Barbara waved a hand. I wandered out to see Cassie in the elevator, holding her box of wires and batteries. A bunch of other kids were crowded in around her.
Somebody hit the button, and the elevator started to move. Cassie called down, “You're coming, right? I won't start it until you get there!”
“I'll be there, but it'll be a minute. I don't want to cut in line!”
While I waited for the elevator to come back, Barbara followed me out. She looked normal again, or at least just extravagantly gothic. She did lean back against the wall.
That brought my attention to the one boy, with long brown hair and a loose brown shirt and slacks, who was also standing against the wall instead of crowding around the elevator.
Just in case he wasn't okay, I asked, “Are you not coming?”
He looked guilty and embarrassed. He couldn't meet my eyes, and mumbled, “I'm not sure I should be here.”
That, of course, got Ray and Claire joining me, and a couple of other kids to drift over as well. Not the attention this kid wanted. Ray tried to give him a comforting smile. “It's fine if you don't have super powers. We'll work something out. Penny did for me.”
“No, I've got super powers. It's… I'm…”
Barbara gave him a curious, concerned frown, and put a hand on his shoulder. “What's wrong, Jake?”
“I…,” he stammered, eyes squeezed shut. Then his shape changed, or at least got a lot more curvy. The suddenly-a-girl finished awkwardly, “I'm Jacky.”
The girl who had wanted a table saw stared, open-mouthed. “I've known you since elementary school, Jacky. Why didn't you say anything?”
Jacky let out a long breath. She still looked tense and embarrassed, but a lot less. “My parents didn't find out until I was two months old. By then, everybody would know I had super powers if they changed my name. They thought it would be dangerous.”
Ray screwed up his eyebrows in confusion. “I get that you can change shape, but how can it take two months to know you're a girl?”
“Because… because…” She let out another sigh, and relaxed further. Not relaxed, so much as sagged. Her face turned blue-green. Her everything turned blue-green, except her clothing, and slightly transparent. Still decidedly curvy and female, basically human in shape, all the details of her body blurred into a gooey mass. “…this is the real me.”
“Huh. Neat,” said her friend.
“I bet you're hard to hurt. You could be really great as a superhero!” Teddy squeaked. His voice really, really needed to change. It was higher than Claire's or Barbara's.
Jacky shook her head. Her hair wobbled like jello. “I'm not really into fighting.”
Barbara slipped her arm into Jacky's, slowly, giving her plenty of time to pull away if she wanted. “Me, neither. But it's fun to watch the heroes and villains show off. Why don't we go see the show?”
Jacky smiled. She seemed to be okay, now, so I left her be and waited on the elevator. On the fourth run, there was room enough for me, Ray, and Claire.
Cassie was out in the middle of the recess ground, with a car battery sitting on the asphalt in front of her. When she saw me, electricity arced from her arms and legs all around her. Voice raised, she asked, “Everybody ready?”
“This had better be good!” Will yelled back.
“Ha!” Cassie barked. The blue and white arcs picked up, until she looked like the center of a plasma globe. Holding out her hands, she channeled them in a twisting mass into the battery.
Out of it rose a glowing white blob.
It looked kind of like the wisp that Cassie'd used to destroy the computer lab, but more like a cartoon ghost. Two stumpy arms waved out of a round body, all made out of churning, painfully bright lightning.
It was big. I wasn't sure if I would call it 'giant,' but it was at least as big as a couple of cars stacked on top of each other, so maybe.
“HA HA HA HA – hey, stop that!” Cassie's victory laugh was interrupted when the giant wisp extended its arms and blasted her with lightning.
It didn't hurt her, but she did wave her arms like she was clearing smoke, then pointed at the battery. “If you're going to be like that, volto-vermin, you can get back in the box.”
Ignoring her command, the monster drifted away. Kids yelled and scattered as it pointed its arms at the crowd, and tried to blast them. Fortunately, its control over its lightning was as bad as Cassie's, and the attack hit the ground well short of its target.
“I said back. In. The. Box! Before I put a world of hertz on you!” Cassie shouted. The monster continued to ignore her, until she pointed one arm at it, and another at the battery. Bolts of electricity staggered between the three, with Cassie in the middle.
Ponderously, the monster turned. The electrical line connecting it, Cassie, and the battery became a thick bar.
The battery blew up. Cassie yelled in pain.
Will zipped out of the crowd, catching her as she fell. I waved my arms and pointed at Barbara. “Over to her! Now!”
He obeyed, pouring a swearing Cassie into Barbara's arms. Jacky spread damp, gooey hands over Cassie's burns, while Barbara got out her pins.
Of course, now nobody was controlling the monster. It headed for its disabled owner and her healers, until Will ran past in front of it. More badly aimed lightning. If Cassie had learned to project at a distance, this thing would have killed someone already.
“It's electricity! Somebody ground it!” Rocky shouted.
“Hit it with water!” echoed somebody else.
Teddy took that as a challenge. Water sprayed out of his raised palms like a hose with a thumb clamped over it.
The monster slid away, out of range.
Even with holes burned in her clothing, Cassie was still quite able to kibbitz. “That won't work. After you absorbed the first one, I taught this one to avoid strong conductors.”
“So it's smart?” Ray asked.
“No, just programmed to go the opposite direction.”
The monster was following some of the younger kids, now. There was no gate in their direction. It would have them trapped in a minute.
“Teddy! Stay between it and everybody else!” I shouted.
He launched a squirt of water in that direction. Sure enough, the lightning ghost shied away.
“Will! Try to keep it distracted.”
He started zipping. When he got close enough, the monster stopped trying to get at the other kids, and began floating with murderous patience after him.
“Herd it towards the basketball hoop, but Teddy, don't get too close. We don't want it to fly away.” I had no clue how we'd control the thing if it did.
With Teddy spraying water on one side, and Will's zig-zagging to attract it on the other, the monster drifted over to that end of the playground.
I scurried over to the medical team. “Cassie, can you walk? I need you to be a conductor. I can't bend the basketball pole, so we're going to have to break it.”
Cassie nodded slowly. “A big iron rod driven deeply into the ground. Yeah, that would do it. I'm okay, but… ow. I'm not sure how mobile I am.”
Ray stepped up next to me, arms encased in gear-whirling clockwork gloves. He lifted Cassie out of Barbara's lap, and said, “I can do the knocking down.”
He set off at a run. Hopefully, anyone watching would blame the gloves for his speed. Nobody knew how they worked anyway, right?
I cupped my hands around my mouth. “Spray water to either side, Teddy. Keep it pinned where it is, and try not to get hit!”
Big as it was, the wisp truly was totally mindless. With water spraying on both sides, and the fence and basketball goal in front of it, the monster stopped. The only way it had left to go was up, and we weren't pushing it hard enough to take that route.
Ray reached the back of the pole. He slammed both fists together against it from behind. It squealed and bent a little. He hit it again. And again.
The pole broke, and fell down from above towards the elect
ric ghost. It started to squeeze off to one hand, and Teddy focused his water spray there.
Cassie wrapped herself around both broken ends of the pole.
The pole hit the ghost, and with a pop and a flash, it disappeared. Gone. Sucked into the earth at the speed of traveling electrons, and those travel pretty fast.
Kids cheered. Barbara stuck pins into a cloth doll with blue hair tied around its neck. Jacky sank into her clothing. Will ran over to Cassie so fast that he tripped and plowed into Ray.
When they crawled back upright again, Cassie giggled, leaning against the stump of the basketball goal. “I could kiss you, speed freak.”
Even from over here, I saw him brighten up.
“Figuratively.”
“Awww.”
Everybody laughed.
I wondered what my parents would think. I didn't do any fighting myself, after all. I just gave advice. Would that count?
A flicker of rebellion flared up inside me, all of a sudden. I kept getting caught between impossible options. I wasn't allowed to be a hero, and I couldn't just stay out. Fine.
I would get a new lair, and new toys. Until they let me bring back Penultimate, Bad Penny would play. The Inscrutable Machine was getting back in business.
Which meant a weekend visit to Chinatown.
got off scot free, this time. My mother's decision? “This situation was not covered in the rules you were given. You will not be punished until we decide what rules to lay down for the future.”
It was a weird way to put things, all neutral, and Dad didn't add anything. Something was up.
As long as they were up in the future. I had my own plans, which almost came to a screeching halt when I headed for the front door on Saturday and Dad called out, “Good morning, Princess. I just got a car full of experimental robots confiscated from mad science laboratories. Want to come with me to the desert station and help me test them out?”
By 'station' he meant 'high tech bunker,' a glorious cement and steel hole in the ground where things that blew up, lased, melted, or exploded into shrapnel could be analyzed.
As my finger pointed automatically at the 'Princess' jar, I ground my teeth and whined. “Can we do it tomorrow? Please? I've got ten times as many club members as I did last week, and I don't even have chairs for them. If I don't fix things up today, on Monday they'll get bored and destroy the rest of the playground.”
He stared at me for a minute. It was a smiling stare, but my folks were definitely in Mysterious Adults Land this weekend. Then he called out, “Beebee? What are the odds of the toys I have packed in the car destroying it if I wait until tomorrow?”
Mom's voice drifted back from the basement. “What? Brian, I don't… four percent. Less, really, but I only have generic data to work with.”
Dad nodded amicably. “I'll take a one in twenty-five chance on you, Pumpkin. Have fun. Let me know if you want my help setting the place up.”
Ooh. “That… is a great idea.” It was. Dad could provide resources and exotic machinery without my giving away the extent of my powers. “But probably next weekend. I need to see what I can do, first.”
“I completely understand. I remember my month in the Techno-League.”
Mom stuck her head out of the basement stairwell, and immediately burst out laughing. “Brian, did you just say 'Techno-League?' What did you ever see in those idiots?”
As tempting as it was to hang around and hear this story, getting to Chinatown would take awhile. I slipped out.
First, I had to bicycle down to the Red Line. It felt good to do so with my teleport bands back around my arms where they belonged. The flying rotors had been cute, but teleportation was a way better defense and tactical tool.
I skipped a couple of red lights by teleporting across the intersections, but only a couple. Sudden muscle ache made me ease up on the pedaling after each one. I'd been away from the action for too long, and was getting soft again.
What I really wanted was my light cycle back, but it was part of my villainous jumpsuit, and without a helmet that screamed 'Hey, look at me! Bad Penny is actually Penelope Akk!'
I did take considerable amusement in fastening my bike to a rack using my mad science capture cuffs. Let some poor fool try to steal that. Ha!
With my teleport cuffs hidden under my shirt, and my goggles and Dad's boxing glove gun in a belt pouch, I looked like an ordinary kid taking the subway to the library. Nobody gave me a second glance.
Only when the gates to Chinatown were in sight did I put on my goggles. A sudden wash of rightness hit me. I hadn't realized how much I felt like an imposter pretending to be a normal girl.
I didn't even wait for the Old Chinese Man Robot to start complaining. I teleported right past him, and if anyone was watching, I bet nobody could see the wobble in my legs. So out of shape.
Even as quiet as Chinatown was before noon on Saturday, the moment I saw a ridiculously broad-shouldered woman in a suit arguing with a svelte pretty-boy in spandex tights, I felt at home.
The guy poked the girl in the elbow, then pointed past her at me. They both waved. “Bad Penny! Good for you!” the woman greeted, in what I thought, maybe, probably, was a Russian accent?
Maybe I swaggered just a little more. I'd never met these two, but everybody knew who the thirteen year old girl mad science supervillainess was, right? Plus, they might be useful. “Thanks! Do either of you have a map of empty secret lairs, or anything like that?”
That got a grin from the guy. “Wouldn't one of those be useful. Alas, we do not. Unless you're holding out on me, snuggle bunny?”
The huge woman wagged a finger at him. “Don't make me squish you.” Then she kissed him, a touch of pursed lips to lips that was practically chaste.
“I'm certain Spider does,” the man suggested.
I scrunched up my cheeks. “I'll ask her if I have to, but…”
“Understood,” said the woman, nodding. Then she said something else, in whatever foreign language matched her accent. 'Russian' was still my best guess.
The two resumed their argument. Lots of arm gesticulation and arm waving was involved.
If anything was going on this early, it would be in the big, white central mall that dominated Chinatown. I had a definite momentary impulse to drop by the fortune-telling pinball machine, but my need for information would not be filled by vague prophetic announcements.
When night fell, it would be a party in here. There were still a few dozen supervillains hanging around, relaxing or shopping at the six or so booths already open. A lot of laughing was going on around a cart that smelled like sausage.
One end of the mall was reserved for mad science weapon dealers. A pile of crates stood behind most of the tables, but two were already laid out.
As soon as he saw me, Lab Rat fell out of his chair, then hopped up and down waving his arms. That got Red Eye's attention. She beckoned me over more sedately. Actually, that grin would have been pretty enthusiastic if the standard of comparison weren't Lab Rat's bouncing around.
“Finally. It's been a month. Where is this psychic cat cannon I'm hearing about?” Red Eye demanded as soon as I got close enough to talk to.
“I left it on Jupiter. Near Jupiter. I think it's on Pluto now.” That's where the mutant goat girl I'd given it to was headed, last I heard.
Lab Rat pumped a fist triumphantly, hissing and dancing in a circle. Red Eye furrowed the side of her brow that wasn't dominated by a metal faceplate, and ran her hand over her hair. “Aw, really? Little girl, do you know how rare stable biotech weaponry is? You could have sold that thing for enough to retire!”
His dance finished, Lab Rat rubbed his hands together in a, well, ratty way instead. “Tasty, tasty moment. Cat gone. Bad Penny here. Bad Penny not one to party, so maybe needs tastier day? Lab Rat and Red Eye can make it more tasty?”
Red Eye chuckled loudly. “Rat, that routine is creepy enough when you're not doing it to a fourteen year old girl.”
Note
to Penny: At least your real age isn't common knowledge.
I tried to sound casual, and to ignore my urge to fire every one of the crazily-shaped glass-and-plastic weapons on Red Eye's table at the ceiling. “My base got invaded. Do you know anyone who knows how to find empty lairs I could move into?”
Lab Rat bobbed his head enthusiastically. “Yes. Where you want one. Near old base? Far from old base? Lab Rat suggests underneath old base. Very tasty trick.”
It was tough to choose, but I latched onto the weirdest part of what he'd just said. “Underneath?”
He laughed, hissing and gurgling. He was rattier than ever today. It was very, very hard to see him as an ordinary man in brown leather and goggles. All the hand-washing and the hunched over posture made you see a rat where there was no rat.
“Always an underneath. And an underneath underneath that. Sewers. Caves. Ruins. Underground jungles. You want secrecy? You want surprise? Just go down. That is Lab Rat's advice.”
“Is he serious?” I asked Red Eye.
She nodded. “Oh, yes. I've never been down past the first layer, but I've heard stories.”
I returned my attention to Lab Rat. “Okay, but do you know any specific lairs?”
“Around school? Yes, many. Many. This is what I do, Bad Penny. I am between the surface and the Undercity, and share things from both sides. I will poke around, send scouts. Lab Rat will find best options for you. Be proud. Tasty.” He'd almost sounded sane for a minute there.
A voice whispered into my ear, “The boss will see you now,” and a paper slipped into my hand.
I spun around, but no one was there. The voice had been that of Barbara's sister, She Who Wots, who unlike Lab Rat was exactly as creepy and dangerous as she acted, but at least you knew to expect it.
In hand-written cursive that couldn't possibly belong to a gigantic black widow, the paper read:
Bad Penny,
Please come down to my office. You will be happy you did.
Spider
Criminy. I could throw the paper away and leave. Spider was too devious to hold grudges. She was also usually honest. If she said I would be happy to visit, I would be. It's just that I'd already figured out there were strings attached to everything she did.
Please Don't Tell My Parents I've Got Henchmen Page 7