“Okay.” I close my eyes, and press my head against the hard armor that covers his chest. He loves me. It’s not real. I know that.
Still.
It’s better than nothing.
The Plan
Charles “Zan” Christensen
Charles “Zan” Christensen is a comics writer and publisher living in Seattle, Washington. He was the founding President of nonprofit LGBT comics organization Prism Comics, and is currently the publisher of graphic novel publisher Northwest Press. He was featured with artist Mark Brill in OUT magazine’s “OUT 100” for 2011 for their work on the anti-bullying comic book The Power Within. “The Plan” is his first prose fiction work and is dedicated to the guy who turned him in to the police.
I remember rain like this. Thick, heavy rain, driving almost sideways in the wind, with drops so big that they hurt when they hit your exposed skin. Rain like this will soak you through in a just few seconds and chill you to the bone. But not us; we gave off so much heat that we barely noticed it. This rain always got us in the mood.
But you’re not here with me now.
The city erected some bleachers in the town square yesterday in preparation for today’s public relations lovefest, but it’s way too early for anybody to be here yet. It’s not quite dawn, and with the rain clouds covering up whatever dim light might be on the horizon, it’s near pitch black out. I’ve already disrupted the power to the few streetlights on this block to make sure it stays that way. Darkness never bothers the mysterious Eclipse; my sleek, flexible black armor helps me blend into the shadows and I always see perfectly, thanks to my Infinity Lenses.
I’ve never told anyone the whole story of how I got them, since it doesn’t exactly paint me in the best light. Still, you might have heard variations on the general theme: alien crash lands on Earth, entrusts almost magical technology to incredulous Earth man with his dying breath to use it to defend the powerless and mete out justice.
They actually weren’t lenses when he pressed them into my hands. They were two small stones, diamond hard and clear, and they seemed to respond to my thoughts, as if they could become whatever I needed. I shaped them into a pair of obsidian lenses and discovered when I wore them, I had all kinds of amazing powers. I vowed to honor the alien’s dying wishes and use my newfound powers for the benefit of all.
Well, that lasted all of about three weeks.
I discovered that being able to see in pitch darkness and move through walls and having the strength of ten linebackers and the agility of a jungle cat was actually not very lucrative when you spend all your time foiling bank robberies, intervening in gang wars and maintaining a full-time shitty office day job. So I switched teams.
Save your moralizing and your judgements; it’s easy to brag about how you stuck with doing the selfless thing, but you weren’t the one who was faced with missing another mortgage payment and losing your house. You weren’t the one buried in credit card and student loan debt from getting a worthless masters degree.
It was one little heist at the start, just to settle the biggest debts, but then another opportunity arose, and another… Before I knew it, I got caught up in the challenge of it all. Yes, I admit it, it was fun. After we tangled a few times, they were calling me a “super-villain” and you were calling me your “arch enemy.”
Speaking of challenges, it was pretty tricky to sneak into the Mayor’s office and make a copy of the layout for today’s event, but it turns out I won’t even need it to know where the podium is going to be. Some helpful technician has marked the spot with gaffer’s tape, so I know exactly where to rig the device so it will be right below you.
The rain’s got me lost in memories when there’s work I should be doing. So I get back to work laying my final trap for you.
“Drop the bag and step away,” came the booming voice from behind me.
I froze, not knowing how to react at first. I’d been careful, not leaving any evidence at the crime scenes and making sure to disable any security cameras. I wasn’t trying to show off and draw attention, like a lot of “villains” did. Sure, I’d been taking some larger hauls, but I thought I was still going below the radar of the Justice Alliance. I mean, did they really watch collectible coin shops to make sure they’re not being robbed? I thought a security guard might eventually stumble upon me or something random like that, but I wasn’t really expecting to deal with a hero confrontation.
I hadn’t even thought of a goddamn super villain name yet.
When I turned around to size up the threat, however, all my worries melted away. Established superheroes tend to have pretty slick outfits—they’re on super-teams with big public relations budgets and design consultants—but it was obvious that this guy was just starting out, and fashion sense wasn’t one of his superpowers. His costume was a mess of garish yellows and light browns in ill-tailored shiny spandex. He had added a wide black leather strap to some small yellow swimming goggles to cover his eyes. His cape was edged with brown feathers which had the unfortunate and not-at-all threatening effect of looking like he was wearing a wilted brown feather boa. The costume was bad enough, but when he told me his name, that pushed it over the edge.
“You thought you’d steal those precious coins undetected,” he said earnestly, using whatever superhero gravitas he’d managed to pick up from Saturday morning cartoons and comic books. “But you didn’t count on the keen eyes of The Eagle!”
I actually felt a little guilty when I laughed out loud. I couldn’t help it; even though he’d obviously worked so hard on this getup, puckered seams and all, it was so predictable and literal. A guy dressed up like an eagle calling himself “The Eagle.” Yawn.
“Look, buddy, I’m sure this is fun for…” I started to say, after I managed to suppress my laughter.
Before I could finish, he was hurtling at me, teeth clenched, apparently not too pleased to be mocked on what might be his maiden voyage as a superhero. I realized right away that he wasn’t just some wannabe in a cape; he was actually flying through the air, and had he lost quite a few feathers when he pushed off forcefully from the ground. When I sidestepped to avoid him, he connected forcefully with the glass display case that I’d just emptied of its contents, compacting it into a pile of flattened metal and pulverized plate glass and making quite a dent in the wall behind it. Not only was he fast, but he was plenty strong and durable, too.
As passé as it was, the spandex certainly showed off his body; his muscles were on full display, tensed and rippling as he rose from the crushed remains of the showcase. He brushed off the broken glass—and the embarrassment—and squared himself to face me again.
Maybe his guard was down because he wasn’t expecting me to be so direct, but for whatever reason, I was able to land a solid punch, right to his nose. Temporarily stunned and disoriented, he sank back down to the floor.
I took advantage of the moment and sent the mental signal to the Infinity Lenses to initiate phasing mode. I dissolved into an insubstantial black mist, feeling the odd sensation of my body being held together solely by my force of will. The fastest I’d ever managed to make the change was five seconds, which sounds quick but, trust me, it wasn’t the kind of thing I would want to try in the thick of battle. I shuddered to think what would happen if something interrupted the process midway. Once the transformation was complete, however, there was no way anyone could lay a hand on me.
And the effect certainly was stylish.
Before I let my body dissipate to re-form elsewhere, I leaned in near the disappointed hero’s face and whispered, “You’ll do better next time.”
And I don’t know why, but I planted a ghostly kiss on his cheek.
Villainy might not be an “honorable” line of work but, regardless, it’s still work. I had to cut a chunk of pavement out of the street, wire and place the device, then put everything back exactly the wa
y it was. I couldn’t risk your “Eagle vision” detecting that something was amiss and ruining everything. And I did all this in a skintight costume while it was pouring down freezing rain. Why do I even wear this costume when there’s nobody around to see it? Force of habit, I suppose.
Shortly after I finished and headed to my position on the rooftop, the prep crew that was scheduled for 8 AM arrived early to start setting up the stage and lights. If I’d stayed one minute later, I would have been discovered and my plan would have been foiled before it began. Talk about an anticlimax.
From my vantage point, I can see the workers scurrying about, ants preparing for the arrival of the queen. In addition, some citizens have shown up early, trying to sneak onto the bleachers and get good seats, but they’re waved back and put into a line while the crew finishes their decorating and safety checks.
I watch carefully for a few minutes until I’m sure that nobody’s noticed my handiwork, and then I sink down below the ledge and lean back to check my remote activator. Everyone is going to be on extremely high alert at the event, so I can’t risk having the device active and on a timer, or even actively scanning for a wireless signal from a remote control. Its power signature or radio frequencies might be detected by one of the Justice Alliance’s security devices. Instead, I used the Infinity Lenses to create a dimensional portal, just an inch in diameter, at the core of the device; I can open another portal, up here on the roof, and press the power button myself. If I don’t pull back fast enough, maybe I’ll lose a finger, but you’ll lose a whole lot more than that. And that’s the point.
“Defeat your enemies, or your world is doomed!” the Arranger’s crazed voice boomed out over the giant loudspeakers.
Everyone gets a kick out of watching heroes and villains slug it out, but they usually just watch the news to get their fix; the Arranger had taken voyeurism to whole new heights and kidnapped the lot of us to duke it out under his watchful eye. He claimed that we had to fight to the death or he would destroy the Earth, and so heroes and villains alike complied. We villains might be greedy, selfish bastards, but most of us are locals; at the very least, we didn’t relish the idea of our playground being razed.
(The Arranger’s threat turned out to be complete bullshit, of course, but we didn’t find that out until years later. You start to take threats like these seriously, in my line of work).
By this time, The Eagle and I had pretty well established our friendly rivalry and were constantly running into each other. He’d been so stodgy and by-the-book when he arrived on the hero scene, with his goofy colors and awkward catchphrases, but he’d come a long way. I don’t want to take all the credit, but I’m sure I played a part in his transformation; after a year or so of tussling with me, his costume was sleek and sexy as hell. The color scheme went darker, replacing the yellow with black and toning the brown down a lot, and his cape was streamlined to a simple black and gray three-point shape. There was even a time when he experimented with not using one, but that didn’t test well, I guess, so he took it up again. It was made out of a high-tech nanomaterial that the Justice Alliance had concocted, and it hugged his body in all the right places. The change wasn’t just cosmetic; The Eagle had definitely embraced a little bit of the dark side in his worldview as well. He realized that things were often more gray than black and white and dislodged that stick from his ass. At least a little.
Still, he never wavered from his core principles. Although I covered it up with snide remarks and dismissiveness, I developed an enormous respect for him because of that. For his part, he knew that I stole and caused mayhem for the thrill and challenge of it and that I wasn’t a diabolical menace at heart. And I think he understood even before I did that a lot of the needling and taunting was to get his attention more than anything, and he started to give as good as he got. Star-crossed through we were, I could tell he enjoyed it.
When the Arranger had nabbed us, we’d been in mid-battle. The Eagle had interrupted me after I broke into the offices of an “ex-gay” halfway house to clean out their safe—you’d be surprised how much money you can make preying on the self-loathing of others—and was finishing up by replacing all of their reading material with copies of “The Joy of Gay Sex”. I considered that part more of a public service than a crime.
When he saw what I was doing, he looked almost pained to have to intervene.
“This isn’t the answer, Eclipse,” he warned me. “I know, in your own twisted way, you think this is some kind of justice, but you’re just giving these people more ammunition to use against us.”
“Maybe I’m just not as patient as you,” I purred at him, opening to a particularly lascivious page in the book and showing it to him. “Though if I were, I’m sure I’d have the patience to get limber enough to do this. Care to give it a go?”
It was at that moment that the Arranger’s teleportation beam locked on us and teleported us in the great hall of the Battle Complex, where the heroes and villains were assembling, all startled and disoriented. Luckily for The Eagle, the book I’d been holding hadn’t made the journey with us.
When we weren’t alone, our banter got a lot more formal. I could tell that he got uncomfortable when I flirted with him when the other heroes were around. Not so much because of the gay thing—he’d skyrocketed in popularity after he came out, and been linked to every hot male superhero from Volt to Captain Kinetic—but because I was a villain. Maybe he’d adjusted his thinking a bit to see what I did as less harmful in the grand scheme of things, but I was still wasting my talents on selfishness and was ultimately a moral failure in his eyes.
“Defeat your enemies, or your world is doomed!” came the voice over the giant loudspeakers, and we moved to the appropriate opposite sides of the room.
People are coming in from all sides, and the square is filling up fast; giving government employees a paid day off to commemorate the first annual “Eagle Day” goes a long way toward guaranteeing an audience.
It’s coming up on 9 AM and you’re not here yet, but people have gotten used to superheroes never being on time, given the nature of your work. After all, every minute you spend soaking up public accolades just takes away from the time you could be defending the status quo.
It looks like the city officials are anticipating a bit of a wait, because the deputy mayor has been given the podium to say a few words. You know they’re desperate when they give him the floor; the high point of his administration has been a comprehensive review of the taxes on landscaping services.
Even though the risk of detection is low, I’m still hesitant to use the Infinity Lenses to reach out and check that the portal is still in place inside the device. I’ve never done this particular trick before, leaving a portal open when I’m not actively maintaining it. I decide to chance it and do a test run, summoning a tiny portal in the air in front of me. I slowly put my finger through, feeling the smooth, concave surface of the plastic button that will bring my plan to fruition.
I hear a piercing cry from behind me and pull my finger back quickly, lest I accidentally set off the device, and I close the portal at my end. I whirl around to see… a crow, perched on the ledge, looking at me with a puzzled expression.
I could never tell if all the birds that seemed to hang around when The Eagle was on the job were just some weird coincidence or if he had some telepathic link to them, or something. Do birds respond to pheromones? Or did he keep a flock of trained ones on hand? Having fifty birds spontaneously dive-bomb you when you’re coming out of a jewelry store at 3am with your hands full is a pretty rare occurrence, and I assure you it can be pretty inconvenient. I’d managed to keep hold of the bags and get some undignified cover from the avian menace between some dumpsters, but their attack was forcing me to take a different route than the one I initially planned. The Eagle would probably be counting on that, so I needed to be on my toes.
I leapt from my hiding
place and ran down the narrow alleyway, a few stray birds following me and pecking at my armor, chipping their beaks in the process. It’s cruelty to animals to get them to do that, I think. I scanned the shadows with my perfect night vision, waiting for the telltale shape of my archenemy to appear. In true dramatic fashion, he stepped out into the light at the end of the alleyway and ran at me, putting himself between me and the next block.
Without slowing my pace, I gritted my teeth and concentrated on the shadows at the corners of the alleyway and they seemed to come to life, coalescing into a dark, amorphous cloud about five feet in diameter directly in front of him. I charged into the cloud, shifted direction abruptly, and passed him with a few inches to spare as he blindly reached out to try and grab me.
That didn’t slow him down too much, though. He flew out the other side of the cloud and up in a wide arc, reversing direction to get back in pursuit. I did my best to stick the shadows, but his eagle eyes were in rare form that night. When I finally looked back to spot him, he was in the middle of a dive bomb. I almost made it clear but he clipped me, the impact knocking the wind out of me and sending me to the pavement. I took a breath, then sprang up again in a run, rounding the corner and hoping to find something to distract him. Not likely at 3am, but there was always hope…
I had to shield my eyes, which were adjusted to the darkness, to block out the bright yellow flames that were raging in front of me. The lower levels of an apartment building were ablaze and people were gathered in the street outside, but no fire trucks had arrived on the scene yet. There was heavy construction on this block and narrow streets; they might have been having trouble getting through.
The roar of the fire was so loud that it took me a moment to hear the screams coming from the upper windows. About two dozen people were still in the building and on the roof, trapped, with no way to get down. Maybe they’d had their exits blocked by the fire and made their way to the upper floors to buy some time, but the flames were moving steadily up the structure.
The Lavender Menace Page 13