Evolution

by Hayden Thorne

  “I mean, I can only handle so much rabbit food.”

  Mom’s eyes narrowed. Bingo.

  “So it looks like the Dark Side is catching up with the heroes, number-wise,” Liz piped up. “Let’s see. The Devil’s Trill, the Shadow Puppet, and this new energy kid. They’re all up against Magnifiman, Calais, Spirit Wire, and that firestarter girl. Bad guys need one more to their number for an even match.” She paused and grinned broadly, sweeping the table with her gaze. “This is exciting! I don’t know how many others are coming out of the woodwork, but I expect that in the end, it’ll be a balanced match between the two sides. Awesome.”

  Dad cleared his throat and sneaked a peek at the clock. “Fifteen minutes till the news,” he said. “We’ll find out what’s up. I’m sure by the end of it, we’ll have names for the new girl and the new boy.”

  I coughed violently and had to take a few large swigs of my water. That was what I forgot to do! Shit! A manifesto—or else, like the Puppet, a calling card or two. Damn! Damn, damn, damn! Bambi Bailey was going to latch on to my identity, slap my butt with the King of Crap Names before I could establish myself properly.

  “You okay, Eric?”

  “Yeah, I’m—I’m fine, Dad.” Cough. “Thanks.” Cough.

  It was my turn to wash the dishes that night, but I asked for a bit of a delay, so I could watch the news with my family. Mom, still reeling from my earlier assault on her motherly senses, would’ve granted me anything. After dinner, she gave me a fond, dazed grin and a quick peck on the cheek for an answer. Then followed that with a playful mussing up of my hair. That was definitely a yes.

  In the living room everyone huddled—except for me, anyway, as I stood by the door to ensure a quick getaway in the event of severe shock or distress over Bambi Bailey’s baptism. While suffering through the commercials, I comforted myself with one nefarious supervillain plan after another, stuff that I could do tomorrow after school—note to self: replace stupid, pointless haikus in writing journal with outlines of Bad Guy Deeds; I was still an intern and needed to learn how to be more hardcore.

  Then I could use them against the Trill when the moment came.

  Ah, yes, there she was. Dressed up, hair held together by ten cans of hairspray, but rather than looking heartbroken, Miss Bailey was once again glowing, starry-eyed, at the camera. I also realized her beauty mark had vanished. Maybe she’d run out of those faux moles, finally.

  Behind her sprawled the carnage from the early afternoon. Snarled traffic, abandoned cars, smoke rising in pillars all over the place, people wandering out of shops to gawk at the scene that graced a three-block stretch of Main Avenue. With the sun still up, I imagined the report was taped immediately after the incident. Cops swarmed the area as well, and flashing red lights from a gazillion squad cars that had crammed the area after the attack gave the scene a bit of a surreal disco quality.

  “Looks like this is a rerun of today’s Breaking News report,” Dad noted with a loud yawn and a cat-like stretching of his arms above his head.

  “Huh. So much for breaking news,” Liz snorted.

  “It all started when Vintage City’s Paragon of Virtue received an alert regarding a possible break-in at the Department of Antiquaries’, well, Antiquaries Department. Along with Calais and Spirit Wire, Magnifiman foiled the break-in attempt, but it appeared as though the whole thing was a two-tiered job.” With a triumphant toss of her head, Miss Bailey turned to her side, and the camera panned out to reveal—yep—Magnifiman standing next to our intrepid reporter.

  Appropriately angry, beautifully glowering at both his seductress and the camera, Magnifiman stood in all his brawny, justice-keeping glory. Massive, monolithic chest thrust out as he took on the pose of Vintage City’s gallant protector with his arms akimbo, his cape fluttering slightly in the breeze, his hair just this side of mussed—he was a vision. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if he were to be the cause of a sudden wave of boys realizing they were gay on this day alone.

  “Thank you for staying with us for a moment, sir,” Miss Bailey cooed. She flashed Magnifiman a pale, womanly throat as she threw her head back in order to look him in the eye.

  “Well, I’m afraid I can’t stay too long, Miss Bailey. There are leads to follow in addition to petty crimes to thwart,” he replied. Never had I heard impatience sound so sexy in that low, silky purr. It was hypnotic. It was seductive. It was…

  “Damn it, Peter, where are you?” I hissed, squirming a little in my too-baggy jeans.

  Easing the pressure of surging hormones made me resort to nail-biting. Seriously, even Magnifiman’s cheesy dialogue style couldn’t douse the fires.

  “Of course, I understand. If you don’t mind filling us in with some of the details…”

  Gross, did she just swipe her tongue over her lips?

  Magnifiman, as usual, didn’t seem to notice. He merely sighed and nodded before turning to the camera, his eyes, already narrowed to near slits, shrinking even more. Superhuman vision aside, I highly doubted if he could see through those muscular slivers.

  “The Shadow Puppet has left us a number of calling cards—most of which are harmless, nothing more than the usual expression of pathological narcissism that’s common among criminal minds—”

  I nearly choked on my nails and had to muffle my sudden fit of coughing behind my hands.

  “—there are, however, a number of these calling cards that are actually coded messages.”

  “Coded messages?”

  Magnifiman nodded again, his slit-gaze unwavering. It was a little infectious, to be honest. I caught myself a few times narrowing my eyes in response to his look. “Yes, coded. I can’t tell you what the original calling cards say since all that’s classified information, but this I can share—and I’m talking to you, Shadow Puppet, as well as the good citizens of this good city!” Magnifiman gave the camera an emphatic jab of his oh-so-muscular finger. The fury of a man of virtue was plain beautiful to watch on camera—more so in person, yessiree. A hundred and one gay boys up and down Vintage City must’ve just swooned from an overload of a hundred and one different fantasies about this glowering, threatening hunk of superflesh at that moment.

  “The noose is tightening, you vile fiend!”

  Oh, the high romance of his language! A breeze blew again, the hair and the cape all fluttering in a show of angry, virtuous defiance! Shakespeare, eat thy heart out!

  “Calais and I got to the place in time to find several of his nefarious dolls hard at work in breaking the security code. Spirit Wire was able to delay them, but a short-circuit broke the connection between Spirit and the Department of Antiquaries’ computer.”

  “Oh, my!”

  He nodded—for the third time—his jaw clenching. My gaze automatically dropped to his chin and its magnificent cleft. Then it moved farther south to his Adam’s apple. For one crazy moment both halves of me thought how much being on the wrong side of justice sucked.

  Stand your ground, soldier!

  I snapped out of it and started chewing on another finger.

  “Yes, Miss Bailey. Spirit Wire’s delay helped, and I was able to come after several of them while the rest broke ranks and retreated. As it turned out, they’d responded to a signal that made them turn their destructive designs on the innocent folks of Vintage City. Calais went after them, and so did our new ally, whom we were honored to fight with, side-by-side, this afternoon.” He paused to look long and hard at the camera. “Young lady, though you’ve heard this from us before, I want to say this publicly. You’re an asset, and Calais and I thank you.”

  “As do the rest of Vintage City,” Bambi Bailey piped up. “Thank you, Miss Pyro, for your courage!”

  Miss Pyro. That was definitely impromptu. Miss Pyro was lucky it didn’t take a lot of thought, or she’d be baptized with something like Fiery Whiplash Femme or something.

  Magnifiman stared at Miss Bailey for a moment, suddenly at a loss for words. “Yes, very well,” he muttered. He turne
d his attention back to the camera just as Bambi Bailey gave him the biggest, brightest, toothiest smile this side of heterosexual courtships. “This is not to say, however, that the job’s done. The noose might be tightening, but Vintage City is still under many threats from the most despicable criminal minds to be born.”

  “Created in a lab, you mean,” I muttered against my tattered fingernail.

  “You, young man, will be found out,” he growled at the camera, his muscular finger once again teasing me. “Yes, you, energy fiend! Someday soon, you’ll slip up and leave an energy trace, and by all that’s good and right, we’ll have you where we want you! You will—and I swear this—feel the hard hand of justice tightening around you!”

  My breath caught, my cheeks heating up. “Really? You promise?” I gasped.

  I had to lean against the doorway, my gnawed finger limply caught between my teeth as I stared at my nemesis and brother-in-law in a lust-filled daze. Magnifiman was threatening me on camera. I never felt so—so wanted—and in public, too. All this time I thought I’d gotten over my crush on him. Then again, I did notice I’d been rather hormonal lately. It was like PMS for boys, but way, way funner.

  “Any idea who this new threat is, Magnifiman?”

  I finally remembered how to breathe.

  “No, but we’ll find out, Miss Bailey. I promise you that. He attacked Calais and the gi—Miss Pyro with his energy waves. Even the police weren’t safe from him. He tried to help the Puppet’s mechanical henchmen, but we don’t believe he works for or with the Puppet.”

  “So, did the Puppet get away then?”

  Magnifiman smiled grimly. “He was never there. Two of his walking dolls are in captivity right now. They’ll help us with the final pieces of the puzzle.”

  Bambi Bailey gave her hair a quick pat as she turned to face the camera. “The people caught in their cars during the attacks today are doing well, we’re told. In shock, of course, but they’re all fine. It seems the bullets that were fired at them were these strange bullets that vanish on impact.”

  “Excuse me, Miss Bailey. I must attend to the needs of Vintage City.”

  “Of course. Thank you, Magnifiman,” she said. Magnifiman didn’t even bother to wait. He simply took off while she was still talking, but all the same, Bambi Bailey appeared to take it all in stride. I figured she was happy enough to have him with her for a while, considering how long she’d been waiting for this moment. She merely looked back at the camera and continued.

  “Yes, where was I? Oh, strange bullets. No one yet knows what these bullets are made of, or what kind of damage they can do to the human body. As of now, what we do know is this: the bullets are capable of breaking glass and denting metal surfaces, but they leave nothing behind once they come in contact with objects. Strange though this might sound, but they really do seem to vanish on impact. People were lucky to be shielded by their cars this afternoon. Police and investigators have scoured the crime scene, but they failed in finding anything that they can examine—almost as if these bullets never existed, except for the fact they left clear physical damage where they struck…”

  That was enough torture for one evening. At least I wasn’t named—this, I discovered before I went to bed, when I sneaked downstairs for an illicit late night snack and caught Liz doing exactly the same thing; it was a brother-sister gossip moment that I was afraid would ruin my reputation as an up-and-coming, tormented supervillain. I left my spot at the door and washed the dishes, the drudgery of what I had to do easing my fluctuating hormone levels. It sure brought me back to the depths of average-ness, but I figured that was a necessary evil if I wanted to be incognito.

  “Superhumans deserve more dignity than this,” I ground out as I dumped the garbage afterward. To add insult to injury, I nearly got savaged by a moth that had decided to claim our garbage can lid for its moonbathing perch. Superhumans needed to start a union. I seriously had to organize one.

  Chapter 14

  I wished my dad had saved that newspaper with the Trill’s manifesto. I was hoping to put one together of my own, but I’d no clue what went into it other than “Hello, I’m So-and-So, you all suck, I’m going to destroy this city, and Magnifiman’s a wuss!”

  Of course, I could always break the Trill out of the asylum, but I wanted to do this on my own. I expected him to have plenty of chances once he was out to mold me into the best supervillain I could be—before I used everything I learned against him, yeah!—but in the meantime, there were a few things I’d rather do, myself. What better way to test my abilities than to exert some independence?

  So I stayed up late that evening, half-killing myself over my manifesto. It was like writing another essay for my English class, and I was going nowhere fast. Why didn’t supervillain manifestos come with Literary Cheat Sheets?

  Althea never possessed my computer. I figured she was caught up in all the excitement that day unless she was avoiding me because she somehow found out I was energy boy. Peter also didn’t show up for a romantic visit. It was easier for me to come up with reasons for his absence, but that didn’t bother me as much. I had enough things to do as it was.

  You’re trying too hard.

  I grimaced. “Do you come with an on-off switch or something? I need to focus here, not listen to some nagging voice in my head.”

  It seems that you don’t fully understand my purpose for being here.

  I waved a hand and glowered at the computer screen. “You’re here to piss me off, and you’re doing a pretty good job of it. I’ll give you a raise when I can afford to. Now go the hell away. I’m busy.”

  The voice stopped, and for a moment, I was surprised at how quickly it responded this time. Maybe it was one of those signs of my taking more and more control of my powers. God, I hoped so. This whole wishy-washy-badoozy thing was really wearing me down. I shrugged things off and moved forward. The blank file stared at me, defiant and mocking in all its snow-white, virgin state. The cursor seemed like a tongue that kept sticking out at me—the way some snot-nosed kid with missing front teeth would do to random people. Neener-neener, yep.

  Minutes ticked by, and still nothing. This was writer’s block at its worst, and I wanted to destroy something. Of all the times for it to happen! I stood up with a curse and paced around my room, grumbling and hissing as I stared at my bare feet and my bedroom’s faded old wood floors.

  I couldn’t even figure out a name for myself. How stupid.

  I must’ve worn a circular path on my bedroom floor before I forcefully reminded myself what was at stake here. In other words, I stood before a wall and knocked my head against it a couple of times. Then I tiptoed downstairs—dazed and headache-y—for nutritional reinforcements. Within moments I’d sneaked back in with a cup of Dad’s coffee, which was nowhere near decaf, and oh, boy, did that work!

  Funny how stress, pride, and a deep, crippling fear of Bambi Bailey’s naming skills worked together to push me into a state of caffeine-induced stream-of-consciousness brainstorming.

  Energy waves. Warmth. Asphyxiating bubbles. Organic bruising, no death or maiming. Limited inanimate destruction. Sci-fi stuff. Television. Reruns, retro crap whose scripts I’d memorized by my fourteenth birthday. Cheesy, cheap special effects. Aliens and monsters. Bad acting. Star Trek. Vulcans were cool. Romulans were cooler.

  “That’s it!” I crowed, my spirits perking up as I rushed back to my computer and typed out my new supervillain alias.

  The Cloak.

  I grinned, feeling giddy and official and ignoring the throbbing lump on my head. Romulans used cloaking technology. My powers could be used for cloaking. That was simple, to the point, and appropriately ominous. I squirmed in my chair, unable to believe my luck, not to mention my cleverness. Of course, I’d yet to crash through the wall of writer’s block, but I figured the surge of jubilant energy would carry me through the godawful process of coming up with a good manifesto.

  I cracked my knuckles and set to work, channeling what I cou
ld of my initial euphoria. The words came out slowly at first—awkwardly and painfully—but I felt untouchable then, and I kept going, wholly unfazed, and before long I was lost in a fury of superhuman angst. I stopped when I felt I was done and sat back to reread my rough draft. It worked, I thought, not a bad first effort from a newbie bad-ish guy.

  I almost—almost—threw in a couple of threatening haikus, but that would’ve given my identity away—note to self: stop sharing your poetry with Peter and the rest of the Quill Club.

  Besides, haikus would be too artistic for someone as hardcore as The Cloak. I took a quick break and went downstairs again for another cup of coffee. Sure, it was eleven o’clock or somewhere around that time by then, and I was sure setting myself up for a night of miserable sleep deprivation, but I could afford to sacrifice peace and rest for one night. Business first, yep, pleasure and everything else came a distant second.

  By the time I was done, it was three in the morning. I was dizzy and alert in a residual sort of way, the kind of alertness that wouldn’t go away because one’s nerves had been hopelessly fried by too much caffeine at the worst time of the day.

  Screw all that, I thought, eyeing my manifesto over and over. I set to do something and got it done in excellent time. It had been revised a few times since, and I was satisfied with it now. I saved it and resolved to drop it on Bambi Bailey’s lap the next day. No use waiting for the papers to be printed and distributed. Live, breaking news was more immediate and more effective.

  Besides, I knew where the local TV news station was located, and I could always corner Miss Bailey at the right time.

  I tumbled into bed, turning off my light, and curled up, wide awake still, but oh, well. I felt quite impressed with my ability to wade through the psychotic quicksand of superhuman-ness with some ease. It was going to be a tough balancing act being an ambivalent superhuman type, and I reminded myself not to be overtaken by the Dark Side despite my desire to learn more from it.