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

by Richard Roberts

  Lucy held up the bottle we’d stolen and told us, “Dragon’s blood is worth way more than that. Little Grandmother’s got great stock and information, but you could get a much better deal this weekend.”

  I waved my hands emphatically. “No. I don’t care if she’s ripping us off, we’re getting rid of this bottle now before Marvelous finds it. Besides, I find myself suddenly needing new equipment much more than cash.”

  Lucyfar snorted, but Claire and Ray spread out gleefully, studying the exhibits now with the eye of prospective buyers.

  Claire summed up my reaction pretty well. “I have no idea what this stuff does!”

  Ray pointed out, “Anti-magical charms would prevent anyone sneaking up on us with a sleep spell again. I’m certain there are plenty of them right in front of us, if we can identify them. Powerful charms might even protect us from poison attacks, or other insidious physical traps.”

  I took the bottle back from Lucyfar, who gave me a noncommittal shrug. “Normally I’d ask Little Grandmother. I shop here because she’s a real expert. She’s too busy throwing a sulk to be any use to us today.”

  I grunted. Common sense told me one thing. “I don’t want to buy anything that I don’t know what it does.”

  From a tabletop covered in bowls of colored sand, Claire suggested, “I could go home and ask around, get some advice on what to trade for.”

  I shook my head, hard. “No, no way. We’re ditching the bottle. We’ll find something here worth buying.”

  That got me looking around for my personal magical detector. I found Vera hovering over an upturned black top hat with a bundle of knotted together handkerchiefs hanging out of it. She didn’t have fingers, but her tiny floating hands were strong and precise, and she untied a handkerchief from one of the knots. The knot turned out to be more complicated than I thought, because another handkerchief fell into view hanging from the same spot.

  Or had it? I wandered over and helped her untie the knot again. I managed to pull a handkerchief out, but the knot hadn’t changed. Ha! Infinitely reproducing handkerchiefs, a stage magician’s trick performed with real magic.

  I untied another. I couldn’t see where the new handkerchief appeared in the bundle, but in the back of my head I could see it, where it came from and how, although everything but the crudest physical parts of the process made not a lick of sense. Other pictures started to build around that image, but I focused on the issue of the moment.

  “Okay, we’ll take this. There’s nothing a good mad scientist can’t do with an endless source of fabric,” I announced.

  Lucyfar regarded the handkerchief knot over my shoulder skeptically. “There’s a lot of magic in that spell, but you’re still getting ripped off. You kids have no idea what dragon’s blood is worth.”

  “I don’t really care. I didn’t steal it for the money,” I brushed her off. Or at least, I tried. Lucyfar beamed with delight as I scooped up the ball of handkerchiefs and handed the gold-wired bottle to the witch’s sheepish grandson.

  “Aren’t you here to buy something yourself?” I snapped, my peevishness bouncing off that grin with no effect. It might have been more effective if I was actually mad.

  “Not anymore. The Inscrutable Machine’s help will be much more useful than anything I could buy, if you guys are willing to help me out.”

  That did it. Claire and Ray shouted, “Yes!” at the same time, swooping over from opposite sides of the shop to crowd around Lucyfar in eager anticipation.

  Which left me to continue playing the grouch. “Can we at least hear what you want us to do, first?”

  Lucyfar stuck her hands in the pockets of her jeans and answered frankly, “I want you to help me get Chimera out of jail.”

  Whoa.

  Lucyfar turned her head to look at Vera, then followed Vera’s gaze to the door. Rushing over to open it, Lucyfar squealed, “No time to talk about it. My date is here!” Seriously, she squealed. Who were the thirteen-year-olds here?

  We filed out onto the rooftop after her as a mass of white wings fluttered down out of the sky. They tucked behind Gabriel’s back as he landed, only slightly out of the way.

  “So, you two are dating?” Claire asked pointedly, giving them both a hopefully questioning grin.

  Her powers didn’t do her much good this time. “Yes!” Lucyfar declared immediately, throwing herself onto Gabriel and wrapping her arms around him.

  “No,” he contradicted, standing stiff and disapproving.

  “Yes!” Lucyfar repeated, nodding like a bobble-head.

  “No,” Gabriel insisted, just like last time.

  I sighed as loudly as I could to make it clear I didn’t know which of them was less believable. Stalking over to the edge of the roof, I teleported straight down to the alley pathway below. I stood there, taking deep breaths and letting the ache in my muscles dissipate while the fire escape clanged above me from Ray’s descent. Claire got to me first, zipping down on her grapnel line. She let it snap back onto her wrist as she unfolded a little piece of paper and read it.

  “Lucy wants our help today. She’ll call me after her date.”

  Which meant a few hours later Claire, Lucyfar, Ray and I were sitting on the ledge of a billboard overlooking the West Hollywood Elite Detention Center. It felt a little creepy being this high up, dangling my legs over the gap, but if I fell I could teleport myself to the ground and get away with no worse than a bruise, right?

  Ray looked up from his pocket watch. “It’s time.”

  Lucyfar pushed herself up to her feet. Claire stopped peeking around the corner of the billboard as Lucyfar addressed her. “The Apparition should be in the monitoring room. You’re next, E-Claire. Go around to the front door and make a distraction. Turn your power up as high as it can go and keep as many cops as you can paying attention to you.”

  Claire saluted, grinning eagerly. “For how long?”

  “When the chaos starts, get out of there and don’t look back. I’m betting five minutes, maybe less. One way or another, there will be chaos.” Lucyfar sounded downright serious. Note to Penny, even crazy supervillains have to plan like a professional.

  Claire giggled and jumped off the ledge. Her arm shot up, and the grappling line grabbed that same ledge, lowering her to the ground at a speed that would merely have broken my ankles. Claire twirled when she landed, kicked a leg back, and skated off down the street and around the other side of the building.

  I could easily imagine Claire in her hoodie teddy bear pajamas talking to a room full of heavily armed supervillain containment policemen about her lost cat, with none of them suspecting a thing. Whatever happened, I needed to stay in charge of The Inscrutable Machine. I hated to think what Claire and Ray could and would get away with if I didn’t hold them back.

  “Our turn,” Lucyfar announced. I stepped off the ledge, blinking down to the edge of a rooftop below, then down again onto the street corner. Breaking up the jump that way kept me from needing to do more than take a deep breath to recover. Ray landed on the grass with a loud thump behind me, and Lucyfar dropped down lightly. Gravity was for regular people, not supervillains.

  Walking across the street was kind of boring in comparison. Lucyfar broke up the normality by asking, “How good is that cutting tool of yours?”

  I pulled the wand out of my sugar tank and flipped the switch to cutting mode. “It’s a water knife. Technically, a cola knife, I guess. At very short range, it should go through steel like butter. There’s not much it can’t cut, if we’re patient and I don’t run out of sugar.”

  “If it can’t, I have a blast weapon that will take out the whole wall,” Ray added, flexing his gloved hands.

  “I want to do this quietly,” Lucyfar answered as we reached the fence around the cubical cement building. She emphasized her point by jumping up and catching the top edge of the fence, vaulting over silently. Ray followed suit. I just walked through it, teleporting one single step from this side to the other.

 
As a jail, the building didn’t try to be pretty. Windows were barred, none of them on the ground floor. It had no lawn or decorative trees, just a bare cement walk between the walls and the fence. I itched to tell Vera to override the cameras at the corners of the roof, but hopefully Claire and The Apparition were on the job. There would be non-gunpowder weapons in this building, and I didn’t want to face them.

  We walked down the length of the building, with Lucyfar trailing her hand along the wall and staring at the ground. Finally, she stopped short. “Here. The Chimera’s cell is underneath us. Cut us a hole.”

  I’d need something bigger than a manhole cover if Chimera was supposed to climb out. I picked one of the squares of cement the sidewalk had already been divided into and pressed my wand into the crevice, tracing all around the edge as cola hissed and sprayed. When I got around the first time, the hole wasn’t deep enough, so I kept cutting. On the third pass, I saw light peek through, the slab sagged as I circled around it, then fell into the room below with a very loud and very wet clang. My cola knife was not mess-free.

  Lucyfar jumped down immediately. I teleported neatly onto the slab I’d sent tumbling into the cell below. Ray landed next to me.

  Chimera stared at all three of us, grinned, and his shoulders sagged as he let out a huge sigh of relief.

  “Is this all? You can’t get yourself out of this, Chimera?” Lucyfar asked sarcastically.

  I couldn’t tell which way she meant the joke. Someone seriously wanted to keep Chimera in here. The metal walls, ceiling, and floor of the cell might not have been enough, but heavy chains like those I associated with boats connected two-inch-thick cuffs on his neck, wrist, and ankle to a metal ball on the wall. It let him move around the room, but it did not look comfortable. They had him in the horrible red and blue thin shirt and pants of a super-powered prisoner, too.

  Chains rattled as he shrugged and scowled. “I can’t believe they kept this cell intact for forty years. I’m the only prisoner in the building, and they had to hose the dust out of the room before they dragged me in. If they’d waited another minute my spine would have healed before they got me chained down.”

  Lucyfar winced, her grimace more sympathetic than amused. “Ow. She broke your back?”

  “She broke everything. Kids today are a bunch of thugs.” Chimera winked at me and Ray, and grinned again.

  Lucyfar stepped over to him, lifting up a chain and examining the collar around Chimera’s neck. “We need to hurry. Can’t you break out of these?”

  Chimera went back to scowling, a growl in his voice. “Not without changing shape. If I grow any bigger, I crush and strangle myself.”

  It was weird to hear Lucyfar being the businesslike one. “And if you shrink?”

  Chimera jerked his head at the metal ball the chains fastened to. “Grip loosens, I get electrocuted.”

  “What about the snake tail? That goo trick?”

  He didn’t show it on his face, but a moment’s pause told me Chimera was embarrassed. “I’m still getting those powers back.”

  Lucyfar stared at the chains, frowning as she considered what to do about them. Ray stealthily tapped The Machine wrapped around my wrist, but I’d already figured that out. It was my turn.

  Twisting The Machine until he let go, I told Chimera, “I can take care of the electrocution.” I stuck The Machine against the base of the chains. He would eat any charge trying to go down that line. In fact, he was probably breaking the circuit and setting off that charge already, we just couldn’t see it.

  I couldn’t hear any alarms, so hopefully The Apparition was on top of her end of things.

  Next obstacle. “Can you shrink out? I can cut off the shackles, but not without cutting you in the process.”

  Chimera held up his wrists. “Cut through the hinges, and I’ll do the rest.”

  That was easy enough. I raised my wand and sliced the chains off of the cuffs. Chimera’s arms bulged, and red and black scales rolled up his skin, then were replaced by coppery metal feathers along his forearms. He looked awkward and apelike with his arms so massive, but only for a second. The shackles popped off his wrists, and he reached up and ripped the collar off his neck. His whole upper body swelled up to match his arms then.

  Chimera snarled, showing heavy fangs. Yikes. His face distended forward, black metal porcupine spikes popping out of his hair. He snapped the remaining cuffs free, and suddenly his whole body swelled up. The three-eyed, hairy and scaly thing pressed up against the ceiling, its clothes ripped to useless clinging shreds. Turning, Chimera reached out a giant fist and gently bumped it against Lucyfar’s.

  “I owe you big,” he growled. I could make out the words, but that toothy mouth gave him quite an accent.

  Lucyfar smirked up at him. “Nope. I did it for a buddy, and for my favorite sin – the sin of pride.”

  That got a rough, booming laugh. He turned his fanged face to me, and my body felt suddenly very cold and weak. Still, I extended my arm and tapped my fist against his. His touch was as light as a baby’s. Most of the fear drained away, and I smiled despite myself and assured him, “Just what friends do, right?”

  Chimera looked down at Ray last. They grinned at each other, and on Chimera that involved way too many mismatched teeth. It only lasted a second. Apparently that satisfied them both.

  “Now what?” Ray asked Lucyfar.

  “Now we get as far away from here as possible,” Lucyfar answered. She jumped up and caught the edge of the hole I’d cut in the ceiling, pulling herself up with ease. Ray made the whole jump and landed on his feet. I grabbed The Machine off the wall and teleported up next to them—and behind me, noise exploded out of the hole. I had trouble telling where the screaming cat voice left off and the torn metal began. The ringing of heavy impacts against metal stabbed at my ears.

  I could, just barely, hear Lucyfar’s voice as she grabbed Ray’s collar and pushed. “It’s all up to him now. Run!”

  I didn’t need encouraging. I took off as fast as my feet could take me, and after four steps focused and teleported to the other side of the fence. Pulling myself to a jarring halt at the edge of the street, I slapped my chest and my light bike flashed into existence on the asphalt.

  A hand grabbed my shoulder, and I nearly shrieked. It was just Lucyfar, pulling me around and yanking me into an uncomfortably tight hug. “You kids are the best! You’re coming to Chinatown this weekend, right?”

  “What?” I asked, completely left behind.

  Then the wall of the detention center exploded, bits of rock flying everywhere. I got a glimpse of Claire far down the street, skating away as fast as her frictionless bear shoes would take her. It was hard to pay attention to anything but the four-winged, two-headed, three-armed amalgamation of every mythological horror looming in the broken building, lunging at tiny-looking policemen whose guns didn’t work.

  “No time. Run!” Lucyfar ordered me. I was happy to oblige, throwing myself onto my bike and shoving a foot at the pedal. Vera grabbed my shoulder, and we sped down the street away from the yelling and crunching.

  It didn’t take me long to get home. I should have gone around to the lab and changed back into civilian clothes, but I was physically and emotionally exhausted. What a day. Anyway, the sun had finally set and it was getting pretty dark. I pulled up at the street corner and teleported to my front door so no one would see me walking up to the house in supervillain costume. That hurt, but what was one more ache?

  My worries were worse than the physical pain. Stealing a bottle of blood from crooks before a hero could do the same thing? I didn’t feel bad about that, much. Setting Chimera free was another matter. He’d seemed friendly, but he was a serious supervillain. Police might die and were certainly getting hurt, just so he could reenter the community with a little more style than getting beaten to a pulp by Generic Girl.

  That was not the game I wanted to be part of. Maybe I should be trying harder to switch over to the hero side. I’d proven I could b
e a real supervillain. That didn’t mean I had to be one.

  I unlocked the door and pushed it open. With my parents out of town, I ought to get the mail. I scooped it out of the mailbox, all those bills and bank notices and official adult letters that all looked the same.

  All except one, a pink envelope with fancy gold edging. I pushed the door closed behind me, walked into the kitchen, and laid the mail out on the table so I could look at this different, special envelope. The envelope addressed to me, Penelope Akk. The envelope with no return address or postmark.

  I ripped it open, and pulled out a fancy white gold-embossed card.

  Bad Penny,

  I have been following your career with great interest, and it is time we became personally acquainted. You and The Inscrutable Machine are invited to meet with me at 10 p.m. this Friday in Chinatown, so that I may officially welcome you to the community and we can discuss where you go from here. I strongly suggest you arrive several hours early and enjoy yourselves before the meeting.

  Looking Forward to Working with You,

  Spider

  pider knew who I was.

  The note could not be left lying around. I put it in my belt pouch. If it wasn’t safe there, neither were my teleport rings.

  I was too tired to take this in. It had been too long a day. Food would help with that. We had some leftover macaroni and cheese. That would be easy to make.

  I looked in the fridge. No, we’d finished the macaroni and cheese. It wouldn’t be hard to make some. I got out a couple of packages lurking in the back of the pantry and set a pot of water on to boil. I turned the boxes over to find the instructions, sections of text leaping into focus as the visor of my helmet magnified them. That was confusing enough that I had to flip the visor up.

  Oh, right. I was still in supervillain costume. I wasn’t expecting my parents home tonight, but I didn’t want anyone to see me at home dressed like this. I also didn’t want to leave the pot long enough to undress, because, as tired as I was, I might forget it. Vera picked up the other package and started to read it in imitation of me, although she was only slightly bigger than it was.