by Lucas Flint
“Actually, there is an interesting rumor about his sidekick, Winged Gal,” said Frank as he dug through his locker. “Ever heard of her?”
Vaguely, I recalled Iron Angel telling me that his sidekick was named Winged Gal, but he had seemed oddly reluctant to talk about her death. “I think so, but I don’t remember any specifics. Refresh me.”
“Well, like I said, Winged Gal was Iron Angel’s sidekick,” said Frank, still digging through his locker. “His third one, actually, because the other two had gone and struck out on their own to be their own heroes after working for him for a few years. Winged Gal was supposed to succeed Iron Angel when he retired, though, because she could also fly like him, though her wings were actual organic parts of her body instead of being part of a suit of powered armor.”
I almost made a comment about how weird that was, but then remembered that I could shoot lasers from my eyes, so instead I said, “Huh. Interesting. But nothing very scandalous or weird so far.”
“I’m getting to it,” said Frank. He stood up and, with his textbooks in his arms, turned to face me with a serious expression on his face. “According to the rumors I’ve heard, Winged Gal didn’t just die. Iron Angel let her die.”
Suddenly, I felt very cold, and it wasn’t because of the January wind that sneaked in with the students whenever they opened the front doors. My heart beat a little faster than usual and my palms felt sweaty. “Let her die? Why?”
“None of the rumors can agree,” said Frank, shaking his head. “It’s mostly because of the circumstance surrounding her death. Do you know how she died?”
I shook my head. “No, I don’t.”
“Okay,” said Frank. “So, about ten years ago, Iron Angel was in the hospital because of a broken leg he’d sustained from an earlier fight. But then a new supervillain appeared in town—known as Black Poison—who was causing a lot of trouble. Iron Angel couldn’t deal with him, obviously, due to his broken leg, but Winged Gal was still in good enough shape to fight, so she went to try to take down Black Poison herself.”
I gulped. “And what happened to her?”
“She died,” said Frank simply. “Got poisoned by Black Poison. She didn’t even hurt him. All of the eyewitness reports say that Black Poison brutally beat her down and even tortured her in the streets. But he didn’t finish her off there and then. He just injected her with some of his poison, which was apparently incurable. She died there on the street just as the medics arrived to get her to the hospital.”
I couldn’t help but feel sick to my stomach hearing this story. “If Black Poison killed her, why do these rumors about Iron Angel letting her die exist?”
“Just conspiracies, man,” said Frank. “Some people think he was too irresponsible by letting Winged Gal try to take on a supervillain all by herself, even though she had been fighting crime alongside Iron Angel for about two years by then. Some people think he intentionally let her go because he hated her and wanted her to die.”
I thought about how sad Iron Angel had looked when he mentioned Winged Gal’s death to me yesterday. “That seems like a pretty extreme accusation to make without evidence.”
Frank shrugged as he stepped aside to allow two girls to walk past us. “Like I said, it’s just a rumor. Probably just another crazy Internet conspiracy. I just thought I’d mention it to you.”
“What happened to this Black Poison guy, anyway?” I said as I closed my locker. “Did Iron Angel catch him, once his leg was better?”
Frank chuckled. “He didn’t just catch the guy. He outright murdered him in cold blood. And in the most gruesome way possible, too.”
“How did he kill him?”
Frank made a motion with his hands like he was ripping the lid off a jar. “He ripped Black Poison’s head clean off his neck, like he was beheading a chicken. I saw the pictures of the corpse. Pretty brutal.”
I didn’t really pay attention to that last thing Frank said, however. I’d stopped listening when he described how Iron Angel had ripped off Black Poison’s head. Several things clicked in my mind when I heard that and I came to a conclusion that I didn’t want to even think about. Yet it made too much sense and, at the same time, made no sense at all:
Iron Angel was the Superhero Killer.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Of course, I didn’t share that realization with Frank, because that would mean revealing my secret identity as Beams to him. But I didn’t pay much attention to him or to anyone else for the whole school day, because I was so distracted by this revelation that nothing else seemed to matter. I even accidentally ignored Greta once when she asked me a question, that’s how scattered my thoughts were.
My first impulse was to leave school and head straight to the Elastic Cave, but I didn’t. First, because that would be a good way to earn detention, because there was no way I would ever be able to explain to my teachers why I needed to leave or where I needed to go on such short notice without revealing my identity and losing my license. Second, I didn’t want to raise any suspicions among my classmates or make them start spreading rumors about me. And third, it was possible I was wrong. I mean, how could Iron Angel, one of the greatest superheroes of all time, be a serial killer himself?
But I couldn’t ignore that idea, no matter how many times I told myself that it was ridiculous. I texted Rubberman during lunch, asking him to call me back as soon as he got a chance, but he didn’t reply to my text and I doubted he even read it. I even faked needing to go to the bathroom so I could call him in the boy’s room, but neither he nor Adams answered the phone. I told myself that this was because Rubberman was probably showing Iron Angel around the Elastic Cave, but deep down I wasn’t so sure about that.
When the school bell rang, I rushed through the hallways of Harold Golden High, jumped the front steps, and was on my bike in seconds. I rushed through Golden City, taking the shortest path I knew from my high school to the Elastic Cave. I biked faster than I ever had in my whole life, yet it still seemed too slow. My backpack flew behind me as I raced through the back streets and alleyways of Golden City, almost running over a homeless man once, though I managed to avoid running into him at the last possible moment.
In five minutes, I saw the false grocery store front of the Elastic Cave. It looked perfectly ordinary, but for some reason I felt more like I was looking at an ancient tomb than the entrance to a superhero’s secret base.
When I actually entered the false front, I just dropped my bike to the floor, not even bothering to hook it up to the bike rack. I entered the elevator and slammed the button labeled ‘LEVEL ONE’ as hard as I could. The elevator began descending immediately, though it still seemed to take an eternity for it to reach the first level of the Elastic Cave. I rocked back and forth on my heels, my eyes locked on the floor level display above the doors until I heard a small ding and the doors opened.
Rushing out of the elevator, I shouted, “Rubberman! Adams! Are you—”
I tripped over something and fell flat on my face. My hands managed to break the fall, but it was still very jarring. Nonetheless, I looked over my shoulder to see what I’d tripped over. I wish I hadn’t.
Lying on the floor in front of the elevator doors, his normally pristine suit bloodied, was Adams. He looked dead. His black jacket was ripped and torn in several places, while his white shirt was stained with his own blood. His right arm was twisted in a weird way, while his nose appeared broken. The only way I knew he was still alive was the fact that his chest rose and fell with each breath, but I doubted he would live for much longer if he didn’t get medical attention for those wounds very soon.
“Adams?” I said as I scrambled to my feet. “Adams, are you all right? Adams, where is Rubberman?”
“Gone,” came a deep, slightly muffled voice from the other end of the room. “Fled, like the coward he is. Like the coward all superheroes are.”
I turned to see who had spoken. Iron Angel sat in the Mission Control chair, wearing his full suit of armor,
his wings retracted against his back, his bag sitting on the ground next to the chair. The only difference was that his helmet was off, sitting in his lap. His claws, however, were stained with blood, though whether that was Adams’ blood, Rubberman’s blood, or even someone else’s blood entirely, I didn’t know.
“Iron Angel,” I said, my hands balling into fists. “Or should I say, the Superhero Killer. The real one.”
“So you figured it out,” said Iron Angel. “I thought you were a smart kid when I first met you. It appears that I read you correctly. You remind me of another young sidekick I once knew, who was also quite smart, though perhaps not as smart as you.”
I stepped forward, but before I could get very far, I heard something like a cannon go off and some weird, whitish paste flew out of nowhere and struck my foot. The paste instantly solidified before I realized what happened. By the time I realized that my foot was immobile, it was too late. I tried to yank it out, but the paste was too thick for me to break.
“Now, now,” said a high-pitched voice from under the arch which led to the kitchen. “You don’t need to come any closer to our leader. You can talk to him just fine where you’re standing.”
I looked over at the arch and saw two people standing underneath it. One of them was a short, chubby man wielding a giant glue gun in his hands and wearing armor as white as his paste. The other was a tall, skinny man who looked like a snake, who made a strange hiss-like chuckling sound when I looked at him, though I didn’t see what was so funny about getting hit with glue.
“Alex, allow me to introduce you to two of my allies,” said Iron Angel. He gestured at the two men. “Meet Glue Gun and Hissteria. Like me, they were once superheroes, though now both of them have abandoned that title, again like me.”
I blinked. “I’ve never heard of either of them.”
“Not surprising,” said the fat man named Glue Gun. He jerked a thumb at himself. “I’m more famous in New Jersey than Texas, because I used to be the superhero of Trenton. Hiss, on the other hand, used to be the superhero of Florida, right?”
“Miami, to be more specific,” said Hissteria; oddly, he didn’t have much of a hiss to his voice, despite his name. “Well, I was technically a member of the team that defended the city, but—”
“Who cares?” I said. I looked at Iron Angel. “Where is Rubberman? You said he fled. Did he really run away or—”
“Yes, he really ran away,” Iron Angel interrupted me. “To where, I know not, though my people are searching for him even as we speak. I doubt he’s gone far, however, because I wounded him gravely before he got away, and would have killed him outright if his butler hadn’t distracted me at the last moment.” He shook his head. “Not that it matters much. I despise anyone connected to this vile industry, whether superhero or not.”
I glanced over my shoulder at Adams. Adams still hadn’t said a word since I entered the Cave. Talking was probably extremely painful for him, depending on how badly he had been wounded. That meant I couldn’t count on him helping me, which meant I was all on my own against three ex-superheroes who were more than willing to use lethal force against people they didn’t like.
Turning back to face Iron Angel, I said, “So is it just you three or are there more guys around here?”
Hissteria held up three fingers. “Three more of our allies are exploring the second level. We have not yet been able to gain access to the third level, but it doesn’t matter, because Rubberman doesn’t have access to it, either.”
Crap. If Iron Angel and his allies had the second floor under their control, then I couldn’t try to escape using the Rubbermobile. I would have to break free of this paste and use the elevator to escape, though I had no idea how I would also drag Adams out of here and get him to the nearest hospital, which was about five blocks north of the Elastic Cave. With my bike as my only form of transportation, I wouldn’t be able to get far before Iron Angel or his allies caught me.
I needed to come up with a different escape plan, then, but first I needed to buy time in which to think.
“Okay,” I said, addressing Iron Angel again. “Tell me what happened. Did you guys barge in here and take Rubberman by surprise or what?”
Iron Angel shook his head again. “Not quite that blatant. I came earlier today to start that tour of the Elastic Cave that Rubberman offered to take me on. When he had his back turned, I tried to kill him, and nearly succeeded, too, though his butler managed to stop me at the last minute, as I have already said. Then Rubberman fled through a secret exit in his office and we haven’t seen him since.”
“How come you haven’t gone after him?” I asked. “I know you said you had people in the city looking for him, but I thought that the famous Superhero Killer always hunted down his victims himself.”
Iron Angel smiled. “Perhaps you’re not as smart as I thought. Let me spell it out for you: You are Rubberman’s sidekick. We know that you are almost always in contact with Rubberman. By capturing you, we can send out a message to Rubberman demanding that he return or else we harm you. Of course, if Rubberman views you as nothing more than a disposable employee, as I think he does, it might not work, but it has a higher chance of working than wasting time and energy searching for him myself.”
“Why do you think I glued you to the floor like that?” asked Glue Gun with a chuckle. “Don’t want our hostage to get away so easily, now do we?”
I tugged at my glued foot, but it was still too thick for me to break. I might be able to shatter the glue with my eye beams, but I was worried that I might harm my foot in the process. I’d never practiced using my eye beams on things like this; I might accidentally use too much power and blow my foot straight off. But even if I didn’t, the only other alternative was to stand here and be their hostage. I needed to come up with a better way to escape. That meant I needed more time to think of a way to escape.
I looked at Iron Angel again. “I didn’t know you had friends. I thought you were just in town by yourself. Did either of these two help you kill those other superheroes or did you just do it by yourself?”
Iron Angel smirked. “Just by myself, though Glue Gun, Hissteria, and the others have all been very helpful in other ways. By the end of the day, I expect Rubberman to be killed and Golden City to be free of its so-called ‘superhero.’”
I bit my lower lip. “How many people are working for you, anyway? I thought it was just you three and the other people on Level Two.”
“I have an entire legion of ex-superheroes and ex-sidekicks under my command,” said Iron Angel. “It would take an equally large force to undermine it. Even if you managed to escape and reunite with Rubberman, you would not be able to stop us.”
My eyes widened. “An entire legion? Where did you get all of those people?”
Iron Angel steepled his fingers together. “Some came from the streets, where they ended up after losing their business; some from secluded parts of the world, where they retired to after their disgust with the industry overwhelmed their desire for money and fame; and a rather large number of them were simply former colleagues of mine who answered the call I sent out and have sworn their loyalty not just to me, but to the higher ideals to which we aspire. And there are still more of us in other cities and countries, laying the groundwork for future endeavors for our group.”
“Just who are you guys, anyway?” I asked. “A bunch of superheroes and sidekicks turned evil?”
Iron Angel’s smirk vanished and became replaced with the foulest scowl I’d ever seen. “We’re not evil. We may not be superheroes and sidekicks, but we are certainly not evil. We’ve abandoned the title of ‘superhero’ because it has become tarnished and corrupted. To be a superhero nowadays means to be a greedy, money-hungry narcissist who seeks only to line one’s pockets and increase one’s own glory, often at the expense of society’s least. We reject such labels. Indeed, we reject the entire superhero/supervillain paradigm entirely.”
“Then what does that make you?” I
said, looking from Iron Angel to Glue Gun and Hissteria and back again. “If you guys don’t consider yourselves superheroes or supervillains, then what are you?”
Iron Angel rose from the chair, his helmet tucked under his arm, his claws still gleaming with blood. “In the old days, before superheroes were recognized and regulated as legitimate businesses by the government, individuals who took to the streets to fight crime and protect the innocent were called something else. Tell me, Alex, do you know what they were called?”
I blinked. A vague memory floated up to the surface of my mind, of some superhero trivia that Frank once told me about a few years ago, but I couldn’t recall it off the top of my head. “No, I don’t.”
Iron Angel raised a claw and balled it into a fist. Vigilantes. That is what we are. We are vigilantes, but more than that, we are the Vigilante Legion. And we will eliminate both superheroes and supervillains from our society, even if that means tearing up the very foundations of society itself.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Now I remembered what Frank had told me all those years ago. Fifty years ago, superheroes had been known as vigilantes due to the fact they operated outside of the law. The details were still fuzzy to me, but it seemed like the legalization of the superhero business had been as a result of some sort of deal between the original vigilantes and the government. I wish I’d paid more attention in history class, because right now I felt like that information would have been useful to know.
Then again, it wasn’t like that knowledge would have been very helpful right now. I was still stuck, Adams was still dying, and Rubberman was still missing. Superhero trivia was not exactly helpful against actual former superheroes who were willing to kill me if I got in their way.
“The Vigilante Legion,” I repeated. “I’ve never heard of your group before.”
“That’s because we have been operating in the shadows for some years now,” said Iron Angel. He walked toward me, each step of his boots clicking across the metal floor. “But we have crossed paths before.”
