Wearing the Cape: Villains Inc.

by Harmon, Marion G.

  I couldn’t argue; a retired marine, he would know what it took to be fight-ready. “So, who?”

  “You’ve met him. Lieutenant Troy Dahmer, ironically—the supersoldier who tried to recruit you for the Army. His current tour is up, and he’s looking for a civilian job.”

  Lieutenant Dahmer: buzz-cut blond hair, nice face, thin scar from the corner of his eye down to his chin. A soldier’s soldier with a weird sense of humor. He sounded good, but it didn’t feel right. “Everyone will be comparing him to Atlas.”

  “He could be Atlas,” Blackstone said.

  “No—”

  He held up his hand again.

  “I said ‘could,’ not ‘is.’ The truth is, the team owns Atlas’ name and symbol; we could bring Dahmer in, slap the ‘A’ on his chest, and use him to continue the legacy John created. And there’ve been some suggestions in that direction. But John made Atlas a symbol that was bigger than just the Sentinels. He was the first, and he set the standard the public measures capes by.”

  He ran a hand through his hair, the lines around his eyes deepening.

  “Hope, John wanted the ‘A’ to be used. He was the goddamned Last Cowboy, and you know he always expected to die with his boots on.”

  I nodded, my throat closing up.

  “I never understood why, until afterward,” he went on. “But he saw the A like a marshal’s badge, a symbol to be passed on. He was wrong. Nobody else is going to wear the A. The current non-scandal will fade and all anyone will remember is the good he did, but you’re right; the public will see any Atlas-type we bring in as his replacement, and it won’t go down well. Unless you’re his replacement.”

  “Me?” I squeaked.

  “Sidekick, remember? You’re the real heir of his legacy. I’m not saying you’ve got to wear the A, and you certainly don’t want to use the name, but it’s time you stepped up. Drop the black. All the public sees now is a kid acting dramatic. Andrew sent you a new costume a month ago, in your old Atlas-colors, and if anyone knows what the public needs to see, it’s him. Step up, and we can bring Lt. Dahmer in without any blowback. The team will be stronger, you’ll be trained, and John will get his wish if not the way he expected; it’s a win for everyone. Think about it. Because tomorrow Lei Zi and I have a job for you.”

  * * *

  Blackstone left it at that, and I got on with my day. Tom drove me back to get my car, as silent as Tom-Bob-Willis—the whole Platoon gang—always was. I wondered if Platoon was Blackstone’s DSA contact. Finally back in my rooms in the Dome, I wrote up the incident report, then stripped down and walked into my closet.

  Blackstone had said “step up” but he might as well have said “grow up.” Was I being that unprofessional? Why had I gone with black? I hadn’t felt comfortable, in the blue and white, but… Yuck. Maybe the tabloids were right for once; maybe I was acting like a drama-queen. How Victorian of me. I sighed. It couldn’t hurt to look.

  Shelly popped in as I pulled the new costume out of its bag.

  “Wow,” she said. “You’re going to do it?”

  “Why?” I didn’t trust her playful grin.

  “No reason. Just thinking you may need help.”

  I dropped the outfit on my bed and looked at the picture and instructions that came with it.

  “Oh, hell no!”

  My BFF since childhood collapsed into shrieks of laughter.

  The thing came in two parts, plus cape, mask, boots, and gloves. The mask was my old leather half-mask and wig, in Atlas’ cobalt blue. The short cape looked the same too, but blue with my star in white. But the body of the costume…

  I sighed. I’d dress, then I’d go strangle Andrew. He at least deserved to see why he was going to die.

  First I put on the white spandex tights. The legs ended in stirrups for my feet, and the high waist attached to suspenders with snaps. The blue bodysuit was harder to get into. Of layered and seamed spandex, it had the high neck and long sleeves that I liked, but its bottom might as well have been a thong. The bodysuit had to weigh at least ten pounds on its own, with reinforced ribbing that made it tight as a corset under the spandex, and heavy snaps up the front that locked me in. The suit’s leg came up to the top of my hips, and despite the tights I felt like I had a permanent wedgy.

  I attached the cape and looked down, ignoring Shell’s ongoing giggle-fits.

  “Nice boo-teh,” she gasped.

  “Can I go out in public in this?”

  “It’s not like you’re flashing skin. Fact—you’re covering more than you used to. At least the cape hides your butt.”

  I groaned, then pulled on the boots and gloves and looked in the mirror. Whatever else Andrew had been thinking, it did make me look more grown up. No costume could give me stature or make me look anything but elfin and petite, but the bodysuit pulled in my already-small waist and it had the usual bust enhancement, giving me an almost hourglass shape. The bright silver snaps displaced my crest, so Andrew had shrunk it and moved it higher and to the left so I wore the six-pointed star like a sheriff’s badge. The tabloids could call me a minor all they wanted, but nobody seeing me in this would pay much attention to them.

  I looked at the instruction card again, flipped it over. He must have anticipated my reaction, because on the back he’d scrawled The snaps are titanium-alloy and can take temps as hot as you can, and the reinforcement and fireproofing will prevent wardrobe malfunctions. You shred too many costumes, girl.

  Maybe The Harlequin wouldn’t mind if I only hurt Andrew a little.

  I dropped to the bed. “Hey!” Shelly complained, rolling over so I wasn’t lying through her virtual self anymore. I wiggled with the unfamiliar feel of the costume, sighed.

  She echoed me. “Did we do it?”

  “Do what?”

  “Save Blackstone. I mean—we outed the villain that killed him before, right? And the Outfit’s so not after him now. They don’t want anything to do with any of us, or what was the point of today?”

  “I don’t know,” I said slowly, sitting up and hugging my knees. “I wish we knew why the Wicked Witch killed him in the first place. Maybe only Blackstone was a threat to her before, but the whole team’s a threat now, and the police, and the DSA if she manages to get out of Chicago and becomes an interstate fugitive.”

  I chewed my lip, but before I could chase my thoughts around some more Shelly got that abstracted look. She made a face.

  “We’ve got a call from the CPD Detective Division, Fisher’s team,” she said. “He wants you at the Great Lakes Mercedes dealership. It’s another murder.”

  “Of course he does.” I looked down at myself. I could change, but what would be the point? I’d already made up my mind.

  “Blackstone flagged us,” Shelly added. “You’re supposed to take Galatea.”

  “Aaand that’s the plum in the pudding.”

  * * *

  “She’s different,” Fisher said, smiling. “You, too.”

  “Galatea, this is Detective Fisher. Detective, Galatea, Vulcan’s gynoid field unit.”

  “Good evening, detective. I am pleased to meet you.”

  “Are you really?”

  She looked at me. “Is that a normal social response?”

  “Don’t make me hurt you,” I said to Fisher, rolling my eyes. “Galatea, file Detective Fisher’s response under ‘humor’ and don’t use it.”

  “Thank you, Astra.”

  Fisher chuckled, crushed out his cigarette, and opened the door to usher us into the dealership showroom. He hardly needed to; every one of the building’s bay windows had been shattered and we could have stepped in anywhere. I opened my mouth to ask him about the Millibrand case, and he shook his head. Later.

  Phelps and Wyatt turned our way as we stepped inside. Both stopped what they were doing and couldn’t decide who to look at, making me think it might have been a good idea to bring Galatea along after all; her silver and white neoprene catsuit showed the ridges and bumps of her articulati
on, and her mannequin’s face, barely mobile, gave away what she was to anyone who watched her for more than a second.

  Officer Wyatt settled for nodding to me before turning back to his interview, but Phelps joined us.

  “George is talking to the last customer,” he said. “I’ve got the sales manager waiting upstairs. What’s this?”

  “She,” I said, “is Galatea, and she’s with me.”

  “Phelps,” Fisher said as the junior detective started to puff up. “I’ll be upstairs in a minute, after I show Astra and Galatea the security footage and they’ve had a look around.” He led the two of us to the other side of the floor. “Two in two weeks. Sorry about this, kid.”

  I choked. I recognized the body hidden by the silver Mercedes.

  “Donald Gerrold,” Fisher said. “You know him?”

  And I wanted to kill him. This time I didn’t have to smell the blood—it was all over poor Don and the floor. At least someone had closed his eyes. I took a breath, swallowed, and decided I wasn’t about to contaminate the crime-scene.

  “I met him today, Detective Fisher,” I said. As Hope. “He works for—worked for—Robert Early. What happened?” I managed to keep my voice even.

  “That happened.” He pointed to bits of metal scattered around the floor and imbedded in showroom cars. “K-Strike?”

  “Dude.”

  The hero straightened up from his post by the door, stepping over the remains of whatever it was to join us. He wore a black half-helmet and a black and gray jumpsuit armored like a motorcycle racer’s. A short black swashbuckler’s cape, slung over one shoulder, made him look like a cyberpunk highwayman.

  “K-Strike.” I smiled. I’d met the West Side Guardian at last year’s Metrocon blowout party, where he’d hit on Artemis in a charming but perfunctory way.

  “Hey Astra,” he said. “Nasty business.”

  “What happened?”

  He looked at Fisher, and the detective nodded.

  “I was riding home from a safety event two blocks from here when Dispatch called—said a metal-man had killed somebody and was shooting up the place. Bullets are no problem, so I came in without waiting for backup and found Robby the Robot here—” He waived around and I could see some of the bigger parts were arm or leg joints. “—firing away with a couple of built-in autorifles.”

  He frowned. “Metal-dude wasn’t shooting to hit anybody, or even the cars, but I figured that could change. I could see it wasn’t some dude in armor, so I took it down.”

  I looked around at the mess. “With what?”

  He reached into a belt pocket and pulled out a couple of steel marbles. His power was a personal field that could absorb the kinetic energy of anything that touched it, making him bulletproof. He could also project kinetic energy into anything he touched; he could fire those marbles hard enough to punch holes in concrete, and take the eye out of a One-Eyed Jack with one, too—I’d seen him do it on the Metrocon best-of video.

  “I took off its arms at the elbows so it couldn’t shoot anymore,” he said. “Then it just blew up. Lucky everyone was already under cover—the biggest bit left is its head over there.” He pointed to the caved-in robot head. It had camera-lens eyes and microphone ears.

  Galatea looked at it, and then at the fragments of joints nearby.

  “May I examine it?”

  Fisher nodded. “Don’t touch anything yet.”

  “I will not.” She knelt stiffly and placed a hand in front of the thing’s field of vision. “Detective Fisher,” she said. “The visual and audio sensors of this automaton are still active, and it is transmitting a signal.”

  “It’s what? Wyatt, get me a trash can.”

  My super-duper senses aren’t always the biggest help, but I heard the sharp thuds of unlatched steel doors and the timing set off alarms in my head.

  “Fisher—”

  The steel dragon came through the windows.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Superhero vs. supervillan fights are often short but seldom brutal. Lots of confrontations start and end with “You know who I am, do you really want to do this?” If the hero has a formidable reputation, often it’s enough. If it isn’t, neither side is usually trying to kill the other; villains who become cape-killers don’t prosper, and heroes who kill villains have to fill out all kinds of paperwork and appear in front of unsympathetic review boards. And then there’s the other kind of fight.

  Astra, Notes From a Life.

  * * *

  “Dispatch!” I yelled. “Civilian evac!” Galatea froze, jerking, in the oddest attack of controlled epilepsy I’d ever seen, but people began disappearing in blurs of red as Rush arrived and started clearing the deck, staff and customers first. Fisher drew his gun before a sweeping claw threw him into the sports car behind him. He bent the wrong way, but before I could even react Rush whisked him away as well.

  The metal monster—a serpentine Chinese dragon built out of scavenged and spot-welded parts—focused on me as I leaped upward, hoping to draw its attention. It twisted about with a thumping crash, flattened a shiny showroom car, craned its head to follow my flight, and shot me with the artillery piece sticking out of its open mouth.

  “Hope!” Shelly screamed as the sabot-round blew me through the roof. I barely heard her, or anything else until my arc ended in the windshield of a BMW parked in the outside lot.

  I pulling myself out of the car dashboard, and gasped as agony flared. Broken ribs?

  “Clear?”

  “Geez! Rush got everybody but Galatea and K-Strike, and you’re hit! Wait for backup!”

  “Can’t!” I launched myself back through the frameless windows, coming in high. “We need to keep it here!”

  The critter spun to face me, impossibly fast, its scything tail neatly decapitating Galatea where she stood. A second sabot-round whumped out as I jinked, blowing another hole in the ceiling. K-Strike darted forward to push on its left foreleg with his field and stressed metal joints screeched as it lurched. I dove for its wildly swinging head as it turned to look for him.

  Whang. It staggered as I struck the base of its skull, grabbing hold and pulling up with stinging hands. Weaving, it flattened another show-car as I forced its metal head back. Its tail hit K-Strike and sheared off against his kinetic field.

  Whump. It fired again, adding a third hole and bringing down bits of burning ceiling. My ears rang and I couldn’t understand Shelly. Damn super-senses.

  It swung me into the wall, knocking me off in a shower of cement. I sat up, shaking my head. “Everybody’s coming!” Shelly yelled through our neural link. Then it stepped on me.

  I screamed as my ribs ground together. Pinned under tons of steel dragon, no leverage, I pushed back uselessly, taking sobbing breaths in time with each lance of pain. Its head swiveled around, mouth open, barrel down, and I knew it was going to blow its own foot off to take the shot. I could see down the barrel to the chambered shell, and I closed my eyes.

  “Astra!” Its knee-joint exploded, then Rush was there. He grabbed my shoulder and the world slowed. I pushed again as he pulled. “Move!” he yelled, and hung on as I flew up and back. The gun fired and I saw the shockwave propagate through the showroom floor, shattering tiles in a wave that passed under us.

  I pulled him up to a better position on my back, cringing as the move lit a fire in my ribs. “What was that?” I yelled over the stretched-out echoes of the blast. The expanding cloud of fragments slowed and then stopped as he took us completely over the Wall into hypertime.

  “Shaped charge to the knee! I always carry a few on my bike just in case!” He sounded like he’d run a marathon. How many transitions had he made? Focus. “Got any more of those?”

  “One.”

  “Bike?”

  “Outside on the curb.”

  We flew out through the glassless windows. Traveling in Rush’s freeze-frame world always gave me the wiggins (I’d closed my eyes on the bike ride this morning), but I didn’t have time t
o think about it. I landed beside the bike and he dropped us out of full hypertime into a slow-moving world of dopplered sound. Not letting go of me, he cracked a case behind the bike-seat and pulled out a truncated steel cone, bigger than both fists.

  He took a steadying breath and the world froze again. “You got a plan?”

  I grinned savagely. “Off with its head.”

  “That’ll work.” He wrapped his arms around my neck and I took off. We found the frozen dragon, head still bent groundward for the shot. K-Strike hung suspended mid-leap, his target another of the critter’s legs. I landed us on the dragon’s neck, right behind where I’d hit it the first time, and Rush slapped the shaped charge onto the joint where neck met head.