every scan and measurement he could think of, and as far as I can tell it’s exactly what it looks like—a big patchwork tube with lights stuck on.” He clicked between a few windows to show me the empty interior and the bands of different materials.

  From the kitchen Mom called out, “The tower is a distraction, made out of refuse from the dig. The tunnels are the important clue. Someone with access to nonstandard technology went searching through that landfill. They knew something was there, and we may never find out what it was because they took it and got out.”

  I wandered back into the kitchen, sat down at the table, and dug into my breakfast as Dad shouted back, “So you think it’s another hit by The Inscrutable Machine.”

  Mom set a glass of milk in front of me and walked over to the doorway of Dad’s office so she wouldn’t have to shout quite so loud. “It fits their current MO. They like attention, and it’s only bad luck no superhero saw the tower. They’ve already gathered one artifact no one else knew existed. They were seen in the area, as were robots like the ones at the monster attack. However, the tower doesn’t match the technology they’ve shown off already. It’s too crude.”

  Well, yeah. The Machine built it, not me. He wasn’t exactly a genius, he just made a tube out of garbage like I told him to.

  “It doesn’t match anything I’m aware of,” Dad replied. “A stiff wind and the tube will collapse under its own weight, yet it’s built out of seamlessly refined materials from the dump.”

  Mom disappeared into Dad’s office, but I could still hear her. “I’m not actually sure The Inscrutable Machine were directly involved here. The odds lean to their being used as a cover by whoever sent them after the first artifact.”

  “But you’re certain the crimes are connected,” Dad said.

  “Enough that I would act on that hypothesis if I were professionally involved. It would be difficult. Without knowing what was found at this dig site, we can’t guess what they’re going to be used for.”

  I got up, put my dirty dishes in the sink, and circled back to my room to pick up my new belt pouch and scoop Vera and the teleport rings into it. “I’m going out!” I yelled as I headed for the door.

  Mom stepped out of Dad’s office right in my way. She sounded friendly enough as she asked, “Going to meet Claire and Ray again?”

  I shook my head as I swerved around her and opened up the door. “Going to the clubhouse. I’m so close. I know I can get another spark. Anyway, I think Claire and Ray will be off together somewhere.” I was surprised by my own vehemence. It was fully fledged supervillainy that I felt I almost had in my grasp, but the frustration felt the same.

  Mom brushed her hand over my head, fingers toying through my bangs. I wasn’t looking at her, but I could feel the cheerful affection as she told me, “I learned this as a superhero, Penny, but it proved just as true in my personal life. The person who cares enough to work for what they want, who both thinks and acts and doesn’t hesitate? She’s the one who wins.”

  I nodded. “Yeah.” Good advice. Stepping out and closing the door behind me, I circled around the house to get my bicycle. Mom was absolutely right. I wasn’t going to stumble into trouble again. I would do this right.

  First I needed to prepare, so I got on my bike and headed down to my lab.

  What did I need? I pedaled industriously down Los Feliz and tried to figure it out. I’d built my most important group defense, and I had a personal defense in the rings, but I needed more. A surprise defense, maybe. Something for emergencies. I did have okay defenses. I was out of weapons. We all needed weapons. Claire’s sticky gloves were useful, but not enough against professionals. What would we do if we ran up against a heavy hitter like Bull or Mech? We needed the option of more raw physical force than we had. Simple impacts wouldn’t do it. We needed different kinds of attacks. Shock-based attacks against the armored, heat attacks against unliving targets, something to remove walls that might be armored themselves, area effect attacks, distractions, and especially nonlethal attacks to take fragile human enemies out of the fight.

  I was never going to remember all that. It wouldn’t matter. I’d make everything I could think of, then figure out what I was still missing.

  I passed by the cool side entrance, the one that looked like a manhole cover. My bike wouldn’t really fit. So I took the elevator down to the lab, ditched my bike in a side room, and pulled on my jumpsuit as fast as I could. I needed to get to work. Which meant first I had to think, so I dumped Vera and The Machine on my bench, activated them both, and asked the obvious question.

  What first? Start with the most glaring lack. I’d lost my air conditioner cannon. I needed a basic, obvious weapon to replace it. A candy chainsaw would be cool, but useless. There was no way easily breakable little me was relying on close-in attacks. Still, I liked the candy theme. It would be great to tie everything together.

  I could see possibilities with candy. I’d brought back a lot of sugar. Of course, not all the parts would be candy. I pointed at a block of red plastic and ordered, “Vera, cut me off this thick a slice of that plastic.”

  I pinched my fingers to show how thick I wanted it, and Vera flew over to the slab. Awesome. She’d understood. I pulled levers on the smelter, got it fashioning some curved glass for me, then took the plastic from Vera and used The Machine to cut it more precisely.

  Eventually, Ray’s hand settled on my shoulder, shocking me out of my building trance. “I think you’ve built enough,” he said quietly.

  I turned around and leaned against the metal folding bench, taking a few deep breaths. Tired, but not too bad. I hadn’t entirely blacked out either. I could sorta remember all the work I’d done, just… “You’re right. I got a little carried away.” Tidy the mad scientist wasn’t. My new toys were scattered across the floor around me.

  “We could tell. By the maniacal laughter,” Claire informed me. She was standing halfway across the room in civvies, arms folded. Her faint smile seemed torn about whether or not she’d been joking.

  I just had to grin. I pointed at the gloves I’d left hanging from a hook on the wall. Vera zoomed over, picked them up, and brought them back to me. They were gorgeous, black and satiny with thin, oval amber crystals set into the palms. They were too big for my hands, of course. I tossed them over to Ray. “Try those out and tell me you don’t feel like laughing.”

  Ray’s eyes lit up with fascination, slipping on the gloves and turning them over several times to study from all angles. “How do they work?”

  “Click the gems together,” I answered.

&nb
sp; He did. Claire giggled a bit, which meant she noticed the different way he moved afterward. “Interesting. They’re dragging at my hands. Drawing power for something?” Ray asked. He swung his hands up and down, putting a little more effort into it. I couldn’t tell the gloves were impeding him anymore, which was good. I didn’t actually want to slow him down.

  “Click them again, pull apart slowly, and push,” I ordered.

  He gently smacked his palms together again. When he pulled them apart, purple beams arced and twisted between the two gems, and, in two seconds, they’d formed a glowing ball suspended between his palms. Leaning forward, he angled his hands out and gave the ball a shove. That sent it rocketing away from him… straight at Vera.

  Vera moved fast, her own ceramic hands coming together just like Ray’s. A pink burst of light hit the energy ball, and a hot wind blasted across us as the two attacks detonated each other.

  I decided to pretend I knew that could happen. “This is Vera. She’s mainly a defensive design, but as you can see she has offensive capabilities.”

  Claire took a sharp step forward, hands clasped together and grinning as big as her face could hold. “Do I get anything?”

  I gave my back a stretch, trying to push aside the still alluring pictures in that wordless, more-than-human part of my brain. “Not yet. You get a task. Check with your contacts and find us a job. A real job, but something I won’t feel too guilty about.”

  Claire nodded, her smile sly and knowing now, rubbing a finger along her lower lip. “I know someone who’s just aching to give us suggestions like that. While I’m at it, want me to sell some of that gold?”

  That caught me off-guard. I looked over at the block of gold, much smaller than the jars and slabs and blocks of rough crystals. “It’s not that big, and I need some for my work.” That thought bounced off the thing in my brain. “I guess I don’t need much,” I amended. Which left me with only one answer. “Okay, I guess. Some of it. If you think that little gold is worth something.”