Villains Inc. (Wearing the Cape)

by Marion G. Harmon

  Quin was yelling for first-aid kits. Any bullets that hit her had simply bounced, and Artemis had misted to leave the ones that got her behind, but she held an arm close to her side as she and Quin knelt over Chakra.

  Oh God. I stopped breathing and started praying.

  Quin yelled into her earbug as she made a pressure-bandage out of Chakra’s hood, and I forced myself to turn away to look for more victims. And there were more. Yoshi might have been momentarily stunned (I’d bounced him off the wall), but he knelt beside another Fortress patron. She cried breathlessly, a high-pitched whine he ignored as he gently checked her over, and I followed his example, triaging victims and not even bothering with Dispatch; they’d just distract and help was already on the way.

  Rush arrived only heartbeats later, his arms full of field-kits he laid out in a blur, one for each of us and even for Andrew and Safire. I focused on my work; there was enough for everybody.

  We’d all cross-trained in field trauma—enough to know when bullet-wounds, broken bones, and other kinds of injuries were life-threatening and what to do till help arrived. One victim I checked was already gone; she’d taken a bullet through the neck, bled out arterially in seconds. Next to her a guy, probably her date, held in an abdominal wound that pumped dark blood. I applied a pressure-bandage and wrapped it tight while telling him to lie still and count by tens, and was working on another—a contestant with a bullet hole in her arm and a bleeding graze on her temple—when the paramedics arrived to take our place. Then it became a race as we strapped the worst wounded onto rescue boards and it was my turn, mine and Safire’s.

  Now I paid attention to Dispatch as they called instructions in my ear. Northwestern Memorial’s trauma center stood ready to receive us as we came in, Chakra and the gut-shot victim first, to drop our cargoes on waiting gurneys. They disappeared through the doors, whisked inside by flapping white coats, and we returned to fly every shooting victim that couldn’t walk themselves into the back of an ambulance. The shooter’d had less than three seconds, and he’d managed to hit more than half a dozen people. I tried not to think of my last sight of Chakra; bone-white but repeating some kind of chant to herself between painful breaths. She hadn’t felt me squeeze her hand.

  The police arrived behind the paramedics, cordoning off Rush Street while we worked to stabilize and transport everyone. Then we were done.

  * * *

  “Astra?”

  I looked up at Fisher and realized that I’d wandered back to our table by instinct. Blood spotted it, and I wasn’t touching the cold tapas.

  “Astra?” he repeated. Around the room, cops I recognized were taking statements or safeguarding the room till the crime-scene examiners arrived. Phelps was talking to Yoshi and writing as he listened.

  “Jeez, kid.”

  “What?”

  He pointed at my face. Reaching up, I felt a bump on my mask over my forehead, and picked out a bit of red bone. Back-spatter. I set it on the table.

  “He was standing kind of close.” I said carefully. “I’ll have the screaming willies later, but right now I’m in my happy place. There are bunnies.”

  “Can you tell me what happened?”

  I nodded and straightened up, and he set his phone on record while I talked. “Do you know who he was yet?” I asked finally.

  Fisher nodded. “Got a hit off his record. He called himself Nemesis—he’s a wannabe vigilante. I’m headed to his place next. Want to tag along? We could use you.”

  Standing, I shook my head. “Now you’ve got my statement, I’m going to the hospital. Keep me in the loop?”

  “Garfield won’t like it, but, sure kid. You did good.” He looked back at Nemesis’ covered remains, at the two draped bodies by the wall.

  “Jesus. Sorry, kid.”

  I sighed. “S’okay.”

  * * *

  Once upon a time just stepping into a hospital freaked me out; the unique smells, the beeping machines, brought back Bad Stuff. Now I didn’t even think about it. The nurse behind the desk told me Chakra was stable and directed me to the intensive care unit, after handing me a bunch of wipes and sending me into the staff restroom to clean my face and mask.

  Looking less like a horror movie extra, I found the ICU. Chakra lay sleeping behind glass, attached to wires and tubes and surrounded by blinking and beeping equipment. Blackstone turned away from the observation window when I pushed through the doors.

  I was glad to see Seven behind him, even though Blackstone wasn’t a specific target anymore. Probably.

  “How did she know?” I blurted.

  “Pardon?” Blackstone leaned on his cane, normally a costume-prop.

  “Hecate. How did she know we’d be at The Fortress tonight?”

  He actually smiled. A sad smile, but still.

  “Astra,” he said. “Stop for a moment, and assume that Hecate doesn’t wear her panties on her head and talk to her flying monkeys. Given what little we know of her goals, is there any reason you can think of for her to be behind tonight?”

  “But—”

  “Artemis is back at the Dome coordinating with the police, but I doubt we’ll learn he’s one of Hecate’s minions.”

  “We’re attacked three times in three days and it’s a coincidence?”

  “I didn’t say that.” He sighed, drawing himself up. Tap, tap, tap, his cane rhythmically beat the floor. He looked bone tired.

  “Anti-superhero sentiment is rising. Shankman, the recent violence, the political battles… Quin tracks these things, but she tells me that, while our approval numbers haven’t dropped much, our disapproval numbers have risen sharply; many people who were personally indifferent to superhumans and superheroes are increasingly inclined against us. There has always been angry rhetoric, but now people are listening.

  “I was aware of Nemesis—he’s always been one of the few normals on our vigilante watch-list. He was a fanatic bodybuilder and martial artist, a wannabe street-hero who’s had a hard time finding a target for his righteous anger. Last summer he got three years probation for beating up some drug-dealers, and went inactive so far as we knew.

  I couldn’t believe it. “He thought he was a Good Guy?”

  “Which makes you wonder who he thought the Bad Guys were. I will not be at all surprised if the industrious Detective Fisher finds evidence he’s been listening to Shankman and his ilk. Possibly even a confession tape in which he boasts of going down in a glorious battle against the false icons who are corrupting society.”

  “How—?” I closed my mouth, and he sighed again.

  “Doubtless, Dr. Mendel will suggest he was really acting out his envy; she believes that vigilante normals like Nemesis are generally motivated by their unconscious desire to be superhumans—or to at least to prove they can match us. He needed a better class of enemy, and Shankman gave him one. It is unwise, my dear, to blame a known enemy for everything that happens to us.”

  I didn’t know how to respond to that, and in the pause the beeping machines reminded me where I was. Oh God. Chakra was lying behind glass and maybe fighting for her life, and they never said but they were together and I hadn’t even asked how he was doing while he stood there patiently trying to teach me an important lesson.

  “I’m sorry. I—”

  “Don’t be, dear child,” he said gently. “Focusing on stopping more of this doesn’t mean you don’t care what has happened already.”

  He turned back to the glass. Behind him, Seven shrugged helplessly and I wanted to scream. Chakra looked so pale, and suddenly I couldn’t breathe as my old phobia came up to bite me.

  “I, I’ll go back to The Dome,” I said. Blackstone nodded without looking away, and I fled.

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  Whenever somebody asks me to define what a hero is, I remember Latane and Darley’s experiment, staging epileptic fits in front of one, two, or three observers. A solitary observer will help immediately if he’s going to help at all, but the larger the crowd
the longer the delay. It’s the Bystander Effect: the wider the diffusion of responsibility, the greater the impulse to let someone else go first. The hero goes first.

  Dr. Mendell, Superhero Psychology.

  * * *

  Sometimes being the Good Guy sucks. I turned in my after-action report, showered, changed, and desperately missed Shelly. So I went upstairs to the gym and rang the gong—the strike-plate I used for a punching bag—till the walls vibrated with each hit and pain shot up my wrists, and tried to remember what Atlas had told me, to think strategically, like Ajax.

  Most supervillains avoided direct confrontations with superheroes. Fashion-villains were mostly really gang-bangers, petty criminals, or foot-soldiers for organized crime when they weren’t just posers—they were willing to throw down if confronted, but not likely to target heroes. Professional villains, bank-robbers like Kitsune and professional killers like Hecate, considered a superpowered fight a failure, win or lose. Supervillain terrorists—nationalists, religious fanatics, militant environmentalists, whatever—generally went for easy targets (with enough exceptions for our crazy security).

  Blackstone was right; the Dome attack had been a desperation move (Why? What did Kitsune know?), and Nemesis’ brief rampage didn’t fit the pattern. He was probably just a lone nut who’d started talking to the walls and who’d latched onto Shankman’s hateful talk. He’d grabbed for glory and committed ‘suicide by cape.’

  I switched to Mr. Smith, my favorite practice dummy for targeting knee and elbow strikes.

  But we didn’t know.

  Tin Man had been a surprise—a burglar with no history of violence till now. Even before that, Artemis had been out every night, scouring the underworld for leads, “talking” to people. She’d come up with zip, and we still had no in on their motivation and methods, outside of their tendency to use bodies as messages. We saw no reason why their fight should directly involve us, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t one.

  Mr. Smith came apart and I decided to stop before I trashed the place. My ribs ached and my chest felt tight. It can’t happen again. It can’t.

  We needed Kitsune, but how could we find a shapeshifter? How had Villains Inc. found her? They’d find her again and kill her, and we’d have nothing. Who else could—?

  I dropped to the floor, panting, and fell back to stare at the ceiling. The enemy of my enemy is my intelligence source. Kitsune wasn’t the only player who knew more than we did.

  * * *

  When you tell a friend “I want to go visit a mob associate and convince him to tell us all he knows,” she says “Okay!” At least if your friend is Artemis.

  My displacement activity of choice had been a workout; hers had been to dive into her intelligence-analysis role, and she’d been glad for anything that pulled her out of repeated combing of exhausted data. But once I told her exactly what I wanted to do, she put her foot down; this had to be off the radar, and we weren’t going in cold. The night was old and a day to prepare was non-negotiable, especially since we couldn’t tap Shelly’s special gifts right now.

  Sternly ordered to go to bed!, I texted the parentals and the Bees, worried about Chakra and Blackstone some more, wondered how Shell was doing as my head hit the pillow, and dropped into sleep.

  Warm spring zephyrs danced across the moonlit hills. I lay on my stomach in the grass, propped up on my elbows, and watched the parade of foxes circling the blooming cherry tree. As pale as the snow-white cherry blossoms, the foxes paced in silence. Glowing points of ghostly fire drifted beside each of the elegant creatures.

  One fox in the strange procession raised its head and turned to look at me with shining animal-eyes. It pricked its silver-tipped ears towards our hill and the breeze changed direction, plucking blossoms from the tree to dance over the grass until they lighted on my skin like flakes of fragrant snow. The beautiful creature followed the breeze, bounding gracefully over the young grass to sit on the slope just below me. Its own spark of fox-fire followed along.

  “How do you fair, human child?” it asked as I went cross-eyed trying to count its tails. Three? Five? When I tried to focus I just saw one, but it multiplied when I looked away.

  “I’m not a child,” I objected, giving up. “I’m almost nineteen. And why can’t you be John?”

  “I could be, but you’d object.” It stretched its neck, like it was sore. “And I didn’t enjoy that the first time.”

  I jerked upright in bed, heart racing.

  Great. I was dreaming in Disney-color and even the talking animal couldn’t take me seriously. Still, an epiphany was an epiphany, even if it was the head banging, how-dumb-can-I-be kind. Fisher was going to take away my Junior Detective badge. Pushing my hair out of my eyes, I found my phone. He answered on the third ring.

  “Astra? What time is it?” He spoke carefully, like someone who’d drunk a few too many and knew it.

  “Half past four,” I said, reading off my nightstand clock. I dropped back onto my pillow, trying to shake the sleep from my brain. “Sorry! I just thought—”

  “Calm down, kid,” he said, getting clearer. “Now, what did you want to tell me?”

  I took a breath, my free hand bunching my sheets as I stared at the shadowed ceiling.

  “Kitsune. Kit-soo-neh. Fisher, I—” I almost said I know what this is about. But I didn’t, though I could feel it. What did I know?

  “Our elusive thief. Go on.”

  “I can’t imagine why I missed it before. The fox on the business card. And when I saw her in the Dome, she looked—” Breathe. You remember how. “She looked younger than in the bank video. Half-Asian.”

  “I remember. And Jenny told me that kitsune is Japanese for fox. But the description you gave us doesn’t match anyone in our databases.”

  “Yes, but—. Wait, did Jenny say anything else about the name?”

  “No, just that it sounds like our thief is Japanese. In Japanese folklore foxes are shapeshifters. What are you thinking, kid?”

  I pulled myself up, trying to remember. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. My head was harder than the headboard.

  “I think… A kitsune is more than just a fox. Jennifer’s right, but it’s more than that. In Japanese mythology all foxes are spirits. They call them kami, I think. It’s complicated. I remember seeing a Japanese print—a gathering of white foxes around a tree.”

  What else? I’d known something when I woke up. “They can be male or female, but when they look human they’re almost always beautiful women. And, and, as they get older they get stronger—the number of tails tells you how strong they are.”

  “Number of tails?” He didn’t sound like he was laughing.

  “The oldest and wisest have nine. I think the good ones serve a Japanese goddess, too—you see their carvings at a lot of shrines.”

  “So we should look for a fox with a plethora of tails?”

  “No! Here’s the thing; if Kitsune is a supernatural—not a traditional breakthrough—he might think like a real kitsune—I mean—” I sputtered and stopped.

  “I know what you mean,” Fisher said reassuringly. “Do you remember anything from the stories? Motivations?”

  Now I felt stupid. “No… I don’t remember them being greedy. Wait! I think sometimes they’d get attached to families. Do one a favor, and it might watch out for your children? Or if a kitsune actually married a mortal, it might watch over its family forever. Or take vengeance on anyone who harmed them.”

  “That’s interesting. Where did you get all this?”

  “Comparative mythology class. It’s all a lot more relevant since—you know. Does it help?”

  There was a thoughtful silence on the other end, and I held my breath.

  “It might,” Fisher said at last. “One thing I’ve been asking myself since the Dome attack is why this Kitsune is still in Chicago. She’s got the bonds and everybody’s after her, but how can you stop a shapeshifter from skipping town?”

  Now I felt really stupid.

>   “Blackstone talked like Kitsune was playing his own game.”

  “Mm-hm. Any reason why you’ve switched to ‘he’?”

  And then I knew what it was about. Part of it anyway.

  Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.

  “Kid?”

  “I think I might have met him again last night. Yoshi Miyamoto.”

  “Who?”