Forging Hephaestus (Villains' Code Book 1)

by Drew Hayes

  With a mighty leap that would have made Medley proud, Donald jumped straight over the railing that ran around the fourth floor and into the open air above the dance area. As soon as he was airborne, he kicked on the armor’s thrusters. It couldn’t fly, technically, but the Master Brah’s armor did have the ability to hover for short windows of time. In the case of unleveled armor, that window was especially tiny—the thruster gauge on Donald’s visor began dropping like it had sprung a leak. With no time to spare, he spun in the air, locking his weapon directly on to the alien creature as it slammed into the wall where he’d been standing.

  For a moment, just one precious moment amid the chaos of the evening, the creature was stunned by a combination of surprise and impact. It was exactly the chance Donald had been waiting for. He fired the last plasma beam without hesitation, striking right in the monster’s center mass. The armor held as before for just an instant and then the beam was through, boring a hole directly in its torso. Not wanting to take any chances, Donald swung the gun, the laser carving a path of burned flesh from the middle of its torso up to its alien head. The beam puttered out just before his thrusters, and suddenly Donald was freefalling through the air.

  He slammed into the ground, the shields saving him from some, but not all, of the impact. To his surprise, the armor dissolved into flashing numbers and sparks of electricity as soon as the shield gauge hit empty. Seconds later, the gun, flashing a red light on its side that indicated it was out of shots, did the same. Donald had never seen that happen before, but he’d also never completely used up or broken any of the digital items he brought over. Surprising as it was, the disappearing gear was the lowest possible item on his list of priorities.

  Donald sprawled on the dance floor, listening to the music still somehow blasting through the air, and waited. His back ached and his ears were already starting to hurt from being so close to the speakers, but he didn’t dare move a muscle. Not until he knew for sure that the fight was over. If that thing was alive, if he’d failed to hit any vital organs, Donald wasn’t sure what moves he had left. Wait peacefully for death seemed the most likely, but after fighting this hard to live, he somehow doubted he had it in him to just lie down and die, no matter that he was already lying down.

  Finally, the furry head of Medley popped over the railing’s edge. He yelled something down but Donald was in a crush of bass—no mere words could cut through. When Donald failed to reply, Medley quickly put two and two together. Rather than continuing to scream, he merely held out a clawed hand with a raised thumb—the universal sign for “things are okay.”

  His friend’s furry thumbs-up was one of the most beautiful things Donald could ever remember seeing. He returned the gesture with one of his own, letting Medley know that he was bruised, not broken. Then, to no one’s surprise more than his own, Donald let out a whoop of unfettered joy. On its heels came laughter, nervous and wonderful and paired with tears, which Donald wouldn’t notice until several minutes later.

  They’d done it. They hadn’t just survived, they’d stopped the monster. Maybe he’d exaggerated his way into the AHC; maybe he didn’t really have what it would take to be a big-name cape; maybe tonight was just a fluke. But tonight, none of that mattered. He’d still managed to do the job.

  Tonight, Donald Moss was a superhero.

  Chapter 49

  “Come on now, even we have to admit that was pretty cool,” Alexis said, refilling her glass of champagne.

  Thanks to her and Gretchen shoving people aside, they’d made it back to the limo just in time to watch Donald summon his armor. Tori sat, mouth wide open in amazement at what she’d just witnessed. Donald, Donald of all people, had just pulled that off? It hadn’t felt like she was watching her coworker at all. Had she not known better, Tori would have guessed she was witnessing the fight of a real, true-blue cape.

  Which, now that she thought about it, she sort of had been.

  “Good for you,” Tori said, eyes still on the screen as Donald laughed himself to tears amid the blaring music.

  “He fought bravely,” Gretchen agreed.

  Lynn cleared her throat and shot a look to Alexis, who took the cue and turned off the video feed. With the limo once more silent, she moved to a position near the front where everyone could see her.

  “Though tonight was planned to be more fun than educational, it seems fate intervened and gave us a teaching moment after all,” Lynn said. “Capes are not, in and of themselves, our enemies. We do not antagonize them; in fact, much of the code is based around staying out of their way. We can even respect them, on a personal level, if we deem them to be strong or worthwhile in a way we acknowledge. Friendship is... well, not unheard of, but certainly a bit tough. Nonetheless, Tori, I’m glad you didn’t have to bury a friend tonight. With all of that said, can either of you apprentices guess why Alexis was monitoring the feed before anyone asked her to?”

  “She wanted information,” Beverly replied, no hesitation in her voice. “Those guys are new to the AHC, right? Medley popped up this week, and Tori’s friend only came on last Friday. In case they survived, she—no, the guild would want to know what they could do.”

  “Precisely.” Lynn turned to Tori, who’d suspected that to be the reason even if she didn’t want to say it out loud. “So, using that information, Tori, if Donald were to come up on you while in costume and on a job and catch you red-handed, what methods would you use to avoid capture?”

  Tori opened her mouth to reply then closed it a second later. Her first instinct was to assume Lynn was asking how she’d kill Donald, but that hadn’t been the question. In fact, the guild emphasized evasion over engagement at pretty much every turn. Mentally flipping back through the fight, she realized that they now all knew of a very easy way to slow him down long enough to slip away.

  “I’d blast his armor until it dissolved, then run away before he was able to reform it,” Tori replied at last. “Since the gun died too, there’s probably a limit to how much he can use his items. If I could dodge them long enough and slip away before he had the chance to reload, I could take off my costume and just be regular Tori again.”

  “Which addresses why costumes are mandatory,” Lynn said, giving Tori a slight nod. “Yes, that would be a viable option. In contrast, you also now know that the one called Medley has exceptional recovery abilities. Nothing short of extreme damage is likely to take him down, and even then, only for a short while. This means he can be dealt with more firmly without risk of killing him.”

  Lynn took a glass of champagne from the bar and carefully sipped its contents. “Remember, unless you are specifically authorized by the council, killing a cape is to be avoided at all costs. They get angry when their own die, just as we do, and that anger can lead to problems for the entire guild. Much of why we gather information is so that, should engagement become unavoidable, we can slip away without doing lasting harm. Control and precision are far more crucial to our survival than mere power.”

  “Of course, when the need does arise, and the council gives that permission, it also helps to know what their weaknesses are,” Alexis added. “Though you won’t have to worry about that for a long while. Killing capes, especially covertly, isn’t easy, and it definitely isn’t something we saddle rookies with.”

  “When do you kill them?” Tori asked. “I’ve had to learn the code backwards and forwards, and I’ve yet to see a clause outlining when we knock off superheroes.”

  “It’s covered under the ‘threats to guild security’ section,” Stacey told her. “If the council feels a cape is stirring things up too much, focusing on coming after us instead of the people who aren’t so careful with their crimes, then we try to dissuade them. First politely, then less so.”

  “It doesn’t happen often,” Lynn said. “Nowadays, the AHC largely plays along with the peace. In the early days, things were less stable. But none of the capes in charge are gung-ho about coming after us. They know the gain isn’t worth the loss, so t
hey usually squish any attempts by others to get on our bad side.”

  “If it ever did come down to a fight between us and them, who do you think would win?” Beverly asked. She seemed oddly interested in the idea, a fact that Tori filed away for consideration at a later date.

  “No one knows,” Gretchen said.

  “Yeah, we’ll talk a lot of shit in front of the masses, but at the end of the day, it’s a toss-up,” Alexis added. “They’ve got more people than we do, but we have more major league hitters than they do. People who get the insane, world-changing powers are more likely to seek self-betterment than saving the world. It would be a good fight, but there’s no way to predict the winner.”

  “Which is why we work so hard to avoid it,” Lynn said. “Win or lose, an all-out war between us and the capes would shatter the enjoyable lives we’ve built for ourselves. No one, at least no one in the guild, wants to go back to being wanted fugitives with our faces plastered everywhere. Not when we can have champagne, VIP lounges, and limos along with anonymity.”

  “War: the only way to win is not to play.” Tori wasn’t sure that everyone would get the War Game quote, but the casual nodding and smiles told her that at least the sentiment had made it through.

  “Exactly,” Lynn agreed. She reached up and knocked gently on the divider between them and the robo-driver. Seconds later, the car smoothly pulled into motion. “Which is why we stay out of their business, they stay out of ours as long as we don’t flaunt it, and everyone wins. The people get peace, the capes get acclaim, and we are about to go get some cheesecake.”

  Weird monster fights and cheesecake weren’t exactly how Tori had expected the night to end, but, given the company she was with, things certainly could have turned out worse.

  * * *

  The soft sound of palms striking one another snapped Donald to attention. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end as he readied himself for another fight. The sound repeated itself, and again, and again, and he finally realized what it was. Apollo was standing in the door of the infirmary, giving him a slow clap that was gradually picking up speed. From anyone else, he might have taken it to be sarcastic, but the beaming grin on Apollo’s face made it all too clear how sincere the applause was.

  “You, Donald Moss, are full of surprises,” Apollo said, walking through the door and sitting down next to the tank of goo Donald was currently submerged in. Supposedly, it rapidly accelerated the healing process and minimized long-term damage—an invention Professor Quantum had come up with some time before. All Donald knew was that from the moment he’d been put inside, his back had stopped hurting, which was no small feat since it was bruised from his neck to his ass.

  “I have to tell you, when I heard that there had been a dimensional rip with an unfriendly breaking through, I assumed the worst. Then they told me it was at the club where we sent you and Medley, and all I could think was that I hoped you got the call out for backup in time. But you and Ren, you didn’t even need backup, did you? The two of you handled an Epsilon Class inhuman presence on your own, and that is impressive. Damned impressive, if you want to know the truth.”

  “We caught some lucky breaks,” Donald admitted. Much as he enjoyed the praise, it felt a little excessive to accept wholeheartedly. The last thing he wanted was for Apollo to think he could handle that sort of fight regularly.

  “Oh, there’s no question about that. I’d say seven out of ten times, that thing would have torn you both apart,” Apollo agreed. Despite the seemingly negative words, his cheer didn’t dim. If anything, it seemed to increase. “But three out of ten is much better odds than I’d give the majority of the rookies we’ve got right now. With time and training, each of you will be able to smoke something like that single-handedly.”

  Donald couldn’t imagine ever being that powerful; however, before tonight he couldn’t have imagined himself going toe-to-toe with a giant alien monster in real life either. He was starting to think his imagination was going to have to expand its limits, though he wasn’t too keen on testing Apollo’s assertion anytime soon.

  “Let’s hope I get a long while before I have to try soloing anything of that level,” Donald replied. “What was that creature, anyway? Another meta-human?”

  “Maybe, in the dimension where it hails from.” Apollo sat over one of the uncomfortable plastic chairs, hovering in place a few inches above the surface. “Or it might be something akin to a deer for all we know. Sometimes, for one reason or another, the walls between the dimensions bleed or outright break, and on those occasions, it’s possible for things to slip through. What you fought was one such example. Some of the smarter superheroes have tried cataloguing them, but there are more dimensions out there than there are stars in the sky, so no one has had much luck figuring out any sort of pattern in the bits we discover.”

  “Do they at least know what caused the rip tonight?” Donald had an uncomfortable fear sitting in his stomach as he pictured the way he pulled his items into existence. What if he was yanking them from another dimension and in doing so was weakening the borders between them?

  “Oh yes; security cameras caught a glimpse of the criminal named Nexus watching the show from a corner of the club. We had a few of our metas with dimensional abilities do a sweep and they confirmed it: he caused the rip.”

  Much as he’d expected to feel relieved, Donald instead felt a new fear crystalize inside him. “Nexus is the guy who wiped out the original Denver, isn’t he? Why on earth would he bother unleashing a monster in a club?”

  “No one knows why Nexus does what he does.” Apollo shrugged his tan, muscular shoulders in a way that seemed strange for one so blessed with authority. “He’s untraceable, unpredictable, and seems to be totally insane. Sometimes he changes things in ways that help people; on other occasions he unleashes wanton destruction for no apparent reason. Maybe there was someone in the club he wanted to kill tonight. Maybe he was just interested in seeing what you two could do. Maybe they messed up his drink order, I honestly have no clue. You’re better off not worrying about it too much. Think of Nexus like a force of nature: don’t look for reason in the destruction he causes.”

  “If he’s that dangerous, why hasn’t the AHC stopped him?” It was something Donald had wondered even back when he was looking in from the outside, but now that he was here, inches away from Apollo himself, the question seemed even more important. They had so many metas, so many resources. Why was a maniac like that allowed to run free?

  “Look, you find out a way to do that, you can pretty much write your own ticket around here,” Apollo replied. “Everyone has tried to stop him, even Lodestar and Quorum. We’ve captured him a few times, though it never lasts, and even killed him once or twice, not that it matters. He just turns right back up. We don’t know how his powers work, only that they let him open holes between dimensions. Trust me, the minute someone actually finds a way to neutralize that asshole, it will be all hands on deck.”

  Apollo leaned forward until he was only a few feet away from Donald’s face, his eyes suddenly serious. “One thing about me, I have no tolerance for the villains of this world. It’s our job to stop them, and I take that job very seriously. No matter what opinions our other members might have.”

  Before Donald could ask a single clarification question, the moment was past. Apollo was back to floating above his seat, ever-present grin right back in place. It happened so quickly, Donald almost wondered if he’d imagined the whole exchange.

  “But we’ll talk about that later. Tonight, you just need to focus on recovery,” Apollo told him, floating forward and putting his feet on the ground. “Tomorrow we’re going to have a press conference and some celebration for you and Medley. You both managed to score your first big collar before we’d even put you on patrol. Rest up and make sure you’re in tip-top shape.”

  Apollo walked to the edge of the room and looked back at Donald, the shadows from the hallway hitting his face in a way that distorted his consta
nt smile into something almost like an insane grin.

  “You need to take care of yourselves. I’ve got big plans for the both of you.”

  * * *

  Thuggernaut, Johnny, Arachno Bro, Pod Person, Arcanicus, and Ivan, who had slipped out once his kids were good and asleep, along with Lance and Warren, were seated around the poker table when the other apprentices and their guides walked in. Xelas—Alexis no more as she’d shed her disguise along with the others—glanced around in confusion before slapping herself on the head, causing a clank that echoed across the room.

  “Shit, I forgot you had this place tonight. We’ll go find another room to unwind in.” Xelas turned, motioning for the others to head back down the stairs, but Johnny called to her before she got free.

  “How’d your night go? Have a nice, fun outing at the club? We’ve been getting pretty rowdy ourselves.”

  Every female member of the council, along with Tori and Beverly, stared at Johnny with individual combinations of disbelief and contempt. Wordlessly, they filed back down the stairs in search of another lounge where they could drink wine, relax, and unwind from a night that had gone spectacularly off the rails. The slam of the door from downstairs was the only cue that they’d officially left. No one even bothered to call out a goodbye.