by Andrea Speed
“Feel what?”
“Umm… well, hopefully that’ll become self-explanatory. You ready?”
“Possibly,” Ash said.
That was such a cute response—again, unintentionally—that Kaede couldn’t help but smile. “Okay. Now this is a real kiss,” Kaede said, and then he leaned in and covered Ash’s mouth with his. He had to force his tongue between Ash’s lips, although really Ash didn’t resist as much as he just appeared to have no idea what was going on. It was really hard to believe he had no idea what kissing was, as he had to have seen some TV or movies and guessed how it happened, to say nothing of sort of trying it out as kids, but Ash didn’t seem sheltered from the world so much as alien to it. It was like he’d just come here from another dimension entirely. (Kaede didn’t think that was true. While many mad scientists had claimed to breach dimensional barriers, none actually had, at least to his knowledge.)
Kaede did his best not to overwhelm him, but it was fun to finally kiss Ash. He had very soft, kissable lips, and while he was tentative at first, he kissed Kaede back with a decent amount of passion that didn’t seem like a complete imitation of what Kaede was doing.
Kaede broke away to catch his breath, wipe the drool off his mouth, and check in with Ash. Ash looked adorably befuddled. “So, that’s kissing,” Kaede said. “What do you think?”
Ash was silent for a very long moment—considering? “It’s strange, isn’t it? Who first thought of it?”
“I don’t know. I’ll assume the French, since it’s called french kissing, but I’d be surprised if anyone knew for sure.” On the one hand, this was great, as he got to kiss Ash, which he’d been yearning to do for a while. But Ash was so naïve about these things that he also felt bad, like maybe he was taking advantage of him. Still, the way he responded to the kiss, Kaede was sure that he wanted it, even if he wasn’t completely sure what “it” was. “How did it feel?”
Ash’s brows lowered over his eyes, furrowed in something akin to concentration. “I’m… not completely sure. Feelings are new for me.”
“Did you want me to stop?”
“No.”
That was a good sign, and it made Kaede smile. He knew he should be careful here. Not only was developing any kind of feelings for your bodyguard a bad idea, but Ash, being an emotionally stunted superassassin, could never be anyone’s idea of a good boyfriend. Still, Kaede knew his taste in men, and he knew Ash, as bad as he sounded on paper, was right in his sweet spot.
His father had no idea the trouble he was unleashing, did he?
KAEDE WAS awoken by an explosion so intense it sounded as if the world were ending. Even on the top floor, he could feel the ground tremble, making the entire building reverberate like a struck bell.
He’d rolled out of bed, bare soles just touching the soft carpet of the main bedroom, when Ash opened the door and came in wearing nothing but black boxer shorts, which showed off his impressive, massive tattoo. “We may need to evacuate,” he said.
“Why, what’s going on?”
“There’s a huge brawl in the street between Dark Justice and the Marauder Squad.”
Kaede groaned and scrubbed a hand through his hair as he heard another explosion, although this one was farther away, weaker, and didn’t shake the building. “Refresh my memory: Who’s on the Marauder Squad that we should be worried about?”
Ash shrugged. “I can take them all, but Master Blaster is always a cause for concern.”
That name was idiotic, but then again, most superhero/villain names were. “He the guy with the explosives?”
As if in answer, there was yet another explosion, at a safer distance. “Yes.”
“Can we get a good look at them from here?”
Ash nodded. “There’s an extensive security-camera system that views the outside of the building from multiple angles.”
Kaede nodded. His father was extremely paranoid, after all. It was the least Kaede expected from him.
He followed Ash out of the bedroom and into a secret room behind a false wall, where all the security stuff was. There was a half wall of monitors above a large console with a ridiculous number of buttons and switches, most of which were marked according to some arcane system that he knew he’d be lucky to ever figure out. But Ash was a quick learner, and with a few taps of the keys, he made all the monitors show the hero/villain fight at ground level.
“Is there sound?” Kaede asked.
Ash nodded and increased the volume. From what he could see, Dark Justice, in his black body armor and cowl, was currently grappling with the big muscle man on the Marauder Squad, who also had a couple of short swords in holsters on his belt. “Who’s this knucklehead?”
He wasn’t sure why he expected Ash to know, except he did know. He was studious, and could never be accused of not doing his homework. “He calls himself Grudge, but his real name is Michael Rademaker. He was a patient of Dr. Nightmare’s, who used a new kind of synthetic steroid on him.”
Kaede nodded. It would explain the bulging muscles on his arms and the fact that his calves looked as thick as ham hocks. Dr. Nightmare was another mad scientist, one his father actually killed in a rivalry gone totally lethal. (It would figure that mad scientists would take things to the maddest extreme possible.) “How strong is he in comparison to you?”
Ash shook his head. “He isn’t. I could kick him through a wall.”
That made Kaede smile. He would genuinely love to see that. “Who are the rest of these idiots? Anyone we need to worry about?”
“To answer your second question first, no. But the ones still standing, apart from Master Blaster and Grudge, are Bloody Mary, Cano, and Black Wolf.” He pointed at the only woman down there, a buxom dominatrix-looking lady with vivid red hair, then at a red-clad man holding what looked like a flamethrower, and finally at a thickly muscled man wearing a rather realistic-looking wolf mask.
“Is it me, or does this look like cosplay gone horribly wrong?” Kaede asked.
“Cosplay?” Ash asked.
Kaede shook his head. “It’s like dressing up for Halloween, on any day but Halloween.”
“Oh. Yes, it kind of does.” On screen, Bloody Mary was thrown into Cano, sending them both flying out of view, while Black Wolf pounced on a newly arriving muscle guy wearing more spandex than was advisable.
“Who are these people?” The spandex guy was quickly joined by a spandex lady and a guy who looked like a walking brick wall.
“That is a group that calls itself Super Force, a superhero group mostly made up of one family. That is Neil Miller, who often goes by Mr. Amazing,” Ash reported, pointing at the spandex guy. “The woman is Abigail Miller, who usually goes by Twister, and that is Carl Prosser, who is usually just called Smash. There’s another member, not yet in the fray, named Jamie ‘Backlash’ McKinnon. He’s Abigail’s brother.”
Kaede vaguely recalled the stories of Super Force. Neil used to be in the scientist game, and while not exactly mad—apparently only bad guys could be mad—he skirted the edge, and a lab accident gave him the ability to cause people to hallucinate severely. (Kaede’s father thought he secreted a substance not unlike LSD and quickly worked to synthesize an analog.) Abigail didn’t have a superpower per se; she was just super flexible (she was once a professional gymnast who supposedly worked for Cirque Du Soleil for a bit) and with her brother had developed a kind of defensive fighting style that utilized her weirdly flexible nature. Jamie was insanely good at parkour and had incorporated that in his fighting style. So Twister and Backlash only qualified as superheroes due to the fact that they were very good at one particular skill and turned that into a “power.”
As for Smash, he was a good guy captured and experimented on by Dr. Nightmare, who turned him into a man with bulky muscles and skin like rhino hide. He was easily stronger than Grudge, but Kaede had no idea if he’d hold up against Ash.
Despite his name being utter nonsense, Dr. Nightmare was a real doctor who mainly worked in pha
rmaceuticals, and the few alterations attributed to him were caused by weirdo drugs and toxins. Kaede’s father was more of an advanced scientist than Dr. Nightmare in that he was actually able to genetically engineer people, himself and Ash included. And if Kaede was correct, his father had made himself genetically immune to whatever Mr. Amazing put out. Kaede wondered if Neil had ever tried that trick on Dr. Terror, and if he had been shocked when it didn’t work.
Comic books always had magic superheroes, guys who had supernatural abilities or weird physics-based ones, and the world was sadder for the fact that they didn’t exist. It would be kind of neat if an irradiated animal could bite you and give you its power. It was possible his dad had tried it, just for shits and giggles.
With the bad guys all down, Mr. Amazing and Dark Justice came toe to toe and seemed to be talking animatedly, although the mic was too far away to pick up what they were saying.
“What’s going on?” Kaede asked. Didn’t all good guys get along?
“I’m not sure. It looks like….” Ash trailed off and sat forward, staring intently at the screen, like a bird scoping prey. “It’s hard to read their lips, but it looks like Dark Justice didn’t want their help.”
“Yeah, he has that whole ‘lone-wolf crime fighter’ bullshit going on.” Kaede then stared at the side of Ash’s eerily handsome face. “You can read lips?”
Ash nodded, never taking his eyes from the screen. “It was part of our training, in case we ever became temporarily deafened in the course of a battle. To be honest, I thought it was just some weird sensory training. We learned Morse code and semaphore too, and I can’t imagine ever needing either.”
“Semaphore? Is that the thing with the flags?” Ash nodded and Kaede scoffed. “Yeah, that’s pretty antiquated. Still, might be good to know if you’re stuck in a place with no phones and lots of flags.” Kaede rested a hand on Ash’s shoulder before he realized what he was doing, but for his part, Ash didn’t seem to mind. “So, tension in the good-guy ranks. Think we could ever use it in our favor?”
“Good question. I don’t know.”
Neither did Kaede. But it was worthy of a note to his father. Turning the heroes against one another could only be a good thing. If he could only figure out how to do it without making it seem like a bad guy set it up.
4
WAKING UP to a note from his father was strangely startling. Kaede’s father didn’t communicate with him a lot. He did favor impersonal missives, usually delivered to him by computers. Today it was Ash, who appeared with a printout once Kaede started eating breakfast. Kaede thought it might be about turning the heroes against one another, but it was about something else entirely. Although eventually it could be folded into it. His father—absent, distant whether he was in the room or two thousand miles away—always seemed to get into his business, whether his father had any interest in it or not.
Still, he considered the implications of his father’s note and discussed some options with Ash. His father was throwing him into the deep end here, so there was no way this task wasn’t a test of some sort. But why? Was it just a measuring of his abilities for the hell of it (possible), or was it a task he wanted done and Kaede was the closest one to do it? He might not ever know the answer.
His life would be so much easier if his dad wasn’t such a complete dick. But he might as well wish he was born on a planet with a Xanax atmosphere: it would change things just as much.
Kaede had to admit to himself it was kind of fun to join Ash in gearing up in suit drag and heading into work like a couple of normal people, like they weren’t the possible clone of a mad scientist and a genetically engineered supersoldier/assassin. For five minutes they could be mundane people, and it was weirdly thrilling.
Kaede had time to get his coffee and settle in behind his desk before Oliver buzzed him. “Sir? There’s a Mr. Hamilton Scheer to see you. He says it’s very important.”
Kaede and Ash exchanged a look. His father worked fast. This was his note coming to life. “All right, send him in.” Kaede settled back in his plush office chair, while Ash took his place by the window, looking out at the rear of the complex. Ash probably felt he could observe the man better this way, from his reflection in the glass, so he wouldn’t realize Ash was studying him. Kaede thought that was a good idea but also liked it because it allowed him to look at Ash’s mighty fine ass. There wasn’t a bad spot on him.
Hamilton Scheer came into the office looking like your typical office drone: a chubby white man in an off-the-rack brown suit, eyes hidden behind cheap dark sunglasses, dark hair short and thinning. In reality, he was a villain who called himself Nighthawk because he had special high-tech glasses that allowed him to not only see in the dark but scan in various modes and do all sorts of other things. Not really that impressive for a supervillain, but for a mercenary/thief, it made him especially gifted. Despite his chubby appearance, he was really just beefy, having done a dose or two of some supersteroids. Not super strong, but big enough to do some damage.
“I know who you really are,” he said, whipping off his sunglasses dramatically. “You’re Kaede Hayashi.”
Kaede flipped one of the pens on his desk. “And why do I bother going by another name if everybody knows who I am?”
“I suppose you know who I am,” Scheer said, giving Ash a scrutinizing once-over. Like most idiots, he dismissed him.
Kaede decided to play with the man, just to annoy him. “You’re Hamilton Scheer. My assistant announced you.”
He scowled, pulling up a chair. “No, I’m really Nighthawk. Now do you know who I am?”
“Nope.” He cast a sidelong glance at Ash. Even though he could just barely see him out of the corner of his eye, Kaede still caught his small smile.
Nighthawk slumped his bulk into the chair and with a sigh, said, “I am the foremost cat burglar in this city. I’d have thought your father would have told you.”
“Nope.” It was getting increasingly hard not to laugh. “So what can I do for you, Mr. Scheer?”
There was an awful lot of resentment in his pale brown eyes, but Kaede refused to budge. He was going to play dumb as long as he possibly could. He just hoped he could keep from laughing.
“I have a proposition for your father, but I’ve been informed you’re his spokesman in Corwyn.” Kaede nodded. “And I think we have a unique opportunity to help each other.”
“Go on.”
He sat forward, casting a suspicious glance at Ash. “We should probably talk in private.”
“Whatever you say to me, you can say to him.”
Nighthawk frowned again, clearly unhappy with everything that was going wrong. For obvious reasons, Kaede was enjoying himself immensely. Still, looking as grumpy as a porcupine with his spikes on wrong, Nighthawk shifted in his chair and continued. “Malcolm Treadway died recently. If you don’t know who that was, it was the civilian identity of the Owl.”
Kaede chuckled. “Oh wow, that is a lame name.”
“Yeah, it wasn’t great. But he existed when you could use a bullshit name like that. Anyway, he used all his money as Malcolm—and he was from a family that made a killing in plastics—to buy up everything he could find from the old Dr. Impossible estate.”
“Dr. Impossible? That’s a blast from the past.” He was the übermad scientist, the one from whom all molds were created. He also supposedly had created technology way ahead of its time, but most of it had been parceled out and looted by both the government and his greedy extended family. Some of it was simply lost—no one was sure where.
“Yeah. Well, now that Owl’s dead, his family is coming to sweep it up, although I hear the feds are circling it too. And I’m thinking a couple of ambitious people could take the stuff from them before they even realized what they’d lost.”
Kaede nodded. Scheer wasn’t subtle. “Sounds good, but this makes no sense. Couldn’t you just steal the stuff on your own? Why would we be cut in?”
“If I could avoid it, I would.
But the Owl was no dummy. With his money he bought the right things to keep his biggest prizes safe. He got Dr. Terror to build his security devices. I have tried to crack them. I have run sims, but I doubt I have to tell you how diabolical they are.”
“And lethal.” His dad rarely did that kind of for-hire work, but when he did, he never went halfway.
“Yeah, that’s a big one.”
“I bet. So you want what? Shut-down codes for the machines?”
He sat forward, and Kaede imagined if Nighthawk were a dog, his tail would be wagging. “You got those?”
“No. I’m just curious what you expect.”
Nighthawk sat back, deflated. “You know the stuff, right? He designed it. He must have a way of shutting them down.”
“So what’s the split?”
“Sixty-forty?”
“Get out.”
Nighthawk raised his hands in a placating manner. “Okay, fifty-fifty, an even split.”
Kaede made a show of considering it, then opened his top desk drawer and withdrew a kind of business card, even though it had nothing but an e-mail address on it. “Send me the details. It’s an unmonitored e-mail site in another country. It’s untraceable. So when I say I want details, I mean everything. Pictures if you’ve got them. Understand?”
Nighthawk nodded as he stood, taking the card almost as an afterthought. “Got it. I’ll send you the stuff tonight.”
“Please do.”
Without another word, he left the office. Ash waited until the shadow of Nighthawk couldn’t even be seen through the opaque glass before saying, “He’s lying.”
“Oh, I know.” Kaede turned to face Ash, who was now turned toward him. “He’ll either use our help and scam us, stealing all the stuff for himself and selling us out, or he’ll attempt to kill me. Maybe even both. Of course, he’s risking the wrath of my father, which is an amazingly idiotic thing to do. That’s a good way to die fast.”
“Maybe he’s not afraid of him. Maybe he has protection.”
