by Logan Jacobs
“Uhhh, is that a rocket launcher?” Norma asked.
“Yes,” Aileen answered.
“What a psychopath,” Elizabeth growled.
“His wardrobe needs some work,” I commented, “but look at the time date stamp on the video. It says this is January at eight at night, and everyone looks like they were hauled out onto the roof just a few moments ago. They are shivering, but Manic isn’t, and he’s wearing flip-flops and thin pants.”
“I did not notice that,” Aileen said. “You are very observant, Miles. Now, watch what happens next.”
Elizabeth, Norma, and I leaned a bit closer to the screen, and we watched Manic dance like a wing-flapping chicken over to one of the people he’d obviously taken as a hostage.
Then he leveled the pistol he held in his left hand at the poor woman’s face, pulled the trigger, and sent her brains splattering all over the rooftop.
The other prisoners screamed while Maniac twirled around like a ballet dancer, then he walked over to the next prisoner, but instead of aiming his pistol at the man’s face, he swung the rocket launcher so that its business end pointed at the man’s crotch.
And they were about five feet apart.
I didn’t know if Maniac was actually going to pull the trigger, since that probably would have killed him and half the people on the roof. What happened next was that a flash of black darted across the rooftop almost like a swooping hawk. The movement was incredibly fast, and it was heading for Maniac’s back, but somehow the dark figure missed the ill-dressed man in the cowboy hat.
“Wait,” I said. “Rewind that and play it slower,”
“I was just going to do that,” Aileen purred, and then we saw the video rewind and play back at about a fifth of the speed.
“That’s the Shadow Knight,” Elizabeth said as we saw the silhouette of the dark figure against the night sky.
“How’d he get that angle of approach?” I asked, since it seemed like he was being propelled horizontally across the flat rooftop toward Maniac’s back.
“He has wings?” Norma suggested.
“That’s his costume,” I sighed.
“Maybe they make him fly?” my assistant asked.
“He has a variety of aircraft, grappling hooks, and yes, his costume does allow him to glide through the air.” Elizabeth said as she tapped the screen where Shadow Knight’s feathery wings extended.
We watched for another half minute as the Shadow Knight flew in slow motion across the roof toward the Maniac’s back, it looked like Shadow Knight was going to double kick the flamboyant man’s spine straight into the hospital gurney, but at the very last possible moment, the Maniac ducked, and the Shadow Knight passed harmlessly over his head.
“That seems impossible,” Elizabeth said.
“Maybe he saw a reflection somewhere?” Norma asked.
“At night?” I sighed. “Also, you saw how fast Shadow Knight was flying across that roof. Even if Maniac saw him coming, a normal human wouldn’t be able to react in time.”
“So, you think he has super speed?” Elizabeth asked.
“Play it again,” I told Aileen, “but let’s look at Maniac instead of Shadow Knight.”
My AI assistant re-played that part of the video, and we all kept our eyes on Maniac.
“He’s already dodging,” Elizabeth gasped.
“But Shadow Knight is across the roof still,” Norma finished.
“So, either Maniac knew he was coming, or he’s incredibly lucky,” I said.
“Or his power is some sort of escapism,” Aileen said. “Shadow Knight captures Maniac, but he breaks out of prison again a few days later.”
“Let’s see the rest of the video,” I commanded, and then Aileen changed the play speed so that it was about half speed.
As soon as Maniac dodged Shadow Knight’s first surprise attack, things got all sorts of interesting. Maniac tried to turn his rocket launcher on the black feathered man, but Shadow Knight threw some sort of shuriken and knocked it out of his hand. Maniac’s goons tried to shoot him with their AK-47’s, but the dark armored figure leapt off the edge of the building, seemed to catch an updraft, floated around to the other side in an instant, and then chucked more of his shuriken at the men. Each one was expertly aimed, and soon the goons were all disarmed, and then the dark-armored hero was in the mix knocking them around as if they were training dummies.
“Wow,” I whistled. “He’s really fast and efficient.”
“He’s an excellent fighter,” Elizabeth said with a bit of pride. “Cunning, clever, and resourceful.”
“Ehhh.” I shrugged, but then Shadow Knight had finished taking out all the painted-armored goons, and he had turned his attention back on Maniac.
The crazed man in the ridiculous outfit had retrieved his rocket launcher at that point, and he spun it toward Shadow Knight. A rocket snaked out half a moment later, but he actually hadn’t aimed at the hero, instead, the rocket went wide and up and took out a news helicopter that was circling the building. The aircraft went up in a fiery ball of smoke, and bits of razor sharp shrapnel began to rain down on the roof where the captured civilians, goons, Shadow Knight, and Maniac were all located.
Then, lots of people started dying.
“He’s killing his own men that Shadow Knight just beat unconscious!” Norma gasped. “And all those innocent people are getting--”
“Look, though,” I interrupted her and pointed at Maniac. The asshole was making a break for the side of the roof in the confusion, and I could see Shadow Knight spin his head back to the innocent people and the super villian who looked like he was about to leap off the edge of the roof.
Then the Shadow Knight made his decision, and he chased after Maniac.
“That’s probably what I would have done,” I said. “I’m not a medic, and either someone’s going to bleed to death from the shrapnel wounds, or they didn’t get injured and will be fine. Nothing Shadow Knight could have done about it at that point.”
“What happens next is not what you would do, Creator,” Aileen said, and we all watched as Shadow Knight grabbed Maniac right before he could throw himself off the edge of the roof. There was a brief melee fight, and I noticed that Maniac somehow dodged two thirds of the punches and kicks that Shadow Knight threw at him, but then finally enough blows landed, and Maniac was knocked unconscious.
Shadow Knight then handcuffed the psychopath, and police began to swarm the top of the building.
“And he escaped prison days after?” I asked, even though Aileen had already told me.
“Yes,” Aileen answered. “You would have killed him.”
“Yep,” I sighed, and Dynamo, Norma, and I exchanged unhappy glances.
“Let’s talk about Mayhem,” I continued. “Aileen, what’s your profile on him?
“He’s a Maniac wannabe,” Aileen replied. “Hits a lot of the same notes, tries to anyway, but he just isn’t as clever or original as he thinks he is. The good news is that the police and public databases have much more information about him.”
“Tell us his backstory,” I replied. “We should just try to start with understanding him psychologically.”
“This is going to be a long story,” Aileen warned.
I was pleased by her casually human usage of the term “long.” It had taken me a while to explain the human perception of time to her. Because on the one hand, she could process several gigabytes of data in a fraction of the time that it took a neurotypical human to think of a single word. Yet she also had no concept of boredom or aging, so if I assigned her a task that would take seventy years to complete it wouldn’t faze her one bit. There was really no story that could feel long for Aileen to hear or tell, so I knew that she was referring to our perspective.
“We’ve got time,” I said.
“Mayhem’s legal name is Benjamin Schneider,” Aileen stated. “He is twenty-seven years of age. He was raised by a drug addict mother and is thought to suffer from learning disabilities
due to substances that she used while pregnant. However, he was a precocious child, and his IQ was tested at higher than average. Various sources disagree on the exact number. The point is, his mind is dysfunctional, but he’s not a moron.”
“What does he look like?” Norma asked.
Aileen gestured toward the open laptop in front of us, and the screen filled up with two side-by-side images.
One was of a spotty-skinned teenager, not particularly remarkable looking in any way, faintly dorky with a narrow chin, beaky nose, prominent Adam’s apple, and bulging pale blue eyes. The eyes were the only notable feature. There was a bit of madness in them. But then again, maybe I was just thinking that because I knew that this was the face of the kid who would grow up to become a supervillain and take daycares hostage. I really didn’t think I’d give him a second look if I passed him on the street.
The second image would not have been recognizable as the same person if not for the way Aileen had lined them up in context. The person in it looked like he was almost forty and worn out.
His face had gotten a little longer and a lot more gaunt, like parts of it had melted away. The zits had been replaced by acne scars. The hairline had receded, but what was left had been dyed a bright, garish blue. That electric blue was the only thing that looked fresh and alive about the visage. That, and the wildness in the eyes. I couldn’t tell if it was fear or rage or both. Otherwise, it was like a zombie version of the previously normal looking teenager. The composition of the two images was like one of those before and after ads warning against hard drug use.
The first shot seemed to be from a school yearbook or something like that and was taken in a suit and tie, whereas the second was clearly a mugshot based on the orange jumpsuit peeking out from the bottom of the frame.
“Does he have a costume?” I asked Aileen.
She pulled up another image of a blue-haired man dressed like a punk rocker in a black trench coat. The rest of his outfit was artfully distressed and covered in chains and buckles. “Like Maniac, Mayhem doesn’t always wear exactly the same thing, but that’s his favorite coat.”
“So, he dresses like an emo high school kid from the early two thousands?” Dynamo asked.
“That is an accurate statement,” Aileen replied.
“Okay, thanks for the illustrations,” I said. “Now, what’s the bio?”
“Mother was an unstable drug addict, as mentioned before,” Aileen said. “Had a tumultuous relationship with his father, who was a white-collar employee in the financial sector. There were multiple domestic violence calls to their house during Benjamin’s childhood, usually prompted by calls from neighbors, and she was the aggressor in all of them. The father always declined to press charges. They remained married until Benjamin reached the age of ten, and his mother died of an overdose. His father promptly remarried a divorcee with two children of her own similar in age to Benjamin, with whom he did not get along. When he was fifteen, Benjamin was sent to a private boarding school, from which he was expelled after one quarter.”
“What did he do?” Norma asked.
“He seems to have set a classmate’s bed on fire under the false belief that the classmate was occupying it at the time,” Aileen replied. “The classmate’s parents wanted to press charges but Benjamin’s father managed to settle with them with the support of the school, which wanted to minimize the scandal as much as possible. Benjamin underwent counseling for a number of years after that as he proceeded to attend a series of specialized schools for troubled youths, but he kept getting kicked out after various incidents. No other students actually died in these incidents, however, although that did seem to be Benjamin’s intent in several cases, so for that reason with the help of some very expensive lawyers Benjamin’s father managed to prevent him from being sent to jail. He did spend a few stints in the mental ward but would eventually get discharged.”
“Sounds like a lovely young man,” Elizabeth said sarcastically.
“His father finally cut ties with him, however, after he made an attempt on the life of his stepmother at the age of twenty,” Aileen said. “He attacked her with a shovel during a family picnic. His father and stepbrother intervened and subdued him and another relative called the police. She was taken to the hospital with serious but non-life-threatening injuries. A few months after that, Benjamin adopted the supervillain moniker of Mayhem.”
“What is his superpower?” I asked.
“He doesn’t have any powers that predisposed him to that career choice, it was just a matter of personality,” Aileen answered.
“But he’s classified as a supervillain?” I raised an eyebrow. “Is he just ultra-violent?”
“Yes,” Aileen answered me with a nod. “He got his start as a supervillain by working for the Gray Ghost. He spent the next seven years in and out of prison. Most of his charges are for assault or armed robbery. There are also fourteen counts of murder and twenty-five counts of being an accessory to murder.”
“Does he still work for the Gray Ghost?” I asked. I didn’t know who that was, but if going after Mayhem was going to lead to a confrontation with a bigger baddie, then we needed to know about it.
“No,” Aileen replied. “Their association ended four years ago. It seems… er… the Gray Ghost deemed him as unreliable and too violent.”
“I didn’t know you could do that,” I said. “I mean, get fired by a supervillain and allowed to walk away alive.”
“The Gray Ghost seemed to find him amusing,” Aileen replied.
“Ah, so supervillains can have a sense of humor,” I said. I smirked at Elizabeth. “That’s more than I can say for some of your former coworkers.”
She rolled her eyes. “One thing I’ve never missed about The Wardens is working with Optimo. I mean, even when he wasn’t on the team for a mission, or wasn’t in the room, everyone else was always talking about him. Trying to measure up to him, to do what he would do, even to copy his mannerisms, whether that was on purpose or not.”
“The women weren’t trying to be the Killer Kitten, since she was the most high-profile female?” I asked.
“Nah, even most of The Wardens found her a bit ridiculous,” Dynamo replied. “But the public was obsessed with her. And most of the male Wardens were trying to sleep with her. Well, a lot of them succeeded. I don’t say that to badmouth her, it’s just a fact. It wasn’t uncommon, really. The whole organization tended to be a bit, ah, incestuous.”
“Right, because our crime fighting team keeps it all strictly professional,” Norma said pointedly.
I coughed.
Elizabeth busied herself putting another chocolate-covered blueberry in her mouth. Then she asked airily, “Anything else we should know about Mayhem, Aileen?”
“He has a bit of an inferiority complex, and all of his capers and crimes have a calling card that he leaves behind,” Aileen responded. “Maniac will also leave calling cards, but as I was playing the videos for you just now, I hacked into the Grayville police computers again and did some digging. Maniac was apparently fighting Shadow Knight in another part of town within a few hours of when your nanobots were stolen. Maniac wasn’t captured then, so it is possible that he then stole the nanobots afterward, but I think it may be less likely.”
“So, we don’t know for sure who stole them,” I sighed, “but I don’t think we want to go up against the biggest, baddest supervillain in the city yet, when all we’ve dealt with so far are some of Pinnacle City’s petty scumbags.”
“The Chief and The Virus did have superpowers, though,” Norma pointed out.
“True,” I said as I tapped my chin and thought. The Virus had a mind control power that he had almost used to coerce Norma and me into killing each other, and The Chief had had a telekinetic power that he had used to rip my team’s guns out of our hands, turn a room into a tornado of furniture around us, and nearly batter us to death.
“Some of the most terrifying supervillains don’t have any powers, and some of the mo
st pathetic ones do,” Elizabeth said.
“Aileen, did you search the ownership of that warehouse?” I asked her.
“Yes, but it was an international conglomerate that didn’t appear to be keeping it in use,” Aileen replied. “My guess would be that the thief didn’t own the warehouse and just broke into it to plant the tracker there. And, of course, the bomb.”
“So we think that it’s most likely either Mayhem or The Maniac, but we don’t have any way to narrow it down between them?” I reiterated.
“Unfortunately, it seems--” Aileen began.
“Hey, you know who could help us?” Elizabeth interrupted. “The Shadow Knight.”
“Doesn’t he have an idiotic no kill policy?” I asked.
“Well, yeah, but he knows Grayville better than anyone,” the aquamarine-eyed beauty said. “I bet if we told him what happened to us with the nanobots, and showed him this picture, he’d have a good idea of which supervillain was most likely responsible. He knows all the supervillains in Grayville. Their strengths and weaknesses, their habits, their motives, and their lairs.”
“You mean, because he’s fought and captured them all multiple times before, only for them to escape or get let out again?” I asked.
My girlfriend sighed. “Well, he’s not a Warden… he’s not beholden to organizational rules the way we were. He’s an individual. And he’s extremely intelligent. So if you could convince me that sometimes killing is necessary, then maybe you could convince him too.”
I appreciated her faith in me, but I wasn’t so sure about that. When I recruited Dynamo, she had been the newest rookie in the Warden organization. Confident, optimistic, idealistic, but still only in the formative years of her career and open to questioning the Wardens policies and considering outside advice. The Shadow Knight on the other hand sounded like he was already fairly well established in his career and accustomed to being a big fish in a small pond.
A pond in which the team and I were gearing up to create some sizeable ripples.
“We could ask him for advice and then take it or leave it,” Norma said. “Even just knowing whether we’re up against a supervillain that we probably can’t beat or probably can beat would be helpful. But then if we turn out not to like the guy, the Shadow Knight I mean, we can just go off and do our own thing.”
