Villains Inc. (Wearing the Cape)

by Marion G. Harmon

  The Fortress sat on the corner of Rush and Bellevue, and with its granite-faced walls and narrow windows, it had always looked like a, well, a fortress to me. Now it was a fortress under siege. The narrow sidewalks didn’t give the protestors much room, so they’d spilled across the one-way street and into the small “park.” A pair of police officers stood directing the northbound traffic east onto Bellevue. From the signs waved, it looked like the protestors from the Dome had decided to relocate here for the day. Maybe they thought it was safer.

  “What’s going on?” Artemis asked. At our height, she couldn’t identify anyone and my telescopic vision was stretched.

  “Shankman’s standing in front of the club doors. I can’t make out what he’s saying, but he’s got volume.”

  Police worked the edges of the crowd, erecting yellow barriers to check the spread, but we could see more people arriving from all points and the police weren’t keeping them all out. News of the incident had to be spreading by text and by tweet, not to mention live TV coverage. When protestors meet counter-protestors, is the result mutual annihilation?

  “Astra? Artemis?” Dispatch brought me a new voice. “Captain Verres, here. I’m the situation commander for this morning’s show. My station is on State Street, just south of Bellevue.” We looked down and spotted the big antennae-covered police van. Around it, helmeted police were unloading with riot shields.

  “We see you, captain,” I said.

  “Good. I don’t want to see you, unless it gets really bad. Red flags. Bulls. Understand?”

  “Understood.”

  “Good. Glad you’re here.” A chime told me he was gone, and that worked for me; Atlas had held firm against our being used for public order operations against normals, and the final Go No-Go would be Lei Zi’s anyway.

  “He sounds on top of it,” Artemis said. “Do you see the workers Lei Zi mentioned?”

  “Um, yeah. South edge of the crowd, making noise. It looks like the mourners are stuck up against the side of the club, but they’re not trying to go anywhere.” The small knot of people carrying flowers and frames had formed up tight and were shouting back at the crowd. It looked like some of the late arrivals were trying to force their way through the crush to join them… “Oh no they’re not.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “The Bees are here. And Dane.”

  * * *

  Scenario One: send Rush in to “disappear” each of them from the middle of the crowd. Like they’d go willingly. Scenario Two… My thoughts stuttered around the impossibility of doing any kind of quiet extraction, while a big part of me hysterically demanded to know what the hell they were doing there.

  “Are they really?” Artemis asked, sounding mildly interested.

  I desperately wanted Shelly. She could have easily gotten them on the phone and passed them to me through our neural link, bypassing Dispatch. Seven. If he was close enough…

  Artemis handed me a cell.

  “What?”

  “Burner phone. Never know when you need to talk outside the system.”

  Don’t ask. I dialed Megan’s number. Pick up pick up pick up.

  “Megan here,” she came in clear against the crowd noise. Artemis leaned over to listen.

  “Hi Meg, I can see you,” I said carefully.

  “TV or live?”

  “Live.”

  “Cool. We were down in the Loop when Julie got the tweet. Shankman’s an ass.”

  “And you’re all here to tell him? Go away.”

  “Can’t. Annabeth wants to tear him a new one first.”

  “Annabeth?”

  “I know, right? Righteous indignation’s a new one.”

  The background pitch got louder, angrier. I heard yelling, but they’d moved under the trees.

  “Meg?”

  “Ooh. Looks like we’re not going to make it that far.”

  “What’s happening?”

  “People shouldn’t be stereotypes. Big guy, bigger mouth, bad hygiene. He’s telling Annabeth off and Julie’s yelling at him.”

  “Meg, get them out of there.”

  “Too late—one of them pushed Annabeth. Oops, she tripped.”

  I closed my eyes.

  “Aaand Dane just decked him. Talk later, gotta kick some ass.” And she hung up.

  Artemis began checking her e-lasers, loosening her shoulder and hip holsters. “How will they do?”

  I handed the cell back, strangely calm. “Megan and Julie took Master Li’s class with me, and Meg usually packs a collapsible baton. I saw her use it, once.”

  That once was when some drunk varsity boys tried to pick a fight with Dane after a game, and Meg decided she didn’t like the numbers. She whipped the thing out (six inches retracted, nearly a foot and a half extended) in a swing that locked it open with a wicked k-chunk sound, and asked Dane if she could have the extras. That ended the party.

  A knot of motion caught my eye. “And it looks like they’ve got help. A bunch of the construction guys just headed under the trees.” Over by The Fortress’ doors, heads turned towards the park as Shankman lost the attention of his audience.

  “Astra, Artemis, Rush, stand by,” Lei Zi said. “We’re almost there. If Captain Verres gives the go then Artemis and Rush will tag, Astra will tie. Work the south edge; the Guardians will work the north.”

  “South edge, understood, I said. “Dispatch, Captain Verres please?”

  “Stand by,” he responded. “I’m sending in a squad to try and isolate the fight. This doesn’t have to spread.”

  Then someone fired the rocket. The fire-trail bloomed, from the trees right into one of the club’s narrow windows, and the explosion threw chunks of the wall into the crowd ahead of the fireball.

  “Sweet mother of— Go!” Verres yelled.

  “All Sentinels, cancel containment, assume public-safety priorities!” Lei Zi seconded.

  Artemis leaped off the edge and I caught her hands as we fell, free-fall most of the way down to pull into a gee-ripping arc under the trees. I dropped her into the middle of the fight and kept going, landing on the sidewalk at the edge of the dust-choked blast zone. Where a guy with a sign took a swing at me.

  “Are you completely insane?”

  I took the broken sign away and zip-cuffed him, then did the same for the idiot covered in cement dust who emptied his pistol into my back. From the suit and tie, I guessed the guy fancied himself one of Shankman’s bodyguards. The Next Great Statesman himself ran for it, surrounded by more suits. With no more threats of violence, I turned to examine the stunned and fallen demonstrators in time to see Rush drop Quin off in a blur of speed.

  “Astra, we have the street, take the interior,” Lei Zi instructed.

  “Interior, on it!” I launched myself for the hole in the wall, and the second rocket caught me. It helpfully blew me through the hole, throwing me through the tables to slide across the dance floor.

  “Astra! Status!” Lei Zi called through the ringing in my head.

  “Just— Hit but mobile.” I sat up to prove it and sucked in a breath, eyes tearing. Not the ribs again.

  A moment ticked by, then “Rush has found the launchers, two laser-guided throwaways. They put a guy on top of the Marino Park coffee kiosk with them. Stand down till you’re able.”

  “Thanks,” I said, then looked up. Marcus tossed a table aside to loom over me, offering a hand up I gladly accepted.

  “You okay?” the bouncer asked. “Rough entrance.”

  I nodded. “I’m good. Is anybody hurt?”

  “Nah. Hardly anybody’s here before ten, and I sent everyone else out the back way when Shankman and his boys started their scene. Figured I could take them myself if they got through the door.” He looked around at the shattered and scattered tables. A few were burning, and flames crept up the outside wall’s interior paneling.

  “I don’t think we’re opening for lunch. Let me get the extinguisher before the fire-system goes off.”

&n
bsp; “Don’t mind me.” He got busy while I hugged my ribs and tried to think. My head rang, the world wobbled, spent rocket and explosive burned my nose, and I was beginning to see a sad trend. Enter a house, get blown out the window. Visit a dealership, get blown out into the parking lot. Drop in on a riot, get blown into the club. Did the Hollywood Knights have weeks like this?

  When the wobbliness faded, I exited through the club’s front door. The “park” was chaos, but, amazingly, there were no fatalities. Probably nobody would ever know the credit belonged to Seven. He’d left his GQ look behind and I’d flown right by him without noticing. Collar open and shirtsleeves up, he’d worked his way through the mob so that when the rockets went in he’d been standing right next to the tight group of mourners by the wall. Later he told me he’d been focusing hard on nobody getting killed, and apparently his luck listened to him.

  Paramedics stepped carefully among sitting and prone protestors. Captain Verres’ riot-trained officers moved through the crowd in threes and fours, efficiently cuffing and directing. They didn’t have a lot of fighting to put down; the explosions had changed most demonstrator’s priorities and, going with the flow, they’d thrown flash-bangs to encourage confusion and flight (I’d heard them from inside). Now they swept through a mostly pacified crowd. The air reeked of burned magnesium-ammonium perchlorate, and I stepped around rows of zip-cuffed detainees, searching.

  I couldn’t see them. Focus. Be Astra.

  “Dispatch.” I queried. “Status nominal. Location of Lei Zi?”

  “Lei Zi location police command center, A-One. Standing order: do not engage. Assist at discretion.”

  “Thank you. Artemis’ location?”

  “A-Two location 300 feet to your southwest.”

  I didn’t run.

  Chapter Thirty

  Every concentration of power creates its own opposition, whether that power is military, political, monetary, or social. Opposition groups may or may not be violent, largely depending upon their aims and whether or not they believe the political environment favors them. Citizen-militia groups existed previous to the Event, and their membership has grown in the wake of each superhuman-caused disaster.

  Department of Superhuman Affairs, Threat Assessment 10.4, Summary.

  * * *

  Lei Zi and Riptide didn’t even get directly involved, which was all to the good; Lei Zi could have stunned dozens, she was that good with her control, and Riptide brought his own water-cannons to the fight, but both would have been hard on the crowd.

  I found Artemis with Dane and the Bees. Annabeth sat on the bricks, shaken but looking okay, while Julie washed the blood off her knees. Squatting beside her, Dane sported bleeding knuckles and the battle-light of his raiding, slaving, Viking ancestors in his eyes. Megan’s open baton lay ignored a few feet away—she wasn’t stupid enough to claim possession of an illegal concealed weapon in the middle of a police action. A couple of construction guys gave statements to an officer while others stood around.

  I nodded to Artemis and kept going. I had an excuse; at the command center, I could hear Lei Zi yelling at Captain Verres.

  “Why didn’t anybody tell us about the Paladins?” I’d never seen her seriously angry, and she had good volume.

  “Ma’am,” Verres replied politely. “We had no idea they were in town.”

  Now I wanted Shelly back for the virtual memory she provided. I vaguely remembered seeing a report on some anti-cape militia groups. They met on weekends to train and prepare, waiting for the day when all of us capes decided it was time to openly take over the government and the country and grind norms beneath our heels. No, really.

  “And how could you people miss rocket launchers?”

  “Ma’am, the team on the kiosk held cameras until they fired. Newsfeed timestamps show they didn’t fire until the Chicago News helicopter spotted your pair on the Newberry Tower. We think their intent was to lure your girl in, then pot her.”

  “Brilliant conclusion, captain.” She made his rank sound like a swearword.

  “They’d have probably settled for any flying cape,” I said, stepping up. I made sure my voice was strong and I stood straight. “Captain Verres. It’s good it was me—someone like Red Robin would have been… Well, yuck.”

  “Astra.” Taking my offered hand, he returned a firm shake. He looked like his voice, completely bald, bull-neck, solid and competent, and he gave me a quick scan. Under the dust and scorch I must have looked alright, because he chuckled.

  “Glad it was you, then. Hate to have a hero go down on my watch.”

  “Do you know anything about them, yet?”

  “Only that they’re locals.” He rubbed his head. “The DSA hasn’t warned us about any local chapters, but both are in our database for public disturbances. My guess is they’ve just been talk till now, and Shankman’s campaign pushed them into action.”

  So now we had a team of supervillains and homicidally paranoid normals with bad intentions. We were never coming off of Def-1. Lei Zi must have read something in my face, because she exhaled and deliberately relaxed.

  “I apologize for my outburst, captain,” she said. Then, quietly, “Astra, I’d like you to return to the Dome; we left no one on watch.”

  I looked back at the cleanup, nodded. “Thanks, boss. Captain.” He flipped me a salute as I took off.

  * * *

  Dr. Beth actually sighed when I walked into the infirmary. It hurt to peel out of my costume bodysuit (pretty much a loss, miracle-weave or not) and my breath hitched when I raised my arms. He took one look at my scans and ordered me off patrol duty for at least three days. And no workouts.

  “Watch” is a joke; it’s not like the TV shows, where a superteam has a monitor room and they spend all their time watching the news feeds and listening to emergency-channel chatter and waiting for Things To Happen. Dispatch plugged right into the Chicago Emergency Dispatch System along with police and emergency services; we got our calls when a situation met a determined set of circumstances. So being on watch just meant waiting—and training, studying, eating, sleeping, or catching up on paperwork while waiting. In my case, catching up on schoolwork for the classes I wasn’t attending right now.

  So I carefully showered and changed into a fresh costume, with one eye to Chicago News’ live coverage of the mess. Willis brought me a sandwich and, in my room and mask off, I filed my after-action report, called Mom (I didn’t call the Bees; the way I felt now, we’d have words), and then called the hospital to check on Chakra and had to reassure Blackstone I was fine. Apparently Chicago News got a beautiful shot of my encounter with unfriendly fire.

  And he said Chakra was awake! Which meant that now she could speed her healing with her own powers. Just hearing that made me feel a million times better; Chakra and I didn’t have much in common, but she’d become kind of an older sister—an often embarrassing older sister. Maybe an eccentric aunt? After that I settled in and killed time studying up on the Paladins.

  Apparently their founder, Daniel Nathanial Allred, started the first chapter in rural Vermont just a year after the Event. The report said they were mostly survivalists and weekend-warriors; they stocked food and weapons in their compounds against the day when we took over, and did a lot of pamphleteering and online ranting. But a recent DSA report hinted that they might be developing “action arms” (Gee, do you think?).

  The rest of the team returned, and Lei Zi kept the debriefing short, reminding us to file equipment expenditures for used zip-ties and such, and stood us all down; unless something major blew up—literally—all Dispatch calls would be shared among the Guardian teams for the rest of the day. Artemis and I visited the lab to check on Shelly’s progress. The titanium-cased sphere holding her “brain” looked, wow, just spherical and spherical. Vulcan had put up a screen with a task bar for non-geniuses like us to see; the bar looked half-done, which meant about as much as a NASA launch countdown. Then we went up to her rooms. I cautiously stretched out on her b
ig bed and admired her panda picture. She’d had it professionally framed after moving in.

  She stripped off her half mask and dropped her guns and gear before gently sitting on the bed beside me. Propping her head on her knee, she looked me over. “So? Want to hear the skinny?”

  “Just tell me they didn’t get arrested.”

  “Not even Megan. Worst damage was Dane’s cut knuckles. Someone needs to tell that boy you don’t box without gloves.”