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

by Richard Roberts

  He stopped when the professor-looking guy cleared his throat, loudly. Claire gave the steampunk scientist a sunny, teasing grin. “Why, Mr. Mechanical Aesthetic, aren’t I just a little too young for you?”

  Steampunky guy stared, confused. It took him another second to get it. “No, that didn’t even occur to me!”

  Standing over him, the professory scientist put his hand on Mechanical Aesthetic’s shoulder but addressed Claire. “Your mind control power is dangerously subtle, little girl.” Grim as his face was, he sounded approving.

  “So if we can’t see her shoes, what did you bring?” asked the most unlikely member of the group, a stout middle aged man with a huge red beard. He wore goggles like all the others, although the metal shields around the edges looked much less fanciful.

  “Well, I didn’t leave everything,” I conceded. What to show them? Might as well leave Ray’s weaponized gloves a secret. “I suppose I could let you examine my teleport bands.” Everybody knew I could teleport by now, right?

  They crowded around eagerly as I pulled up my sleeve and slipped off one of the bands. Big beard guy received it in both hands as I held it out. Why him I had no idea, but the others huddled and stared as he turned the band over and over, rubbing his fingers over the metal.

  In a solemn and businesslike tone, he described what he saw. “Impure copper. Hard to know what the alloy is. The inner lining is another alloy, one I’m completely unfamiliar with.” He thumped the metal with a finger. “Solid. No sign of moving parts, visible circuit connects, antennae, power source, controls, or any seams or hatches for adjustments.”

  I gave a little shrug. “It doesn’t need any of that. It operates purely passively.”

  I didn’t realize I’d been expecting disbelief until I didn’t get it. They all looked at me with complete faith that it did work. Evil Eye asked, “Would you be willing to describe the mechanism?”

  Which left me with only one thing to do. I lied! “Like I said, it’s passive. Rather than moving you through space, the six bands together distort the wearer’s attitude in time. They give you the ability to travel in a closed time loop that’s cut away at the other end. The time you spent walking from here to there doesn’t exist. The time removal has a number of odd side effects. Most are useful, like letting you move vertically to places you couldn’t reach normally.” Glee bubbled up in my belly as I rattled off this made-up explanation. For all I knew, that was how the bands worked. My power didn’t object, or throw up any new plans based on this idea.

  They passed the band around through everyone’s hands. Some of them tapped or thumped the metal themselves. Finally, the professor type gave my teleport band back to me, and, as I slipped it back on, he asked, “I’ve heard you have a Conqueror orb. Is that true?”

  My eyebrows lifted. “News travels fast.”

  “In my experience, superheroes and supervillains spend more time gossiping than fighting each other,” he answered in grave, absolute deadpan.

  I patted my belt pouch without thinking about it. Oops. Now they knew where Vera was. Maybe that wasn’t a bad thing! And maybe there were limits to how much lying was appropriate. “It’s a misunderstanding. Vera isn’t a Conqueror orb. I built her myself.”

  That didn’t deter him. “Even more interesting. Are we lucky enough that you brought her tonight?”

  I cupped my hand over my belt pouch. “Well… yes, but she’s deactivated. I didn’t want to appear armed.”

  “I assure you, she’ll be viewed as a status symbol, not a weapon.” He was insistent. Insistent? His eyes burned with curiosity, and so did the others. Even Cybermancer leaned forward over his table and its explosives.

  I was starting to blush. I could feel it on my cheeks. Thank goodness for the visor. I unzipped the pouch, pulled Vera out, and tapped her. “Time to wake up.”

  She did, bits of ceramic sliding away, faintly glowing ball floating up into the air as the pieces surrounded her in a pixie configuration. Like an eye, her black pupil flitted slowly and curiously between the various mad scientists. Then she dismissed all of them and floated over to roll one of Cybermancer’s explosive beer bottles from side to side.

  I felt weirdly awkward at how they stared at her. Jerking a thumb over my shoulder at the arms dealers behind us, I warned, “We might want to make this quick. If we don’t, all the conventional ammunition in the building will rot.”

  The guy with the beard reached out to touch Vera, but she pushed his finger away and floated back. He frowned, staring at her. He looked confused, and he sounded a bit angry. “That’s not a fake. That’s a real Conqueror orb. She didn’t make it.”

  The professor type’s head bobbed slightly, and his own voice hardened. “No, it’s too small. Only drones are that size, and this is obviously no drone. Battlefield support units with the gunpowder degradation field are twice that diameter.”

  Evil Eye peered at Vera, reaching up to plug the cord of a phone sized device into her artificial eye. It made soft beeps and ratcheting noises as she slowly twisted the rim of the eye’s setting. She squinted. Her brow furrowed, then furrowed more. “These readings are ridiculous. She’s emitting all kinds of energy, from infrared to the exotics I register when magic is in use. The levels bounce all over the place, and—” As she spoke, Vera turned from playing with Cybermancer’s explosives to look at her, and she was interrupted when the computer noises of her plug-in burst into a brassy and very badly synthesized rendition of electro-swing.

  “I guess I never cleared that program,” I apologized, not sure if I was embarrassed or proud. Reaching out to cup one hand under Vera’s globe, I tapped her and ordered, “Sleep.” She closed up, and I tucked her safely back in my belt pouch.

  They all looked at me. Very stiffly, the professor type bowed his head low and announced, “It is the official opinion of the mad science community that you may keep the name The Inscrutable Machine.”

  “With our blessings,” the bearded guy added. I guess I’d convinced him.

  Claire giggled, hopping off Mechanical Aesthetic’s table. “Now that that’s settled, I want to drag Bad Penny away. This is our first time in Chinatown, and we haven’t even looked around yet.”

  “We’re glad you stopped here first,” the professor guy replied politely.

  “I did that! Me!” Lab Rat hopped up and down like he would explode with pride.

  Cybermancer threw up a hand. “Hold up! Don’t leave yet! Here!” Twisting around, he rummaged through a duffle bag of explosives and pulled out… a pair of leather and brass goggles. He tossed them over, and I managed to catch them in both hands. Cybermancer winked at me. “You can’t wear those with your helmet on, but you should have a pair.”

  Everyone gaped at him. Mechanical Aesthetic slapped his vending table. “I should have thought of that.”

  I giggled. I couldn’t help it. I kept giggling as I buckled the goggles behind my neck so they hung like a necklace. I felt like I was floating and could hardly feel my fingers to fasten the buckle. Had I ever gotten a better gift? I couldn’t remember one.

  Ray’s hand touched my lower back, and I took a halting step away, and then another.

  “Come back soon, prodigy daughter,” the professor said.

  “And bring something to drink! Cybermancer experimented on all our alcohol, and the soft drinks!” called Evil Eye.

  Claire hung back. Leaning over Mechanical Aesthetic’s table, she clasped her hands together and gave the professor her sweetest, goofiest grin. “Would it be too much to ask for the Expert’s business card?”

  She’d addressed the professor guy, and he nodded. He went by ‘Expert’? The others sure deferred to him like one. He pulled a little card out of his wallet and passed it into Claire’s gloved hands. Rather coyly, he answered her, “Of course. I am, after all, a reputable businessman.”

  We turned away and walked into the chaos. This place was crazy. Inside, most of the villains were real, costumed supervillains. Not all of them. Clai
re tugged on my hand and pointed at a booth under the mezzanine’s overhang. “Is that a sign-up station for henchmen?”

  She giggled, and I admit I kinda giggled, too. Ray waved his hand dismissively. “We don’t need henchmen.”

  Claire lifted her chin and folded her arms over her chest. “You don’t. I’ve got a future to think about!”

  An odd motion caught my eye. A kid almost our age jumped off the balcony above. His hair and clothes whipped about him as he floated down rather than fell. About halfway down his power gave out, and he dropped into the waiting arms of a villain in costume who was probably his father. It was an interesting reminder. We weren’t the only kids with super powers, just the only ones trying to compete with adults.

  Ray pointed, dragging my gaze in the other direction. “Lucy was right. We could have gotten a better price here.” Sure enough, like the mad scientists half a dozen tables were piled with occult looking gear and manned by eccentric looking shopkeepers. Unlike the mad scientists, these tables didn’t crowd together, and the magical vendors eyed each other suspiciously instead of socializing.

  At one of the tables a high school girl in a black and purple dress with black and purple hair fingered wooden dolls. A twitching and elaborately engraved robot woman had its arm around her shoulders and tapped two knives lying on the table instead.

  That was the kind of memory you file away to keep.

  As I stared, trying to stamp into my brain the image of this girl’s shy, worried face turned up to her mechanical guardian, Claire grabbed my wrist and yanked me almost off my feet. No, she wasn’t Ray, but maybe I needed to make it a little more clear to her just how strong she’d become! I managed to stumble into a hurried trot as she dragged me over to the elevators shouting, “Come on, come on!”

  We got to the top of the escalator, and she yanked me aside again. Only a few steps this time, before we pulled up short and she squeaked, “It is!”

  Ray seemed to know what she was talking about. “Wow,” he echoed in a low voice.

  I didn’t get it. I’d been dragged upstairs to watch a mahjong game. I wasn’t even sure it was mahjong. I didn’t know the rules, and I’d never played, I was just guessing because three men and a woman sat around a table playing something with funny little tiles.

  Three men and one woman? Supervillainy hadn’t really caught up with the twenty-first century yet.

  “What am I looking at?” I whispered to Claire. They were obviously rich. Their chips were actual gold coins, and the old guy with chain mail peeking out under his shirt had a suspiciously well-dressed young woman standing very close to his chair. The scarred man in military dress had two. The shriveled little man with the bulging head only had his tiny, floating attendant robots, but I did feel some amusement that the two sleekly dressed henchmen behind the muscular dark skinned woman were gratuitously pretty. At least the shallow privileges of success were equal opportunity.

  “Cossack, Tyrant, the Queen of Swords, and Organism One,” she answered.

  Oh. Yikes. I hadn’t known what they looked like, but I knew their names alright. My parents had kept me from going to kindergarten one day because to step outside our house would have been to succumb to Organism One’s mind control. For that one day, he’d ruled all of Southern California. Mom had been instrumental in uncovering the plot that had placed way too many of Cossack’s minions in top government positions.

  They hardly ever acted publicly, but, when they did, even one of these four could be a threat to the world. That we weren’t drowning in heroes trying to bring them in said a lot about the strength of Chinatown’s truce.

  They looked at us. All four stopped their game and turned to stare at me, Ray, and Claire.

  Ray stepped forward, taking off his hat to wave it in a deep, florid bow. For once, his exaggerated English accent sounded perfectly appropriate. “Please accept our apologies. My friends are Bad Penny and E-Claire, and I go by Reviled. I’m certain we’ll be working together someday, but, for now, we had neither intent nor desire to interrupt your game.”

  “Reviled,” repeated Queen of Swords. Gracefully, she stood up and indicated her seat. “If you want to be one of us, cash in.”

  Ray hesitated. Then he lowered his head. “I said ‘someday.’ I do not gamble when I have no chance of winning… yet.”

  I only half heard him, because things got very confused. In the middle of his sentence, a blur rushed past me, and pain jolted my head and neck as someone yanked my helmet off. His superhuman speed didn’t help him. Ray’s hand caught the blur’s wrist, and pulled a teenage boy up short. None of this interrupted his answer to Queen of Swords, and the thief’s butt thumped against the floor before the word ‘yet’ finished.

  Without a helmet, my braids fell out over my back. Maybe only Spider was gauche enough to blackmail us with our identities, but I felt horribly exposed, and everyone around me suddenly looked much bigger and older than me. I pulled up the goggles Cybermancer’d given me and fastened them over my eyes. Much better.

  The excessively curvy redhead leaned over Tyrant’s shoulder and addressed me directly. “You look great, Bad Penny. More mad scientists need pigtails. Oh, and Reviled? Good answer.”

  Maybe she wasn’t just a floozy. The four evil masterminds turned back to their game, Queen of Swords sliding back into her seat as if the redhead had spoken for them all.

  It still wasn’t over. A Chinese kid, maybe second grade, tapped Ray timidly on the arm. The teenage thief silently, eyes wide, handed Ray my helmet. When he had it Ray let go of the thief’s arm, and the teenager bolted away with super speed. Only then did Ray turn to look at the little boy.

  The Chinese boy gave him a nervous, bobbing bow and explained, “Please, Mr. Reviled, Master Scorpion wishes to speak to you.”

  He pointed, and we looked. An old man stood bare-chested on a mat at the other end of the mezzanine. Maybe he was only early middle-aged. Those rock hard muscles would have been the envy of any twenty-year-old, and, with his bald head, the only clues I had to his age were lines around his eyes and lines of gray in his pointy beard. He stood arrogantly straight, watching us with arms folded. Around him a loose circle of men in martial arts pajamas and ninja black watched us as well. No two of them looked remotely alike. Not even one of them looked happy.

  “Please, Mr. Reviled, Master Scorpion insists,” the little boy urged us.

  Ray dropped my helmet into my arms and walked down the mezzanine to meet the old man. “Strode” might be a better word. Ray was leggy, and he took advantage of it with long, even steps. He might not be rushing, but he clearly wasn’t taking his time.

  Claire and I followed after him. Ray stopped at the edge of the mat, and Master Scorpion stared down at him. The old guy’s face was as hard-edged as his chest, and he had an impressively cold, angry stare. His voice was just as harsh. “They call you Reviled.”

  Ray bowed, not floridly but deeply and stiffly, straight from the waist. “Everyone knows who you are, Master Scorpion.”

  That had technically been a lie. I didn’t know who this guy was, but I was clearly the odd girl out here. The assembled ninjas watched Ray and Scorpion like the secret of life might be hidden in this conversation. Claire had her hands clasped behind her back and rocked forward and back on her heels nervously.

  This scorpion guy was hard, motionless like a rock except for his eyes and his mouth—and they hardly moved as he declared, “Every week these men try to prove that they are strong enough to inherit my skills. This week you are one of them. Spar with me.”

  It was very much an order, and Claire didn’t like it. She winced and took a half step closer to me. Ray lowered his head, a miniature echo of his former bow. “I could not possibly refuse such an invitation.”

  Ray stepped onto the mat. Master Scorpion stepped toward him. There was no signal that I could see. They walked up to each other, and the old guy jabbed a punch at Ray’s face. It struck in an eye blink, but Ray still pushed it aside with his
forearm and punched back at Master Scorpion’s shoulder. They hadn’t stopped walking. Their arms and legs tangled together, they swung around, and I saw Ray’s elbow come within a hair’s breadth of the old man’s chin. Master Scorpion didn’t miss. His hand slammed into Ray’s midsection, sending Ray flying out off the mat to hit the wall.

  I hadn’t had time to scream; it happened so fast. My whole body had frozen up with tension. I forced my muscles to move. I had to check on Ray.

  No, I didn’t have to. Ray wheezed and fought for breath, but he pushed himself back up to his feet. For once, I didn’t find his grin charming. It looked crazy. Still, he obviously couldn’t do anything stupid while he was struggling to breathe and stand.

  Master Scorpion pointed at Ray, arm extended like a spear. His harsh voice rasped, “I want you, boy. One year. Train under me for one year, and, when we are finished, you will humiliate Joe the Fist. You will fight him, and he will look like the child.”

  Still shaking, Ray bowed. His voice sounded pretty raspy too. “It was an honor to match myself against the Master, but I am not looking for a teacher right now.”

  My gut tightened again. Master Scorpion did not look like the kind of guy who took refusals well. When he grinned, it shocked me, and his reply sounded almost jovial. “I can wait. There are limits to what you can teach yourself. Sooner rather than later, you will come to me.”

  A clank off to the side pulled my eyes away from Ray and Master Scorpion. Lucyfar’s hands gripped the edge of the railing, and, with a fierce jerk, she pulled herself up and over onto the mezzanine.

  Lucyfar was already chattering. “That was wicked! You impressed Master Crab Face? Come on. Spider told me to keep an eye out for you kids, be your welcome wagon. I’ll take you to her first, then we’ll have the whole night to party! You haven’t had your fortunes told yet, right?”

  The change of conversation made me dizzy. Master Scorpion showed no sign that he resented or even noticed being called Master Crab Face. Lucyfar grabbed Ray’s hand, and my wrist when I wouldn’t let go of my helmet. Claire let out a little squeak, and I saw the flash of a black shape pushing her toward us. Claire latched onto my other arm with both of her hands. In seconds Lucyfar was pulling us all toward the escalators.