by Jack Bristol
Clarissa pats my arm. "Superheroes are not the only ones who can Fall, Mr Forrester. Many a villain has switched sides." She turns her attention back to Amy. "Now is your chance to redeem yourself. We were hoping you'd come so we could offer you that opportunity."
Hang on a minute … "You engineered this?"
"To some degree." Clarissa throws me a tiny shrug-shaped bone. "The world runs more smoothly when we leave as little as possible to chance."
The bad girl's face is slathered with disbelief. "You want to offer me the opportunity to be—what—one of the good guys?"
Oh, God. She's one of those people. You know the ones. An air-quoter. And the phrase she air quotes this time is "good guys."
I hate air-quoters. Pet peeve. I can't believe Mr Happy wanted to dive into an air-quoter. He and I need to talk.
"It's that or imprisonment." Clarissa, the former Super Fucking Villain is circling us now. "Not a civilian prison, but our prison. No one has ever escaped a SuperCell. They're made to contain even the best, most skillful of us, and the most cunning and powerful of the supervillains. Once we put you there, you'll never know daylight again."
The current Super Fucking Villain grins. "I'll take my chances. Boys?" She tosses that last word over her shoulder, along with her ponytail, like she's pitching spare change into a fountain.
I hope her wish is a good one. She's going to need it here in superhero central. Because me and my brothers and sisters are loaded for the apocalypse.
Yeah, we're gonna pound some supervillain ass. Bring it, bitch.
Then the lights flicker and die, plunging the lobby into darkness.
It's an unnatural death, because I guarantee this place is generator-ed out the wazoo. And what does everyone do?
The worst thing possible: panic.
Grown men are squealing like little girls. All the bellowing? Women. They're outmanning the men. I'm cutting through the crowd in what I think is a beeline directly for where Super Fucking Villain was last standing, but she and her football goons came prepared. Those googles had to be night vision—and who knows what else. They could be anywhere, watching us flail in the night.
Where's that guy with the light in his chest when we need him?
Oh. Yeah. Probably at his latest movie premiere.
Fuck that guy. We can kick ass without him. Too bad SuperCouncil Security demanded I kick over all my weapons—I had a flashlight. Well, a gun with a light in the pistol grip.
With no light to work with, I'm trying to remember what Amy smells like. Triumph, probably.
Stop, Super Fucking Hero. Hunter—middle name redacted—Forrester.
Think.
The little voice inside me has a point. So I stop. Yeah, it's darker than pitch, but my eyes close and the world becomes more colorful. Ever close your eyes and see all those swirls and whorls of color and light? That's where I am, in my own little kaleidoscope world.
The panic continues around me, but I'm turning the dial, tuning it out. I pull in a long stream of air. I'm like one of those oenophile douche-bags, swooshing a high-dollar wine around my mouth, only I'm doing that with air and my nose. I drag the air down deep, to where my nose and throat connect to the same pipe. What I'm searching for is that note of her. The smell of a traitorous fucking harpy.
I don't know what exactly she's planning after turning out the lights, but I won't let her unspool her evil. She destroys the SuperCouncil, who's going to keep the streets safe? This is as completely fucking personal as it gets.
On the other side of my eyelids, someone sends up a flare. It sprays the room in orange-pink stars.
That's when I catch a whiff of her. It's the hot chocolate she can't seem to quit; it's warm, sweet, marshmallowy.
Eyes closed, I elbow my way through the freak-out zone. I can't tell where her moron minions are, but her chocolate perfume is headed towards the security checkpoint. That post was abandoned when we landed on the janitor's closet floor. The forcefield's still in place, but she's a clever girl. There must be more than flawless, lightly tanned skin up her sleeves.
That's when the gunfire starts. Short, precise bursts. A woman screams. Must be the goons firing—not us. The only women here are ours—except the supervillain herself.
I'm a man torn in two. Stay and help defend what's ours, or follow the sweet scent of chocolate-covered bitch?
Track the supervillain. For better or worse.
Springing up off the ground, I take flight. Thanks to the flare I see the wall the exact second before it leaps out to grope my face.
No time for pain. Gotta run.
The forcefield blips and burps.
"It's Super Fucking Hero," I hiss at it. Too many seconds zip by before it flashes green. I bolt through, take the door that's open. There's light in the hallway but it's thin and intermittent.
Still, it's enough to see Belinda when I reach the end. She of the magnificent tits is slumped over on the floor. Sliding to a stop, I check her pulse (the one on her wrist, okay? Jesus).
Alive. Thank you.
"Hey." I tap her on the cheek. Her eyelids flutter. Her bountiful chest heaves. Inside the suit, my cock perks up. "Where did the girl in red go?"
She feels around for her clipboard. I hold it up for her.
"The Garden Room," she says.
"Which room am I supposed to be in?"
She squints at me. "Who are you?"
Oof. Right in the ego. "It's me—Super Fucking Hero."
Back to the list. "The Garden Room."
The Garden Room. Exactly where I'm supposed to be. That can't be a coincidence. All the SuperCouncil, minus the former Super Fucking Villain, must be there. Amy's alter ego did say she wanted to wipe out the council. She must have meant it literally, as in she intends to snuff them all. I assumed she wanted to demolish the building. As smart as I am, there are still times when I'm not the brightest star in the sky.
Shocking, huh?
The flaky light continues down the next hallway. No running—I fly. I land with a thud outside the tall doors that lead to the Garden Room.
Dead quiet. Either the soundproof is exceptional, or …
You know. They're dead.
Which would let me off the hook. But—as you've already figured out—I can be an idiot. I'd rather be on the hook with the SuperCouncil alive than off the hook with them dead. Love 'em or hate 'em, the work they do is for the good of mankind.
The door's polished knob yields to my yanking. I open it just a crack before I slide in.
The Garden Room is exactly what it sounds like. It's a garden. In a room. But the room is approximately the size of about four football fields smushed together. The roof is high, domed, made of glass and steel. Think one of those conservatories, but on an epic scale. The Garden Room is what the SuperCouncil uses for unpleasant tasks such as condemning some poor bastard who was set up to permanent neutralizing. I guess if they have to get their hands dirty, they feel happier doing it in a huge-ass garden.
Oh, look. They're alive. Phew!
Super Fucking Villain's got them all penned in behind some kind of mobile forcefield. Chicken wire made of glowing blue threads. She's standing on the outside, arms folded. Got serious gloat-face going on.
If you're wondering how she trapped them, these are retired superheroes, remember? Part of the retirement package is the loss of powers—unless you're from off-planet and they're congenital. And we're not talking men and women in their prime, either. They retired for a reason.
"Hey, crazy lady," I bark. "Back the fuck off."
"What?" The sides of her lips twitch. "Are you going to make me?"
"Wow. It's like you read my mind."
"Not really. I just know your type."
"What type is that?"
"Superheroes. You're all little lost lambs searching for some way to redeem yourselves, to atone for something that wasn't your fault. You're all so … emo."
"What's your malfunction? Daddy issues?"
"
What's yours? Oedipal complex? Did you hate competing with your father for blowjobs?"
Ugh. Just no.
She's on a roll. "Would you hurt a woman, Super Fucking Hero—Hunter? What would your dead, dead mother say?"
"She'd probably say I was stupid, you know, mistaking you for a woman."
There's a satisfying crunch as my fist collides with her nose. Now I'm wearing a Jackson Pollock knock-off on my shirt, painted in blood.
"Asshole."
The butt of her palm catches me on the chin, shooting me across the room backwards, like a falling star.
"Daddy issues—I knew it." Yes, I'm goading her. There's a method to my madness, and it boils down to this one simple fact: angry people do dumb shit. I'm counting on it. "Didn't he love you? Or—" I wiggle my eyebrows suggestively—I'm an asshole and a pig, I know. But these are dark times, my friends. Well, dark time. Hopefully things will lighten up after I wipe out Psycho Sugar Tits here. "—did he love you too much?"
Things get slo-mo and super-fast after that.
She pulls out what looks like a tiny bullet vibrator.
Really? She's going to do this in front of all these people? Kinky. Super Fucking Villain indeed.
But it's not a vibrator. Dozens of ultra-thin cables shoot out, all of them aimed at me. Very taser-like.
I leap, intending to land on her far side, but the cables slither around to hook their barbed fingers into my suit.
"Lights on," she says, smiling. Then she pushes a button and electricity shoots me up like I'm a junkie for Nikola Tesla's beloved current.
For the record, it fucking hurts. My bowels are liquifying. If she keeps this up I'm gonna shit my suit. I've never shit my suit.
"Arrrrrggggghhh."
Hear that? That's me. Totally involuntary. My blood is steaming and hissing in my veins, my kidneys are hoping they won't be overcooked, and my liver is wondering if she brought along a nice chianti and some fava beans.
Then the current dies and I flop into a rocky bed of succulents and cacti, somewhere on the far side of Eden.
Let's not argue whether or not a cactus is a succulent. Bottom line: now there are prickles in my prick. The chest and back plates are the only bulletproof parts to this suit. The rest is completely permeable, as you can see.
"Hey, Professor Hart? You on the rag?"
Oh no, you di'n't, Super Fucking Hero.
Yes. Yes, I did.
That question is a rare gift from the gods who watch over men. It has the power to unglue a girl or woman and shoot her up in a giant mushroom cloud.
I'm trying to piss her off, remember? I would never say it to anyone I cared about, and neither should you.
Except I miscalculated. Amy isn't an ordinary girl. She's Super Fucking Villain. And that line about her period? She probably hears that a lot from the other poor bastards she subjugates. So when she saunters around the giant cactus—the kind you see in cartoon westerns—those delectable hips swaying like an erotic pendulum, it's with a big, dangerous smile.
"Why yes, actually. Fancy some crime-scene fucking?"
Crime-scene fucking, for those who don't know, is menstruation sex. Blood everywhere. Looks like a crime scene.
You're welcome.
Then she nails me in the frank 'n' beans with the toe of her boot.
It's not a total loss. When I puke I manage to spray it all over her red suit.
Now if I can just stand …
Ooof.
Give me a moment … to wrench this cactus out of the ground and slam it into her crotch.
Booyah, bitch!
From the delightful sounds of her screaming, I'm guessing she never took that many pricks at once.
"I'm going to fucking KILL you," she howls.
I stagger to my feet. "Bring it, sister."
Shouldn't have said that. The next thing out of her supervillain arsenal is the arrival of her five asshole amigos.
"It's done," one of them says. They're all the same asshole, so who cares which one said it.
"What's done?"
She glances at me. "My boys set in motion the destruction of this entire facility, with all of you in it. Well, you'll be dead, but everyone else will suffer on their way to superhero heaven."
"Why?"
She laughs, flicks back her ponytail. "You're right about the daddy issues, Hunter. He loved me—fiercely, but not in any sicko way. Until your cronies killed him."
"Your father was a supervillain, too? Figures."
"No, he was one of you. A superhero."
My expression rearranges itself into the surprised position. "Who?"
"It's irrelevant. What matters is that the SuperCouncil is responsible for my father's death. And now they—and you—have to die." She flips me a tiny wave. "Buh-bye! It's too bad we never got to fuck, but oh well."
Something shoots out of another gizmo she's brought to this shitty party. A personal-sized version of the forcefield surrounding the members of the SuperCouncil. I touch it with my gloved fingertip because—hey—I was that kid. And that kid grew up into that man. Tell me it's hot and I'm gonna touch it, because I want to make sure. Oh, the paint is wet? Here, let me see if it's wet.
You know—that guy.
Maybe you're one yourself. I bet you are.
The forcefield, predictably, zaps me until I'm long past al dente.
Twenty-Two
I'm out for all of ten seconds, but that's long enough for an epiphany.
Want to guess what it is?
Okay. Super Fucking Villain, she of the whizz-bang educational background is, first and foremost, an academic type. Now I'm not going to slap paint on all academics with the same sticky brush, but the whole absent-minded professor stereotype comes from somewhere.
Still with me?
That's the thing about stereotypes. They occur because sometimes a particular group of people act the same way, wear the same clothes, go crazy for the same things, in a noticeably quantifiable way.
So Amy is an academic, which means she's not entirely tuned in when it comes to common sense. See this forcefield? Tight quarters. Just enough room for me to pass out for ten seconds. The walls are high, the ceiling—
Oh, that's right—there's no goddamned ceiling!
There's nothing above me but sunshine and glass and freshly processed air.
Smart girl, but not always sensible.
Pushing off from the ground, I zoom up out of that electrical cage and into freedom.
Now comes the tricky part. Amy and her football freaks are currently over on the far side of the garden room where they've got a whole bunch of council-shaped rats still in that same cage. Engaging my super stealth (I'm tiptoeing, okay?) I cross the the room, hiding behind shrubs and trees.
Yes, trees. This room is huge. Imagine botanical gardens, but with separate little ecosystems. I'm crossing into cooler air, away from the moisture-stripped environment where the cacti thrive. I peek out from behind a puffball of a bush. Flat, wide leaves, flowers clumped together in mini bouquets. A hydrangea—that's it. Hey, I'm a guy, we don't really do flowers. There's a small tag in the dirt with the name on it. It's not like I dredged it up from some once-lost memory. I'm good—but not that good.
Anyway Amy's still running off at the mouth about how she's going to let her boys shoot fish in the barrel. The SuperCouncil, of course, are the fish in that scenario. The five apes raise their weapons and fire.
Except that absent-minded professor thing has kicked in again. That forcefield of hers is a two-way roadblock. Nothing gets in or out. In fact, one of her "boys" suddenly goes, "Ooof," and drops.
Yeah, that bullet bounced right off the forcefield at back at him. From the amount of blood he's losing I'd say he's a goner.
Lay down with dogs, folks, you get up with fleas. Or in his case, you don't get up at all.
Amy rolls her eyes at the ceiling, zaps the forcefield down, then she shoots into the small crowd. Someone collapses. Not a one of them looks like a sup
erhero now; they're bedraggled, old, worried. It's as if someone threw the fire alarm in the wee hours at an old folks home.
Not cool, Super Fucking Villain. Not cool.
Yeah, the SuperCouncil is a pain in the ass, but they're my pain in the ass.
Okay, time to separate the men from the boys. Or, in this case, the goodies from the baddies.
I've got a plan.
Actually, what I've got is a weapon I didn't hand over. C'mon, would you have left yourself defenseless if you were me? Didn't think so.
I'm just about to unleash the hurt when a boom rattles the glass. That must be part of her destroy-the-building plan. Which part? It sounded big, but distant.
Heads whip around. Crazy lady laughs. "That's your precious council building imploding."
Boys, men, never stick your dick in that kind of crazy. It'll get you killed.
Time to change the game.
The bottle's small but it's full. And when I put my superhero strength into the squeeze, its contents shoot across the room. You could say it ejaculates. That would be apt.
Amy draws in her breath hard and sharp. "You!"
She takes one step toward me—or she tries. And her world slips away. I've doused her and her goons with the equivalent of banana peels on steroids.
"Lube." I flash her a 'ha-ha-ha, I'm the winner smile.' "A special blend. And to think I almost turned it down."
Her ass-monkeys could be playing naked Twister with baby oil, the way they're slithering and sliding around.
"You're dead, Super Fucking Hero," she yells.
I swagger—hey, I've earned it—over to where she's flopping around in that wet puddle. "Apparently not. You want a hand?" I dangle a pair of handcuffs from one finger.
"Fuck you."
"Not if I can help it. I try to avoid bitter, evil bitches with daddy issues. You're just a bunny boiler waiting to happen. I'm sure you understand."
Her face says she wants me dead, preferably by some excruciating method involving a funnel and boiling oil. Then she presses a button on her watch and disappears.
Cool trick. It's officially on my to-get list.
The not-so cool part is that she's gone. Escaped. Fled the chicken coop.
