Secrets of a D-List Supervillain

by Jim Bernheimer

  In truth, I really only felt that way about K-Octica, but I was trying to be nice. Her brother was an arrogant shit with a magical bo staff. I kind of enjoyed the time I threw a dumpster at him. Shortly before the bugs showed up, Karina had convinced Spirit Staff to relocate South of the Border to be closer to her family.

  “Let’s just get this over with,” the sorceress said, not really responding to my olive branch.

  I couldn’t have agreed more. Unwilling to go back to my work, I watched the magic happen... or not in this case. They lit candles in a pattern around my petrified amigo and walked around chanting and waving various objects at him. It was interesting to observe, and slowly I began to feel the hairs on the back of my neck begin to stand up. The room temperature fluctuated wildly and I felt chills. Grand Vizier had sweat glistening from his prominent forehead, and Mystigal wore a look that seemed to be one part concentration and the other constipation.

  As my hopes for Andy’s revival began to dim I thought, Apparently, comparing what they could do to what the dinosaur could do, was like calling Da Vinci a handyman.

  Even my little mental jab did little to improve my mood. The dinosaur’s words echoed in my mind; about how he called down the meteor that created the Gulf of Mexico to crush a rebellion and oddly enough, bring about the end of reptilian dominance. I wasn’t sure if I believed it, but watching the two humans struggle against the curse, charm, or whatever the hell it was, made me doubly glad that I’d killed him.

  Mystigal uses all sorts of protections on her costume. Maybe I could get her to put a layer of magic on my Kevlar vest? Hey wait! Did Andy’s arm just move?

  I got plenty excited, but it only lasted a few seconds. The Grand Vizier stopped chanting and breathed a deep sigh. He’d apparently tapped out of the match and it looked like Mystigal wasn’t far behind. The old man in the crimson and purple robes pulled himself to his feet, looking far older than when he had entered.

  “No dice, huh?” I stated.

  “I’m afraid it cannot be undone,” the man said, sounding like he’d just finished a five K. “The magics that permeate Andydroid’s body are completely foreign to me. Asa is more stubborn than I am and will expend much more of her power before conceding defeat.”

  I pointed to some of my transformed armor chunks and asked, “I don’t really know how magic works, but could you start on something smaller and work your way up?”

  “Perhaps,” he replied. “But I fear the results would still be the same. Undoing a spell requires some foundation in the discipline from which the spell was cast. We lack that grounding and the most we would be able to do would be to layer our own spells on top of what has already been done and animate him as a mindless living statue.”

  Pondering his words, I pictured the result and knew instinctively that Andy wouldn’t want to end up like that. “No, I’m pretty sure Andy wouldn’t want to be some kind of golem. Some of the things I recovered look like they might have this dinosaur’s language scratched in to it. Would those help? They are these silver rectangular slates.”

  Vizier looked skeptical, but humored me and examined the silver platters José and I had brought back.

  After a little over a minute, he rendered his judgment. “Even once this language is deciphered, and assuming they contain the spell he’s using; it would likely take years to reach a point where the spell could be reversed.”

  I stopped short of asking him, “Well, what good are you?”

  Instead, I went with an idea that just popped into my head, “What if I can get them translated?”

  Chain Charmer’s spare necklace! Maybe I can use it.

  “Perhaps, but I still doubt it will provide the solution you are looking for. The person might very well have to start from scratch with this foreign system of magic.”

  “Maybe if we started with someone who didn’t know anything mystical. Is it true that anyone can learn magic?” It was an age old question.

  He nodded. “Everyone can, but most lack the potential to really do anything with it. Perhaps one in ten could ever cast even a simple spell without an augment. One in ten thousand has enough potential to cast one that does something substantial, and one in a million has the innate talent to become a sorcerer or sorceress.”

  “What’s an augment?”

  “A device, steeped in arcane power that increases magical energy. Why do you ask these questions?”

  “Without a suit, I will probably need more protection. How much would it cost to get an enchanted cloak or vest?”

  “I would not sell you such a thing,” he responded.

  That got under my skin really quick. “Why the hell not?”

  “I mean no offense. Allow me to explain; an enchanted item can be powered by a totem like an augment, but if none is available, it then draws upon the host to power it. You would quickly find yourself incapacitated by the object’s power demands.”

  I thanked him for clearing that up. So much for my enchanted armor idea, but maybe if I can learn this stuff, I could have an ace in the hole if Patterson ever does show up looking for revenge. Even if I could just turn his helmet to stone it’d lock his suit up completely.

  Just as I started to ask a follow up question, Mystigal finally collapsed. I witnessed the look of frustration pass across the Vizier’s face before he stepped toward his more gifted partner and helped the young Japanese American to her feet.

  “There are some problems no amount of power can solve,” he scolded the woman. “You should know this by now.”

  If the man appeared frustrated, she looked absolutely pissed. “Save the lectures,” she hissed. “Can we just go now?”

  The urge to say something petty was almost overpowering, but I’ve tasted defeat so many times in my life that I could describe the different flavors.

  “Thanks for trying,” was the best I could manage, under the circumstances.

  She snapped a cold look in my direction before composing herself. “I can see the lies written all over your face. Don’t bother denying it.”

  “Okay, I won’t,” I said. “I was just trying to be courteous. But if you want to know what I’m really thinking, I’ll tell you; it’s nice not to be the biggest failure in the room for a change.”

  “That’s rich coming from you! I heard what you did to Mather. You’re a cold blooded murderer.”

  “Asa,” Vizier warned her.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m not offended. I can assure you that killing him wasn’t a cold blooded act. You weren’t there, and you didn’t see the little weasel taunting Wendy—the same Wendy who asked you to come here. He enjoyed making her do that and laughed about how he was going to use the system to get off with a slap on the wrist. I guess I slapped a little harder than he was expecting.”

  “Your justifications are as feeble as you are,” she retorted.

  “Tell me something, did your magic save you from the bugs? No, I’m pretty sure it was me. Now, can you get back to the part where you were leaving?”

  “Yes, I think its best that we go,” Grand Vizier said. “Good day to you, Mr. Stringel.”

  I nodded and watched them depart. The old coot seemed decent enough and told me straight up that it probably wouldn’t work. Mystigal got all flustered and lashed out when her powers weren’t enough to do the trick. I’d gotten as much help out of them as I was going to get. However, there was still a way forward.

  He did say that anyone could do magic. Augments? They sound like a way to cheat the system. That sounded right up my alley!

  I’d found a new hobby.

  • • •

  “I got it, but this is seriously one of your stupider ideas,” the man said, and handed me the package.

  Between the hours of making my new ManaCALes outfit, I’d spent my downtime watching video clips online about the wonderful world of beginner’s magic. Most of the video-sharing sites kept the violent and dangerous stuff to a minimum. It was the greatest hits of “watch me pull a rabbit out
of my hat” and “Little Rachel performs her first spell for the coven.”

  It was a unique combination of interesting and lame at the same time. I’d printed some of the pages from spellbooks uploaded to the Internet. Almost universally, the first step was to determine your magical potential. For that, there were official testing centers, but everyone who did it at the authorized locations ended up in a database. Even though I was currently on Uncle Sam’s and Promethia’s payroll, I didn’t trust them one bit.

  There was a home testing kit you could order, but that probably ended up flagging the same database. Good thing I am well acquainted with the wrong side of the law.

  “Thanks, Bobby,” I said, and looked around the Alabama base. He’d settled in again... and it showed. “I appreciate you snagging this for me. You didn’t have any problems with the Wireless Wizard hooking you back up to VillainNet?”

  “Nah, I’m good at lying. Everyone thinks you’re down playing goody two shoes in New Orleans. So what’s this about you and Aphrodite?”

  “We’ve broken up,” I said, flatly. “It’s all, quite literally, downhill from there.”

  “But you still hit that right?”

  I sighed under his questioning and the way he broke my relationship with Stacy down to that one sentence. On one hand, it was refreshing to have someone actually interested in my comings and goings. My team, with the exception of the Six Pack and the Bugler, couldn’t really give a rat’s ass what I was up to. Mom was still the same disgruntled woman when I called her, and Dad had to walk the fine line between being proud his son is finally “doing right by the name” and not pissing his wife off. José and his clones were cool, but usually tied up with his family or one of his get rich schemes, and Bo had only put in occasional appearances while using a wheelchair until his legs healed. I did offer to trick it out for him and maybe turn him into the sonic equivalent of General Devious and her hover throne—he declined.

  “Yup,” I admitted. “Twice.”

  Hillbilly Bobby seemed very pleased with my answer. “Well, all right, then! And that thing with you and the Tornado Girl?”

  “Mind control. I killed the guy who made us do that.”

  “Shit, I woulda shook his hand,” Bobby said, clearing away the trash on the table so I could start laying out the crystals in the kit.

  “He was going to make her kill me at the end,” I said, but at the same time, I think I still would have killed Mather, even if he hadn’t mentioned it.

  The man scratched his scruffy beard and considered what I’d said. “Well, when you put it like that I guess you did the right thing. I hope you brought something to eat. I’m about sick and tired of waffles and frozen dinners!”

  “Groceries are in the van,” I said. “Mind grabbing them?”

  Part of keeping a low profile had my friend staying out of sight. It wasn’t sitting well with him.

  As I looked at the hand drawn diagrams depicting the order the crystals needed to be placed, Bobby got right to the heart of the matter.

  “Cal, I need to start going out and doing some jobs. This place is almost worse than being in prison.”

  “What? You don’t like my redecorations?” I asked, and gestured around the place.

  “I’m serious, Cal. I’m bored shitless!”

  Fighting back the urge to sigh again, I said, “Well, I can’t really stop you, but I’d recommend you stick to low key jobs. Of course, Andydroid is out of commission, along with a good portion of my team, so you might want to take a big score. Just stay away from anything near us. Your cousin doesn’t need a reason to be more suspicious of me than she already is.”

  “Fair enough,” Bobby said, and shifted to scratching his ass. I tried my best not to cringe or look. “I reckon with Andydroid out of the way, that makes pickings in Atlanta easier.”

  Part of me wondered if I should really be giving Bobby advice on potential crimes. I was supposed to be working for The Man now. The other part wondered if I could get him to snatch enough synth muscle to get a new suit going. I’d already scrounged all that I could find here and it wasn’t nearly enough.

  With the ten crystals aligned on the table where the outlines of my hand was etched on the paper, I now had to prick the tips of each finger with a lancet that I’d picked up from a drug store. It was the kind diabetics used, and I hoped never to need it for that particular reason.

  Bobby dimmed the lights as I touched the blood on each finger to the crystals. In a perfect world, each of the crystals would glow, lit by the nascent power of magic that flowed through my veins as I repeated the incantation on the page. Instead, there was a tiny, feeble light where my left index finger touched the piece of rose quartz... and nothing else.

  Shaking my head, I consulted the accompanying paperwork. Light from that crystal indicates the presence of a passive form of magic, like, maybe, really good intuition. From the magnitude of the light, I reasoned that I shouldn’t quit my day job any time soon. It was just a hunch or maybe my passive magic telling me that.

  “Guess I’m going to need a lot of augmentation,” I muttered.

  “What did you say?” Bobby asked, from the other side of the room.

  “I don’t have hardly any latent magical talent,” I said, and began sending out invites to my own private pity party.

  My hulking brute of a friend started walking toward me. When he’d crossed half the distance, I noticed that all of the crystals were glowing now.

  “Bobby?” I stammered. “Your powers must be magical in nature.”

  “Really?” he replied, sounding confused. “So, it was a bolt of magic lightning that made me and Sheila like this? Does that mean I can do spells and stuff?”

  I wanted to shout at the unfairness of it all, and mutter how he can barely spell much less cast spells. Instead I said, “Maybe. I don’t rightly know.”

  Pulling my hands off the table, I stood and saw the semi-precious gems continue to glow brighter, reacting to Bobby’s presence. I felt suddenly exhausted, and all the things I’d read about how draining casting spells could be came to mind—just before I passed out.

  • • •

  “So, his power is magically based,” Stacy asks, her fingers are doing a number on my muscles. She’s being gentle, long accustomed to taking care with her augmented strength and what damage it could do to a mere mortal.

  “Yeah, I guess it was magical lightning that hit the water they were swimming in. The regular kind probably would have killed them.”

  “So, has he ever tried to learn any magic?”

  Recalling the few failed attempts on my friend’s part, I say, “A couple of times, but it requires a certain level of obsession that he doesn’t possess. Luckily, I do.”

  “Wonder it means Sheila could do magic?”

  “Maybe, I didn’t like her enough to tell her to give it a try. Right there, that’s the spot!”

  “You’re tense,” she states.

  “More nervous than tense,” I reply.

  The backrub stops. “Why are you nervous?”

  Turning to face her, I go with the only option available to me—the truth. “To be honest, I’m worried I’ll screw this up again. My plans today included watching the Gab-O-Matic and working on all those projects that I’d been neglecting. Instead, you show up and it’s better than I imagined. I thought I’d never again see the Stacy who’d spent weeks cooped up in this place with me.”

  The world had been ending and things had started out poorly between us, but we earned each other’s respect along the way.

  Stacy taps her head and says, “All the memories are back in here, Cal—the good, the great, and the not-so great. After I was wiped, I kept you around because I was curious what I could’ve seen in you, but I was looking at the wrong person. You’re the same person you’ve always been, and I hope you never change, but I should’ve been looking for the changes in myself, instead.”

  “So, if we were a math equation, I’m a constant and you’re the
variable.”

  Tilting her head slightly she brushes her lips against mine. “I suppose, and I was trying to solve for you and make you seven when you were always an irrational number.”

  “Pi,” I say. “If I’m an irrational number, I want to be Pi. Who doesn’t like Pi?”

  Laughing now, she shakes her head. “Whatever you want, Cal. I can do Pi.”

  She recognizes her mistake by the look on my face. “Oh, for crying out loud! What are you? Thirteen?”

  “You already did Pi!” I exclaim, through my own chuckles.

  “Grow up,” she says, without any real malice behind the words.

  I point an accusing finger at her and say, “Wait. You just said you hope I never change, and not five seconds later, you’re telling me to change. If anyone’s the irrational number here, I think it’s you.”

  We kiss a few more times and my promise to not do anything with Stacy while I’m minding my daughter becomes more optional by each passing second. After all, the little maniac has probably another hour left on her nap. Just as things start to get serious, the buzzer goes off to inform me that someone’s on the elevator. A glance at the monitor shows Larry and Bobby coming back from fishing. Larry has a string of fish and Bobby has two, and looks perturbed. I can already tell that this is going to be one of those “he was using his mind powers on the fish again” arguments.

  “Foiled again,” I say, and push the Olympian back a few inches.

  As the lift doors open, I heard Bobby complaining, “You might’ve caught one of those by yourself!”

  Larry just shrugs and floats his string of fish toward the kitchen. “When are you going to admit, I’m just better at this than you? If I was using my powers, I could pull every fish from that pond.”

  “I still think you’re a cheater!” Bobby proclaims. “Cal? Can you make something that’ll tell me if Larry is using his mind stuff when we’re fishing?”

  “Don’t drag me into this!” I protest. “I could probably rig up something, but that’d take me away from all the other things I’m supposed to be doing. Andy is still on my case about building him a better body.”