Villain (Book 1): Villain 1

by Laddusaw, Cole

  At this point, the ship was close enough that Yasuke could see it without the binoculars, but he continued to use them anyway in order to see more details. There was a symbol on the topmost flag that he couldn’t quite make out. Then in a gust of wind he saw it—a skull and crossbones.

  What the hell? Pirates? Yasuke understandably thought.

  Pirates hadn’t been a problem in that part of the world for quite some time, and the ones in wooden ships with intimidating flags even longer still. Yet there in the ocean before him was a large wooden warship adorned with pirate flags headed straight toward the shores below his village.

  “Dammit,” Yasuke uttered to himself.

  It seemed sleep would have to wait. He went back inside his cottage and grabbed a few caffeinated herbal pills from his grandfather’s medicine cabinet. He then tightened his sword around his waist and took off down the mountainside.

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  Like all things in life, riding on a rocket-powered warship had rapidly become a dull affair. It wasn’t that the prospect of going on a pirate adventure was any less exciting, only that being stuck in any confined space for twenty hours is mind-numbingly mundane. Deimos and Siren had already given Eve the full rundown on the history of villains, set a few guidelines on when it is appropriate to kill (definitely not when a girl is simply wearing the same outfit), and ran her through combat exercises with Captain C’s crew, before finally deciding to simply sleep the remaining ten hours of their journey.

  Deimos, Siren, and Eve met up in the control room with Captain C and his crew once the ship’s engine powered down.

  “Jesus Christ!” Eve exasperated while ripping off her headset. “No wonder they skip over the sailing parts in pirate movies. That was boring as fuck.”

  Captain C approached Eve and chortled, “Sorry, was me ship’s three hundred and sixty-five knots too slow for ya?”

  “Honestly?” Eve began before Siren stopped her.

  “Be polite, young lady.” Siren turned to Captain C apologetically. “The trip was great, thank you. This is the longest Eve has gone without posting to social media and she’s acting out.”

  Eve began to retort but caught herself. There was no response she could think of that wouldn’t further prove Siren right. She slumped back in a chair, defeated.

  Captain C laughed, “That’s quite all right. I know it can get a trifle boring out here, what with the Wi-Fi not working while in transit. We been meaning ta put in a screening room but there ain’t any space with the arcade on the second level.”

  Deimos froze. He gripped Captain C by the lapel of his coat and pulled him close.

  “There was an arcade here this whole time?” Deimos seethed.

  “Er, yeah. Past the laundromat. Didn’t I tell ya?” Captain C asked.

  Deimos angrily gritted his teeth.

  “Let’s just go to the boats.”

  Due to the size of Redbeard’s Revenge, it couldn’t get too close to shore for risk of grounding itself. Therefore, the villains and Captain C’s select crew had to travel the rest of the distance by speedboats. Given that there were only three boats, it would take a few trips to get everyone to shore. For the first round, Deimos rode with Captain C and his first mate Marty while Siren and Eve followed with an assortment of other crew behind them. They had opted to leave Professor Paws on the ship under the care of Veronica after deciding he probably wouldn’t be beneficial on a stealth mission.

  Deimos and Captain C were the first ashore. Deimos leapt expertly onto the sand and was excited to feel only a twinge of pain in his ribs. He turned to help Marty get Captain C off the boat. It took both of them to lift his heavy cannon leg over the ledge.

  “You should really let me take a look at that thing when we’re done here,” Deimos commented. “I’m sure I could create a more lightweight design.”

  “Thank ya, Deimos, but this cannon was from one of me da’s old ships. I couldn’t part with it.”

  Deimos nodded understandably and helped Captain C the rest of the way onto the beach. As they gently placed Captain C down in the sand, there was a shout from up the beach at the tree line. The three turned to see a lone black man standing ahead of them. He wore a black kimono and a large, wide-brimmed hat. The man approached them but stopped suddenly when he was within proper viewing distance. He shouted something angrily at them in Japanese.

  Deimos looked to Captain C and Marty, confused.

  “Do either of you speak Japanese?” he asked.

  They shook their heads.

  Deimos turned back to the Japanese man and shouted, “Hey! I’m sorry, we don’t speak Japanese. Is this your beach or something?”

  The man stared at Deimos with angry recognition.

  He pointed accusingly at him and shouted in clear English, “I know you. I have seen your face.”

  “Finally somebody recognizes me!”

  “You blew up men!” the man shouted. “You are a villain!”

  “Dammit,” Deimos cringed. “I was accused of blowing up those men, but it’s not true. I mean it’s true that I’m a villain, but not in the way you’re thinking.”

  “Quiet!” the man exclaimed, tossing his hat aside and drawing his sword. “My name is Ikeda Yasuke, defender of Unmei. I will not allow criminals to come to my village and-”

  Yasuke suddenly stopped speaking. His eyes drifted uncontrollably past Deimos. Deimos turned and saw that Siren and Eve’s boat had pulled up beside theirs. Eve was stepping out of the boat and Yasuke’s gaze was fixed directly on her.

  “Hey guys, who’s your friend?” Eve asked, twirling one of her pigtails around on her finger.

  Yasuke was frozen. His pointed sword dropped into the sand as he stared transfixed at Eve. She was by far the most beautiful woman Yasuke had ever seen and he was immediately smitten. A lifetime of denying himself the carnal pleasures of the flesh was suddenly working against him as blood that he previously used for his brain rushed to an entirely different part of his body. Even though he had never heard the song before, for some reason a Japanese rendition of “Total Eclipse of the Heart” by Bonnie Tyler drifted through his mind.

  In the short amount of time that Yasuke was distracted, Deimos looked around dumbfounded, unsure what to do. Marty saw this and took it upon himself to sneak around the samurai. When within range, he smacked Yasuke over the head with the butt of his gun. The samurai crumpled like a sandcastle after meeting the beach bully’s foot.

  “Whoa, what the hell was that?” Deimos asked Marty.

  “You gave me the knock-this-guy-out look,” Marty responded, shrugging.

  “What? I was just looking around, dumbfounded.” Deimos turned to Captain C. “Was that really the knock-this-guy-out look?”

  “I don’t know, I didn’t see. What was the look?” Captain C asked.

  Deimos gave Captain C the same dumbfounded look.

  “Oh yeah, that’s the look,” Captain C said immediately.

  “Really? Wow. I must say, I am continually impressed by the preparedness of your crew. Eve, take notes. This is how you train henchmen.”

  Eve ignored him and pointed to Yasuke.

  “Is that guy going to be okay?” she asked.

  The group turned to the unconscious samurai. Spit dribbled out of his mouth and onto the sand.

  “He won’t be if we leave him like this,” Deimos stated. “Getting knocked out is really bad for you, just ask Siren. It happened so often to my henchmen that we had to hire an evil neurologist to help me design a remedy for it.”

  “Doctor Henson wasn’t evil,” Siren stated. “He was a TBI specialist that you kidnapped and forced to work with you.”

  “What are you talking about? Of course he was evil! He was working with a villain!” Deimos retorted.

  Eve interjected, “So do you have anything with you or are we just going to
let this guy get brain damage? This seems like it is going against your villain code, or whatever.”

  “To be fair, I think this guy was going to try and kill us,” Deimos replied.

  “But did he?” Eve asked pointedly.

  After a moment of indecision, Deimos rolled his eyes and turned to Marty.

  “Can you run back to the ship and check my flying craft? There should be a medkit in there containing a small box labeled ‘Fixing Heads.’ The faster you can get back, the better.”

  Marty nodded and ran to one of the speedboats.

  “That’s what you named it? Fixing Heads?” Siren mused.

  “Yeah, don’t you remember? It was like that band Talking Heads but it’s for fixing heads.”

  “That one seems pretty lazy.”

  “Wow! You have been on my case lately, haven’t you? What would you have called it then, if you’re so smart?”

  “Wake Me Up Before My Brain Goes.”

  Deimos squinted menacingly at Siren. She stared confidently back at him.

  Deimos sighed and shouted to Marty, “There should be a label maker in there. Grab that too.”

  Siren silently fist pumped.

  Ten minutes passed. More of Captain C’s crew filed onto the beach as the boats continued their rounds to and from Redbeard’s Revenge. Marty was the first to arrive back and handed Deimos the supplies he requested.

  Fixing Heads, freshly named Wake Me Up Before My Brain Goes once Siren was finished with the label maker, was a concoction inside two glass syringes that came in a sleek steel case. It was a simple two-stage injection—the first reduced brain swelling while putting the subject into a deep sleep in order to promote healing, and the second woke up the subject if they could not wake up naturally. It typically needed to be injected within the first few minutes of the incident, but Deimos figured it was close enough.

  Having already ensured Yasuke’s skull wasn’t cracked, Deimos administered the first shot and watched him carefully. After thirty seconds, he opened Yasuke’s mouth and breathed a sigh of relief.

  “He’s going to be fine,” Deimos said, turning to Eve. “If the shot didn’t work, his tongue would be dissolving by now.”

  “That’s… reassuring,” Eve said.

  “I’m proud of you, Eve,” Siren said encouragingly. “I think this is the most I’ve seen you care about someone outside of your henchmen.”

  Eve shot her daggers.

  “Keep talking about it and I’ll be sure it never happens again.”

  Siren mimed zipping her lips and locking them, much to Eve’s embarrassment, as Captain C sauntered up to the trio.

  “Well, got some good news and got some bad news,” Captain C said. “Good news is all the crew that wanted to come is here and ready to move. Bad news is they ain’t comfortable leaving this ninja fella’ here that threatened us.”

  “I think he’s a samurai,” Deimos offered.

  “Whatever he is, they’re afraid he might wake up and try ta follow us. So either we kill him while he’s out, or we gotta bring him along.”

  “Seems like a waste fixing him up if we’re just going to kill him,” Deimos replied.

  “Then we bring him,” Captain C said definitively.

  “Can’t you take him back to the ship? Throw him in the brig or something?” Deimos asked

  “Did ya see a prison on me ship?”

  “No, but I didn’t see an arcade either.”

  “Deimos, I’m not risking the safety of anyone on me ship. Either he comes or he dies. Which is it?”

  Deimos turned to Siren and Eve, who gave him a wide-eyed stare that said, “Just do the right thing so we can go already.”

  “Fine, let’s bring him,” Deimos relented.

  Captain C turned to his crew and spun his finger in the air.

  “Alright lads, load him up!”

  Two of Captain C’s crew began chopping down a nearby tree while two others began the process of binding Yasuke’s hands and feet. Once the felled tree was cleared of branches, the pirates strung Yasuke to it. Deimos was not at all pleased with the imagery this was giving off and knew they could do better.

  “No, no. Fuck that,” Deimos said, waving off the pirates. “Rip out a seat from one of the boats. Tie him to that.”

  The pirates turned to Captain C, who nodded. They removed Yasuke from the tree and plopped him onto one of the speedboat seats. They affixed two sturdy branches onto the seat and hoisted it onto their shoulders so that the sleeping samurai looked like a conked-out king.

  “Happy?” Captain C asked Deimos, annoyed.

  “Meh. I’m sure we’ll still get some angry comments, but there’s not much else we can do,” Deimos replied.

  “What?”

  “Nevermind.”

  Captain C shrugged and walked away.The entire interaction left a bad taste in Deimos’ mouth. So far their pirate adventure wasn’t living up to what he had hoped it would be. First, they had been stuck on a cramped ship for nearly twenty hours. Then, the second they reached land they were ambushed by some nutjob in a samurai getup. Now they were going to be stuck babysitting the poor guy on a three-mile hike through the woods. All in all, there was a lot less drinking and swashbuckling than Deimos had anticipated and his mood had been soured.

  Deimos remembered, however, that this trip wasn’t for him. Eve had already begun showing signs that she was not a complete sociopath, which was a plus, and Siren seemed to be having a good time working with her. Deimos decided to keep his mouth shut and simply go with the flow.

  Captain C stood at the tree line facing his crew. Nearly two dozen of his pirate crew had gathered to see Redbeard’s final treasure map completed. Deimos, Eve, and Siren hung back with the two saps who were chosen to carry Yasuke.

  “Me friends,” Captain C bellowed, addressing his crew, “I am honored to be standing here with ye all. Tonight we honor Redbeard by retrieving the golden turtle shell he so greatly desired in his youth.

  “He often told me bedtime stories of a magical island whose inhabitants were so lavished with riches that even the animals living there turned ta gold. Of course, we now know that it were likely an expulsion of molten gold from a hydrothermal vent that coated the turtle shell, but that be beside the point. Let us venture forth as he once did into this untamed land and retrieve the last true pirate treasure!”

  The crew cheered loudly, raising their swords and automatic rifles in the air ceremoniously. Captain C raised his sword in response and began the march into the forest.

  Eve leaned toward Siren and whispered, “Untamed land? I’m pretty sure I saw a McDonald’s a few miles from here.”

  Siren snickered and nudged Eve playfully. Deimos hushed them and they followed Captain C and his crew into the forest.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The Twins were stationed at a Japanese military outpost several miles up the coast from Unmei. They had arrived two hours earlier, but were discombobulated from their flight and needed to rest. They had never been in a car before that morning, so they were reasonably shaken from the supersonic jet Hans had sent them in.

  Sasha and Aria were granted emergency Japanese military credentials thanks to Hans’ agreement with a few high-ranking government officials. They had offered up their military services to his villain-hunting operation under the promise that he would share the science behind his team’s spectacular abilities. Hans never planned on following through with that promise, but that was a problem for another day. As far as the Japanese government was concerned, Hans was simply an honorable businessman looking to avenge his murdered board members.

  Major General Jin Katō approached The Twins in the infirmary. They had recently finished an oxygen treatment and were finally able to stand unassisted.

  “Good evening. I am General Katō. Welcome to Sumitari Naval Base.”

>   The Twins nodded in response but said nothing. The general stared back intensely at them. Katō’s subordinates had already informed him of the women’s unique appearances, but their words could not fully capture what these two looked like up close and personal. He scanned The Twins up and down in awe, watching their striped, undulating bodies physically change right before his eyes.

  General Katō had attempted to prepare himself for the shock but nonetheless found himself staring wide-eyed at the women as if he were making first contact with an alien species. It didn’t help that the women had insisted on remaining nude, stating how the clothing irritated their skin. He stopped himself from staring and hurriedly established eye contact. He was a professional and needed to act like one, no matter the condition of his guests. If he could look a soldier in the eye who had lost half of their face from a grenade, he could certainly give these two women the same level of respect.

  “The targets entered Japanese territory at twenty-two hundred hours, which was about an hour ago,” General Katō explained. “We pulled our naval units and allowed the targets to deboard as agreed upon.” He held out a computer tablet and opened a map. “We are currently tracking their movements through the forest in the Takaoko District. I am prepared to deploy ground units to support your extraction of the targets.”

  Sasha took the tablet from General Katō and examined the map. She handed it to Aria who studied it carefully.

  “Could be fun,” Sasha said to Aria, completely ignoring General Katō’s presence.

  Aria looked up, concerned.

  “That’s not the game,” she whispered.

  “When will we ever get another chance to play in a real forest all by ourselves?” Sasha asked.

  General Katō took a step closer as if to remind the girls he was there.

  “Game? Pardon my bluntness, but the Lieutenant never mentioned this was a drill. My troops are using live ammunition. Do we need to pull everyone back and re-spec?”