When Deimos looked up from his phone, all eyes were fixed on him. He couldn’t help but think back to the last time Hans had made a public statement about him while he was working at Starflame Industries. However, where his old coworkers had looked at him in an accusatory, hateful way, the henchmen and villains before him now all wore expressions mixed with concern and determination.
“What do we do, boss?” Terry asked.
“We’re with ya,” Captain C said.
The Buzzard grunted and nodded in agreement.
Deimos looked around hopefully from Siren with her calming gaze, to Eve with her look of ferocious intensity, to his henchmen with their undying resolve, and to all of the faces that made up his new family. They all looked to him for their next step, and he knew they were all willing to act without question.
Deimos understood the position he was in. He was not going to let this moment be a repeat of his first run-in with Hans, but he also was not going to let his fear of losing his new family hold him back from utilizing their skills to their fullest potential. These people were able and willing to stop Hans once and for all, and he was going to let them. All they needed was guidance.
“I think I have a plan,” Deimos said confidently, “but we will need to move quickly.”
There was a loud cheer from the henchmen and Deimos hurriedly quieted them. They all gathered closely around him and he began to delegate orders. Over two hours had passed since Hans made his threat and Deimos was not willing to gamble that it was a hollow one. The window was rapidly closing for any plan to have a chance of success, and they were still nearly three hundred miles from Los Rebeldes. Even by his best estimate that put them within the city limits in five hours, including the time it would take to load the drones and all of the henchmen onto Redbeard’s Revenge. That wouldn’t even give them a full five hours to distract Hans and move the thermonuclear weapon to a safe distance, if they were even able to locate it.
While his mind raced twelve steps ahead, he dictated orders to squads of henchmen, breaking them up into groups based on what he knew about their different skill levels and proficiencies. Within twenty minutes, the eight completed drones were airborne and headed for Redbeard’s Revenge. Six boats full of henchmen sped beneath them, taking Sasha, Aria, Captain C, and the pirate crew to Redbeard’s Revenge, while two other boats carried The Buzzard and his henchmen to the shipping vessel on a separate task.
Deimos stayed back with Siren, Eve, Glenn, Harold, Terry, and Professor Paws. Between the six of them, Professor Paws not included, they would need to complete the two unfinished drones by the time the other eight had been strapped to the deck of Redbeard’s Revenge. That gave them thirty minutes, but they were able to finish in twenty. For the remaining ten, Deimos made adjustments to Tears And Fears that would be crucial to their plan down the line.
The two new drones took off, piloted by Eve and Siren. Deimos followed closely with his henchmen in Indiana Drones. By the time they reached Redbeard’s Revenge, the last drone was being secured near the bow of the ship. Due to the lack of floor space, Eve, Siren, and Deimos were forced to hover their drones alongside the ship while Captain C’s henchmen secured their safety bars to the ship’s railing. When they were completed, they hopped on deck and powered off the drones. The drones dropped and clanked heavily against the hull of the ship, but their bindings held. A team of six other henchmen then secured the other side of the drones through the portholes so that the drones were taught against the hull.
Deimos hoped it would be enough and they all rushed inside as the countdown began for launch. The stern of the ship dropped, the massive thrusters protruded, and soon after they were off at breakneck speeds toward Los Rebeldes. On the monitors, Deimos could see the three drones rattling against the ship’s hull but they ultimately remained bound. On another monitor he saw The Buzzard’s shipping vessel fading out of view behind them. If everything went according to plan, The Buzzard and his henchmen would arrive only two hours after Redbeard’s Revenge.
Siren held tightly onto Deimos’ hand. They looked at each other, knowing that this could very well be their final hours together.
Siren smiled hopefully. It was the most beautiful thing Deimos had ever seen.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Earlier that day, exactly one hour before Hans had made his threat public, Yasuke stepped off his plane at LRX. Though he had never asked for Eve’s number, a fact which he had continually been kicking himself over since the day he last saw her, Yasuke knew she lived in Los Rebeldes based off of her Wikipedia page. It had been several months since they last spoke, and he deeply hoped that Eve hadn’t forgotten him.
Yasuke was still having a hard time believing all that had happened since he last saw Eve. Aiko and the Kasai Gang had made good on their promise. They stopped their harassment of the coastal towns immediately after the night at the museum, but they went on to do so much more.
The morning after their showdown, Yasuke returned to Unmei to find every member of the Kasai Gang waiting for him at the outskirts of the village. As he walked up to them, sure that he had been betrayed and was about to have the last fight of his life, they suddenly bowed. Even Aiko, son of the proud Daizo, enemy of his grandfather, was crouched and bent over with his forehead touching the dirt.
“Forgive us!” they shouted in unison.
Yasuke had simply stood dumbfounded, wondering if he was having a hallucination from the concussion he received the night before. Once he realized that it was in fact really happening, he pulled Aiko up from his bow.
“Please,” Yasuke muttered. “That’s enough.”
Aiko stood and brushed the dirt from his forehead. He looked Yasuke in the eyes and extended his hand.
“I am a man of my word. Today I will prove it to you. Please, put me and my men to work.”
Yasuke looked down at Aiko’s hand and then back to the three dozen gang members standing behind him. He sighed with uncertainty but relented and shook Aiko’s hand.
When the small army of Kasai members marched through the village that morning, the citizens of Unmei were sure they were done for. However, when they saw that it was Yasuke leading them to the paddy fields, they began to come out of their homes in curiosity.
Yasuke immediately set half of the gang members to work fertilizing the fields. When the farmers rushed out of their homes to see what was happening, Yasuke explained the situation to them. The farmers weren’t going to argue with a day off, but they still didn’t trust the untrained Kasai Gang to not screw up their jobs. Many of them followed the gang members through the fields as they fertilized, shouting corrections to their techniques which the gangsters courteously corrected.
Yasuke took the other half of the gang to help him improve the residential area, specifically pointing out the two men who had destroyed Hamada’s and her grandmother’s fence a few days prior. He dragged the men to Hamada’s door and watched in silent delight as they profusely apologized to her. After several moments of sheer bewilderment, Hamada accepted the men’s apology. Yasuke stayed with them the remainder of the day, overlooking their work as they performed odd jobs for Hamada’s grandmother and did a much-needed deep clean of her home.
This carried on for several weeks, until it came to the point the citizens of Unmei wondered how they had ever lived without the help of the Kasai Gang. The infrastructure of each citizen’s home was improved, the cobbled roads had been repaired and expanded, and that season’s crops were already shaping up to be their largest yield in decades.
Throughout this time, Yasuke could not stop thinking about Eve. He was growing afraid that if he didn’t see her soon, she would forget about him and move on to another samurai, or at least some douchebag hipster in Los Rebeldes. He once held the notion that he would never be able to leave Unmei, but now with the reformed Kasai Gang actually working to make his village a better place, it didn’t seem to be s
uch a crazy idea. Eve had been right again, never say never.
The day finally came where Yasuke felt he could wait no longer. After speaking with Aiko, who had become somewhat of a figurehead around the village, and saying goodbye to Hamada, Yasuke packed up a few changes of clothes and left his home. He made one final round through Unmei, the village his father and his grandfather and his grandfather’s father had defended their entire lives, now no longer in need of a defender. Every person he had ever known stood in the streets to watch him leave. They waved, bowed, and shouted their goodbyes and well wishes as he passed.
He finally reached the edge of Unmei where Aiko was waiting for him in his car. Yasuke looked one more time over his village, soaking in every detail that was already imprinted so deeply into his mind, before turning and joining Aiko in the car. Aiko pulled out of the town and drove him away toward the airport.
When Yasuke arrived in Los Rebeldes, he faced another difficult decision. After waiting nearly an hour for a cab, he suddenly realized he did not know where to go. As he was struggling to think of any Los Rebeldes landmarks to tell the increasingly annoyed cab driver to take him to, the cabbie was suddenly distracted by an alert on his phone. Moments later, air raid sirens began to howl in the distance.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Redbeard’s Revenge was making great time hydroplaning across the Pacific Ocean. Captain C had pushed the ship a few notches faster than his engineers were generally comfortable with and they were nearing the California coast within the limit of Deimos’ more hopeful calculations. However, something Deimos had foolishly forgotten to account for in his travel plans was the Coast Guard.
Their ship was hailed several miles off the coast, but the Coast Guard’s tiny boats were no match for the speed of Redbeard’s Revenge and they blew past them. By the time their boats caught up to them, the ship was already anchored and the first two drones were released from the deck.
The Coast Guard was kind enough to not open fire when they reached them, so Deimos returned the favor by kindly not blasting them with Tears And Fears. Despite the high alert that all military personnel were on, the members of the Coast Guard were actually quite understanding. A few of them recognized Deimos from the news and knew that the general in charge of handling the emergency would want to see him immediately. They offered to bring him to where the military was stationed but Deimos insisted they would get there much quicker on their drones.
Meeting with whoever was in charge of this mess was actually an important item on Deimos’ list. News reports were stating that the military was filtering the fleeing citizens out through checkpoints. The backups caused by their slow ID checks was a surefire guarantee to inhibit a majority of Los Rebeldes citizens from escaping the blast zone in time. Deimos wondered why it was that so many stupid people failed upwards in government, then remembered his old boss could hardly work a computer while managing a tech company. It was one of society’s bad habits that Deimos made a mental note to address later on in his victory speech if he made it out of that day alive.
As Deimos, Siren, Eve, Glenn, Harold, Terry, Sasha, and Aria all flew on Indiana Drones to where the general was stationed, a team of Captain C’s pirate crew took the remaining ten drones into the city. They weren’t going to wait for some dipstick general to give them permission to ferry people out of harm’s way. Plus, each drone was outfitted with several Electric Ave Pew-Pews in case any military types gave them trouble. Captain C offered to ride with his henchmen on one of the drones, but his sweaty brow and flushed face told Deimos otherwise. Deimos assured him that his services would be better suited on the ship running communications, and Captain C breathed a massive sigh of relief.
In addition to the Electric Ave Pew-Pews, Deimos had equipped each drone with sensitive Geiger counters he built on the ride over. He didn’t care what Hans claimed, there was no hiding the distinct footprint of radioactive material. Even if Hans had successfully masked the signature of his thermonuclear weapon, there would still be evidence throughout the city from the weapon’s shipment and production.
These newly minted Geiger counters had been masterfully named by Siren as The Final Geiger Countdown. They would be able to autonomously identify and log all points of concentrated radioactivity while Captain C’s crew flew the drones around the city helping citizens escape. Deimos’ would then be able to analyze that data and decipher where the weapon might be located.
Professor Paws was of course left behind on the ship. Although Deimos had no doubt that Professor Paws’ bomb-sniffing skills were great, he would simply be another variable to worry about if things went south.
As Deimos had said to Veronica about Professor Paws before they left, “At least one of us needs to live through this in order to carry on my family name.”
Veronica couldn’t tell if Deimos was joking and didn’t have the heart to correct him if he wasn’t.
They arrived at the general’s outpost with four hours left on Hans’ cliché ticking clock trope. The general was inside a military tent set up alongside the I-5 freeway. Thousands of cars and tens of thousands of people were baking in the late-afternoon California heat, having come to a complete standstill outside of the military’s makeshift barriers.
The people standing on the freeway, who had become accustomed to seeing military choppers fly overhead, were suddenly awestruck by the sight of Indiana Drones soaring above them. Several people recognized it to be Deimos’ aircraft from the videos Eve’s followers had posted online, but most had no idea what they were looking at. There were more than a few grumbles and angry shouts about this seemingly rich prick getting to cut in line with his homemade helicopter.
Indiana Drones landed near the military tents with nearly two dozen automatic rifles following its descent. Luckily, one of the officers had been doing her homework and instantly recognized Deimos. She ordered the soldiers to lower their weapons and rushed to greet him.
“Thank God. A lot of us were worried you weren’t going to show up,” the officer said. “Please, follow me. General Grant will want to speak with you.”
“Good. I want to speak with him as well,” Deimos muttered.
The others remained on Indiana Drones while Siren followed Deimos and the officer into the tent. They had their orders if this meeting went poorly and Deimos needed them on the drone ready to act.
The officer led them straight to General Grant, a clean-shaven man in his late forties with a seemingly permanent scowl one would expect to see on a childhood bully. He was surrounded by four other officers as they marked on a map different areas of the city that had already been searched for Hans’ weapon.
“Sir, Deimos has arrived,” the female officer announced.
General Grant looked up and his scowl deepened, shoving his brow well into his eye line. Deimos was curious how he was even able to see under that avalanche of a forehead.
“Goddammit, boy. Where the hell have you been?” General Grant shouted at Deimos as if he were one of his soldiers. “We got three million people’s lives at risk and you’re off God knows where, ignoring court subpoenas for months, then decide to show up at the last minute? Who the hell do you think you are? Are you trying to look like some kind of hero, boy?”
“I came as soon as I heard what was happening, General,” Deimos sneered. “But the only reason I’m wasting my time talking to you instead of solving this mess outright is to ask you something.”
“Excuse me, boy?” General Grant barked, getting in Deimos’ face.
This was the moment Siren knew their interaction with the general could use a little help. She stepped back and motioned to Eve on Indiana Drones. Eve relayed this to Harold who was lying down on the floor of the drone, feigning his patented ‘sleepy old man’ technique. He reached under the console and pointed Tears And Fears at the tent. He dialed back the intensity and activated it. Everyone in the tent would be affected, but only Deimos an
d Siren would be expecting it.
The electromagnetic field did its trick. Deimos and Siren felt their heart rates increase, and by the looks of the officers’ faces, they felt it too. Even General Grant squirmed a bit in the moment that Deimos stepped forward to face him head-on.
Deimos barked right back at General Grant, emulating his best drill sergeant impression.
“First off, quit calling me boy. I was deriving differential equations before you decided to squirm out of your father’s sack. Second, what the hell do you think you’re doing keeping all these people from getting out of the blast radius? What piss-poor excuse could you possibly have for identifying each person leaving the city?”
Deimos could feel Harold slowly increasing the intensity of Tears And Fears, but he didn’t dare show he was being affected by it. However, General Grant, who had no idea his heart rate was being externally manipulated, took it as genuine fear he was feeling for simply being in the presence of this irate villain. It certainly didn’t help that Deimos reminded him of his sadistic drill sergeant back when he was in boot camp.
“W-we uh-” General Grant stammered, all expressions of authority leaving his voice. “We need to make sure Hans isn’t trying to escape.”
Deimos laughed jeeringly.
“You think Hans Goenn, the richest bastard in the world, would try to flee the city in a car? Down one the busiest interstates in the world? My wife taught eight-year-olds with more sense than you! I was able to get over your blockade with something I built in an afternoon with some scraps! What do you think Hans could do with months of planning and unlimited resources? He might be in Australia for all you know!”
“Well… I uh-” General Grant faltered, wracking his now scrambled brain for whatever reasons he had been given by his superiors. “I don’t really know.”
“Right. You don’t know because you don’t think. You follow orders. So how about you do what you’re good at and follow these orders. Open up your blockade, let these people through, and get your troops’ lazy asses into the city to evacuate the hospitals like you should have done five hours ago!”
Villain (Book 1): Villain 1 Page 28
