Origins of a D-List Supervillain

by Jim Bernheimer

  Whether Bobby was right remained to be seen, but I was going to do another bank job.

  • • •

  Descending, I used my armored foot to kick the camera covering the back of the bank from the wall and landed right at the employee entrance. The breeching charge made me look oddly like a kid carrying a trombone case on his way to band practice—except that my instrument was designed to burn through a steel locking mechanism in less than a minute.

  Using one of those ridiculous force clubs I’d made for Bobby, I smashed the door until it gave way under the third blow.

  This thing would look so much better on a sledgehammer or a maul, I thought while ripping the door from the remaining hinge and tossing it aside like it was made of cardboard.

  The pressure sprayer mounted on my left arm came to life as I smothered the inside camera with a layer of glossy black, limiting the footage they’d be able to recover of Mechani-CAL in action. Stopping only to knock the warbling alarm out of the wall with the club, I trudged straight to the vault and jammed the flat face of my breeching charge against the area where the locking mechanism went into the frame. When I activated it, hot flames and smoke billowed from the back which would take care of any other cameras trying to see me and also set off the fire alarms.

  “Switch to enhanced night vision,” I said and watched my field of vision turn green, loving the voice activated commands. The glow from my breeching charge provided a strange cascade of colors washing over my heads up display as I counted the seconds.

  Like clockwork, I was through in one minute. I set the charge down and used both hands to yank the vault open. One of the things that still took some getting used to was, the strength amplification of the suit. It didn’t matter in this instance, but just doing things around our base had caused considerable havoc and kept both Dee and Dum repairing chairs, countertops, and many, many other items as I was still learning how to deal with my newfound strength.

  The locker where the stacks of cash were located offered less resistance than your average kitchen pantry door and I began shoving everything inside a flame proof bag. Triggering my sensor array, I looked for any type of transmitters hidden within the loot. Banks, in general, aren’t stupid. They know supervillains are out there and that their vaults aren’t impregnable. To counter us, they rely on technology, although there were rumors that some of the banks on the west coast have a deal with the Grand Vizier and Mystigal to use magical tracking spells on their money, but I was certain that kind of protection didn’t come cheap and a little “Podunk” branch wouldn’t have something like that.

  A magnetic field generator, I thought and located the device on the inside of the cash locker. That means a transmitter will be active when I pull it out—probably on a timer. No worries, I’ll run it through an industrial magnet in the back of my van while Bobby drives.

  Bobby was an upgrade over Tracy, the inflatable getaway driver, and he’d even offered to come to the bank, but I impressed him and insisted that I conquer my fears alone. One might think that was some epic moment where two men came to a powerful and deep understanding...not really.

  The truth was, Bobby said, “You want me to tag along in case something goes wrong?”

  My reply, “Nah, I got this! Probably better if you stayed with the van parked about twenty miles away.”

  “Okay,” he replied and the profound moment was over. We were guys and not even particularly complex ones at that. My partner was a good old boy with more strength than sense and I...well, I guess I’d be classified as a disgruntled genius with a chip on my shoulder about the size of Ultraweapon.

  But I now had a full bag of cash that would fill the coffers quite nicely, a bigger haul than one of Bobby’s muscle jobs. Sealing the flap of the bag, I pushed my way out into the burning lobby and scooped up my plasma cutter. A check of the timer showed I was at the four minute mark and needed to hurry. I lumbered back down the hallway and back out the way I came. The moment I reached the back of the building, I triggered my jetpack and got airborne. I’d faced my inner demon and come out of it not a better man, but a wealthier one.

  • • •

  The arson, combined with the lack of useable video footage, didn’t give the authorities much to go on. I was labeled a mystery criminal who is strong and probably able to fly. I was okay with that. The less seen of me, the better. In fact, I was already trying to work on a better way to take out security cameras. The paint sprayer was good, but when I got back to our base—it was a base now, because hideouts were for chumps—I thought it over and realized that the paint could have easily caught fire from the plasma cutter. Quite frankly, I’d already made the countdown on the Annual Dumbest Criminals Captured for my time as ManaCALes, and didn’t want to be remembered as the guy running down the street in a burning power armor suit; with people captioning pictures of me with phrases like EPIC FAIL, STOP, DROP, and TROLL, or WONDER IF MY WIENER IS ROASTING.

  Yeah, not interested in that. Let’s move along shall we.

  “How much did we get?” Bobby asked. I pretended not to notice his use of we, unable to recall a time when he was pulling a job that we got any credit for.

  “A little over two hundred grand in roughly five minutes,” I said. “Not too shabby.”

  He agreed and asked what we should spend it on.

  “I’ll need more synthmuscle and a better autowinder. The good stuff Maxine stole from Promethia went into my legs and torso. As much as I hate saying it, the brand name stuff is much more durable than the cheap shit I put into my arms. I’ve got a bunch of microrips in the bundles up there from manhandling the vault door. Those will need to be replaced before too long. Other than that, I think we can finally afford to put a real power system in here. Whatever’s left we can toss in the recreational fund.”

  Bobby seemed to be satisfied by my last sentence. He liked to have his fun. I was a little more reserved. By contrast, even on my most hedonistic day, I was a prude compared to him!

  “I heard it through the grapevine that someone is looking around for muscle, and I was thinking of tossing my hat into the ring,” he said, changing the topic. “You interested?”

  “Any idea who? What’s the pay?” Those both seemed like important questions. I was legit now, sort of, and didn’t want to jump at any old job.

  “Nah,” Bobby said. “I just got word through one of my contacts. With you having no rep, you probably would only get twenty-five. I’m asking for fifty minus my guy’s ten percent. He gave me the impression that someone had a score they wanted to settle.”

  The numbers would have sounded impressive if I wasn’t sitting on much more than that right now. One of the things that had been drilled into my head by my experiences thus far was that being a supervillain was a dog eat dog world. That probably made me some kind of mongrel that the “adopt a pet” campaigns flash on screen for just a moment to guilt people into donating, but this mongrel had just eaten a full meal. Plus, fighting meant dishing out and taking damage. My armor still had that new armor smell and I was reluctant to throw it—and me for that matter—into someone’s petty vendetta.

  “I’ll pass on this one and pull a few more bank jobs,” I said. “If I go out into the open, I’ll tip my hand about my suit and what it can do. Right now, I’d rather remain a mystery and build up enough money to fix the suit. If it gets too badly damaged, I’m back at square one.”

  “Suit yourself, wussy,” Bobby said, acknowledging my decision and asserting his manhood at the same time.

  I gave Bobby my shopping list to give to his arranger. I’d never met the dude, but Bobby was using him to sell my pistols through and buy the stuff for the base. Adjusting for the markup, my haul probably wouldn’t go as far as I needed it to.

  That meant I’d need to make another withdrawal, or perhaps several, from the banking industry soon. With my suit complete, it was high time I finished furnishing this place and do it right.

  • • •

  By my fourth
bank heist in as many weeks, my luck had run out and I didn’t count on the bank I’d robbed being cagey enough, or so paranoid, that they’d paid the surrounding businesses to have security systems in them as well as a camera in the vault itself.

  Becoming a known quantity was the price of netting my first million dollars. Sadly, when I stopped to think about it, that million wasn’t going very far. The power plant for the base, even stolen...I mean secondhand...ate up four hundred grand. The equipment for an actual elevator system chewed away another two hundred, and that was with me, Dee, and Dum doing all the installation, but at least we could now descend in style with two tons of goodies at a time.

  Admittedly, I could easily become obsessed in a project and neglect everything else. That trait had served me well over the years, but not without an occasional mishap. Case in point was the three day old email from Leslie I was just now looking at. I was celebrating connecting the base up to the network Wireless Wizard runs for criminals to access the internet. It cost five grand a month, but pretty much guaranteed anonymity, and had porn channels from one hundred and sixteen countries. Or as Bobby liked to say, “Kenya? Hell, yeah!”

  Cal,

  Where the hell are you? Leonard came by and was looking for you. He said you missed your check in with him and if he doesn’t hear from you by tomorrow, he’s going to tell the judge that you’re a parole violator! You’d better not screw this up for me!

  “Shit! Shit! Shit!”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I missed my parole officer appointment,” I answered Bobby. “There’s probably a bench warrant out for me already.”

  “Well, you haven’t left this place in probably two weeks,” he observed. “Except to rob that bank in Georgia.”

  I looked at the calendar, a pinup of Aphrodite that Bobby had given me, that was hanging above my workbench and tried to figure out where I’d lost track of the time.

  Deciding I didn’t have the ability to travel through time, I turned back to Bobby and said, “What am I going to do? Should I try and cut a deal with Lenny?”

  “Nah, he lives for this shit. Makes him feel like he’s a big man.”

  It was true. There was no denying that Bobby’s cousin was a tool. I considered seeing if Leslie would go out with him, but decided it wasn’t worth hearing her bitch.

  Taking a deep breath and trying not to think about how I just screwed myself, I said, “Well, no use in crying over it. I’m a wanted man.”

  “Well, you don’t really go out much. I can see if my guy can set you up with a new identity and whatnot, but...”

  “It’s gonna cost me. I know,” I finished for him. Everything seemed to cost me these days. I began to miss the good old days when my biggest problem consisted of trying to get running water in our hideout. Clicking on the terminal, I started searching and cross referencing my name.

  “Yeah, but it’s not like you’re really trying to fit in anymore. You stopped pulling shifts at Floozies. I don’t really see what the big deal is.”

  Bobby was right. I was either working on the base, working on my suit, planning a crime, or committing said crime. In truth, I hadn’t showered in three days or slept in thirty-six hours. My internet searches kicked out some results and I found a “Be on the Lookout for” notice on the police blotters for the surrounding three counties with my name.

  Damn! Leonard got them to send out a BOLO.

  It took only a moment to reach my decision. Screw parole! Screw Leonard! “Is your guy still looking for extra muscle?”

  “Not for the one you’re thinking. That turned out to be Rodentia and as soon as word got out, no one wanted to work that job. That worthless shit never pays up! However, EM Pulsive’s looking for some guys. I was gonna sit that one out, but if you’re in, I’m game.”

  Recalling the one time I’d spoken with Edward Michael Pulsive, I knew he was farther up the supervillain ladder and might be able to get me access to people who wouldn’t give somebody like Bobby a second thought.

  Being a villain—it’s not about who you know, but who knows you.

  “Yeah, I’m in if the price is right. Any idea what he’s planning?”

  I held my breath and hoped it was something on the west coast. Since my parole was a bust, it didn’t really matter anymore and I could pay Mr. Barton a long overdue visit.

  “Nope, not a clue.”

  “Then I guess we should hear what the man has to say.”

  • • •

  “Mechanical, huh?” EM Pulsive said looking me over in his glowing form. His voice had an odd buzzing sound to it. He circled me, inspecting my suit. We were gathered in an abandoned warehouse in St. Louis auditioning for the job. Bobby was a known quantity, but the villain leading this was hiring his crew and definitely interested in little old me.

  “Mechani-CAL, actually,” I corrected, trying not to sound irritated.

  “How fast can your suit fly?”

  “I can hit one eighty unloaded. If I’m carrying up to five hundred pounds I can still hit one hundred. I can’t get off the ground at nine hundred pounds.”

  “What’s your range?”

  “A little over forty minutes,” I answered.

  “Are those force blasters? How’d you get ahold of Promethia’s designs?”

  “I made the originals for Ultraweapon. He has my designs.”

  The man in lightning bolt form nodded. “Fair enough. How much can your shields take?”

  “I’ve emptied two pulse pistols into it and took it down to eighty percent.”

  “Pulse pistols are toys,” he said and I wanted to be offended. “Think you can stop me?”

  “Why would I want to fight you?”

  “It won’t be a fight, but you’re asking for top dollar, with only a couple of bank robberies under your belt. Tell you what, stand over there and shield one of my blasts. If you can take it, you get your hundred grand. If you can’t, well then maybe you’re not ready to run with the big dogs just yet. What do you say there, Mechani-CAL?”

  At least he got my name right. My nerves fluttered, but the engineer in me was confident that I could withstand his best. “All right,” I said and started walking. Whispering under my breath to my voice activated controls, I said, “Divert weapon power and flight systems to shields.”

  The bar on my HUD grew as I watched Eddie summon a crackling ball of energy that swelled to the size of a basketball. Dormant lights in the rafters above him flickered, picking up some of what he was giving off, and I started to worry that my calculations might be wrong.

  That’s probably gonna hurt.

  As he tossed it at me, I resisted the urge to dodge or run away. A proximity alarm alerted me to the blatantly obvious and a crude electronic voice said, “Power surge detected.”

  No shit Sherlock! I thought as I instinctively threw my arms in front of my face. My whole suit vibrated as the electrical storm impacted and washed over me. Even with the shielding, the backlash that bled through and my suit had what could only be termed as a mild seizure.

  The sheer power of it knocked me backward about ten or so feet, but I recovered and let out the breath I’d been holding.

  “Well, how’d you do?” Eddie’s crackling voice laughed.

  I checked the display on the inside of my visor and said, “Sixty percent left.” I wasn’t sure whether to be proud or concerned. My mind began to race and wonder if there was somewhere I could cram another shield generator that I hadn’t already thought of and discarded.

  “So, that was after you pulled your power away from all your other systems. Not bad, but still kind of weak. Just remember there Tin Soldier, that means you can block two shots from me, but number three gets through and you’re a dead man.”

  “That’s why I’m on your side,” I replied. “Satisfied?”

  “Yeah, I suppose, but don’t freeze on me, noob. So, do those blasters actually work?”

  He gestured and I obliged, unleashing them on a stack of discard
ed wooden pallets that had done nothing to me.

  “So, do you think I’d stand a chance if I threw down with Ultraweapon?” Since he’d fought against Patterson several times, I figured that he would be in the position to know.

  “In that mobile deathtrap? Not a chance in hell!” he exclaimed and started laughing before stopping and saying, “Oh, you were serious? That makes it even funnier.”

  I thought, Way to rain on my parade...asshole!

  For a moment, I considered telling him where he could stick his hundred grand, and just leave, when one of the large wooden doors slid aside and Seawall and another person entered.

  “Seawall and Rodentia?” Bobby said and spit. “You want us to work with these two losers?”

  “Wanna go right now Deliverance Boy?” Seawall answered. “I’m ready for a rematch.”

  “Shut up! Both of you!” Eddie commanded. “Either of you can walk right now. Since I called this little get together, if you stay you’re gonna play nice together, or I’ll fry both you miserable jokers.” He paused and looked at the waif of a man and said, “S’up rat? I don’t recall inviting you.”

  “Mr. Pulsive,” the simpering man said. “I was hoping I could be of use.”

  “Story of your life,” EM Pulsive deadpanned. “But you’re here anyway, so how about twenty-five? I could use an extra distraction.”

  Rodentia was a pathetic specimen. Other than his psionic ability to command rats, he was about as normal as you could get. At five foot three and a hundred fifteen pounds soaking wet a thirty mile per hour gust of wind would be a worthy opponent for him. Gunk’s words of warning from back in prison immediately came to mind. On a job, he wore this rubber rat mask. Without it, he didn’t even really have any rat-like features.