Confessions of a D-List Supervillain

by Bernheimer, Jim; Hsieh, Fiona

  This is ... a trap? No! No! No! She’s not even naked and she has her wrist communicator activated! I glance at the external display. Nothing, but then again, the Olympians could probably be all over the place. Shit! What am I going to do?

  “What’s taking you so long?” I see her whispering into her communicator. We now return to our regularly scheduled episode of Cal Can’t Catch a Break!

  “Sorry, it’s going to take about five minutes to get out of the armor.” Okay, bolt-box time! Spare powercells go in as well as two cases of NASA food paste, some goodies I picked up at a gadget swap meet, the laptop, and the half-finished MARK III CAL suit that I’ve been working on for the past two years. There’s no way they’re getting that!

  “Cal, will you hurry up! I’m getting lonely in here.”

  “Almost done!” Smacking the big red “panic” button on the wall, I activate the not-so-passive defenses. Gun emplacements mounted in rusted hulks come to life with active targeting scanners. Big surprise! There are several heat signatures out there. My “junkyard doggie” bursts out of a dilapidated doublewide trailer. He’s a big old loveable hunk of iron with claws for hands and four pulse cannons mounted on him.

  If I’m lucky, he’ll last two minutes.

  The sirens alert the lovely in the bathroom that all is not well with her little plan. She bursts out! “You could have gone the easy way, but no! I get my bug back when I bring you in!”

  “No thanks. I think I’ll pass.”

  “Fine you third-rate Ultrawannabe. I won’t be gentle!”

  Psi-bolts smash into my shields, letting me know that the earlier ones were just love taps. She’s got a thick skin, so I give her a full broadside. Aphrodite leaps out of the way, but trips over all the technojunk strewn about. I’ve got to finish her fast! Shields continue to hold against her barrage. I fire again, slightly to her left driving her toward a beat up freezer and fire right at it when she’s in front.

  My target dodges, but the secondary explosion from all the chemicals stored in the fridge catches her. I seal the suit against the fumes and activate the two-minute self-destruct. Picking up her communicator, I scream into it, “You’ll never take me alive, Olympians!”

  Dropping it, I crush it under my feet and look at the stunned Aphrodite. I could leave her and let the destruct finish her, but it’s obvious she’s still under their control. The effect has to wear off! I give her a heavy Taser pulse to make sure she’s out, throw her over my shoulder, and I grab the bolt-box.

  One glance at a still functioning screen shows that the doggy’s getting pounded. I liked this base. Oh well, two miles of tunnel to fly through and then north to the backup base, “The Pig Sty.”

  • • •

  “Where am I?”

  “My other base.” No need to tell her that she’s in South Eastern Alabama at an old pig farm near the MobileRiver.

  “Let me go!” A psi-bolt slams into the reinforced steel door of the cell area. The previous owner of this base used barbed wire of all things for a cell – idiot! Fortunately, I spent some time fixing it up. Still, I already miss the junkyard.

  “No!” I shout.

  “I can contact them telepathically.”

  “Not from sixty feet below ground in a shielded cell you can’t.”

  Five more psi-bolts impact against the door. The last one is noticeably weaker. “Please, Cal, I need to go! I won’t tell them you’re still alive. Just let me go.”

  “Why do you want to go so badly?”

  She turns on the water works and I flip on the shielded box camera that I installed behind her polished metal “mirror” an hour ago.

  Aphrodite is on the floor crying and convulsing. Rerouting the camera feed over to the suit, I walk to the cell. Scooping a head off some robot thing I never finished building; I pull back the metal plate and stick the robot head up to the peephole.

  “Are you okay in there?” Wham! The head is blasted out of my hand by a rather strong burst of energy from her. The heads-up-display shows her with a wild look in her eyes as she leaps to her feet. I barely get the cover back on before her fists and mental energy begin impacting on the door. She was playing at being weak and tried for a sucker punch.

  “That wasn’t very nice! I’m trying to save you.”

  “I don’t want to be saved! Let me out! I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you! Let me out!”

  “That really wasn’t a bright move. Suppose you had killed me just there? You’d starve in there in a few days.”

  Instead of a proper response all I get is screams and her pounding on the door. Arguing with the mentally unstable isn’t very productive. I make a few more attempts to communicate and decide to let her work out some of her excess energy.

  Meanwhile, I need to figure out what the hell I’m going to do.

  • • •

  In the morning, I open the suit’s service panel, dump the “poop chute,” change the water bottle, and screw in the food paste packet for breakfast. It’s a fairly self-contained existence, and since I’m not very choosy, I can keep it up for at least six months. If it’s good enough for the astronauts up in the space station, it is good enough for me. There’s a horrible thought, what are those poor SOB’s up there thinking right now, or did the bugs send a space-capable superhuman up there already?

  Stacy Mitchell, on the other hand, probably doesn’t care for steak and eggs in an oversized toothpaste tube. The freezer is full of TV dinners and frozen waffles. I make her a tray and switch over to the containment cell feed.

  “Shit! When did she do that?” I look at the display in dismay. She blew up the sink and toilet! There’s water everywhere! I interface with the main computer and tell it to cut off the water to that side of the base. She didn’t destroy the bunk – that’s where she’s curled up at the moment.

  Sliding the top bar back, I look in, not wanting to tip my hand about the surveillance camera. “Hey! What happened to your sink and toilet?”

  “Go to hell!”

  “Well, I don’t see how this is making my life more difficult. The water will drain when I open the valve and I can probably replace the toilet and sink, but I’m not going to if you’re just going to destroy them again.”

  “I’m going to kill you!” she says slowly, full of murderous intent. On the plus side, she sounds more coherent and less foaming-at-the-mouth today.

  “I thought you were the ‘good’ guys? I guess that doesn’t mean as much anymore.”

  “It’s going to be slow. I’ll make you beg before I kill you unless you let me go right now!”

  It’s actually somewhat humorous listening to her. “Would you like some breakfast? Can’t kill me on an empty stomach, you know.”

  Her energy goes through the tiny opening and hits the wall.

  “So, not very hungry today? Okay then, I’ll bring you a bucket and send it in through an access door.”

  “I’m not cleaning this up, you bastard.”

  “You don’t need to. I told you the water will drain. The bucket is in case you need to go to the bathroom.”

  “What?”

  “Well I’m guessing you’re going to need to go to the bathroom sooner or later, and your toilet isn’t getting fixed anytime soon, princess. Before you get any cute ideas, I can filter my air. If you start flinging crap around your cell like some kind of goddamn monkey, you’re the only one that’s going to smell it. I’ve got a second cell down here and if you can be good for a few days we’ll move you to it.”

  Her feet splash across the room as I shut the metal plate. She bangs on the door. “You can’t keep me in here like some kind of animal! I need a bug! Get me a bug!”

  “Why?”

  “I need one!” Her fists start pounding against the door.

  “Again, why? They’ve turned you into some kind of slave. You should be happy to be free of them.”

  “Please, just get me a bug. I’ll do anything you want. It hurts.”

  That little exchange gave me
volumes of information. However these bugs were made, whatever was in them is highly addictive. Explains why nobody just squished the bugs and went on their merry way.

  “How do the bugs make you feel?”

  She’s sobbing now, but still hammering away at the door. “They make you feel incredible. It must be like what people feel if I use my powers on them, except it’s so much more! Just get me one. Stun me and dump me somewhere, I don’t care. I won’t tell them where you are. I don’t even know where we are!”

  I try to sound as calm as possible. “Stacy, I can’t do that. Everyone thinks we’re dead. I intend to keep it that way and you need to try to get out from under their influence.”

  “Don’t call me Stacy! I’m Aphrodite!”

  “No. Aphrodite’s a hero, an Olympian. You’re a woman named Stacy with an addiction. Aphrodite would know that these things were made by The Evil Overlord to enslave humanity.”

  “I don’t care about him. I don’t care about you. Just let me go.”

  The argument goes on for awhile, but I tire of listening and walk away. I’ve met a few addicts in my lifetime. Turning on some music, I head up to the workshop. Eventually, I’ll have to go out again and the Olympians are still out there. My chances will be better if I finally finish the MARK III CAL suit.

  • • •

  “Tell me about yourself, Cal?”

  Two days have passed. Stacy is trying new tactics with me. Instead of screaming and threats, (which got progressively more graphic) she wants to be my friend. It won’t last, but I’ve got to hope she can kick this thing. She doesn’t know the “lament of the nerd.” Every geek that gets into their late twenties looks back at all the girls/women that crossed his path and sees how the good-looking ones were always trying to get something. How many of them had I helped in study groups? They never overlooked the bad acne and eczema that followed me to UCLA. How many tires did I change and computers did I fix, hoping for a number from a grateful coed? How many boxes and pieces of furniture did I carry because a pretty pair of lips asked me?

  At some point every schmuck like me takes stock of his life and faces the reality that the really good-looking ones, and even most of the average ones, are just going to try and use them.

  “UCLA, Electrical Engineering major. I played drums in a cover band. I like music. Don’t really care for long walks on the beach. Graduated top of the class and was hired straight out by Promethia.” The voice modulator in the suit disguises my hatred for the name of Ultraweapon’s company.

  “I saw it in your file that you stole a bunch of designs from Lazarus, so you could become a cheap knock-off.”

  Oh, she found a big sore spot with me. “I did not! That was his lawyers and their smear campaign.”

  “That’s not what I read. So, you’re a little worker bee with delusions of adequacy, stealing from a genius like Lazarus Patterson.” She’s shifting tactics again, baiting me, and like an idiot I’m falling for it.

  “Genius! Hah! Patterson might have created synth-muscle, but that’s about it. Everything else in his Ultraweapon suit was designed by engineers just like me on his R&D staff. I made his original force blasters! Me!”

  “...and you stole the designs and went into a life of crime.”

  “No! I quit Promethia when they refused to put my name on the patents and acknowledge my work. I went to work at Ubertex, but then Promethia’s lawyers showed up with their three-year no compete clause in my employment contract, and Ubertex cut me loose.”

  “Oh, you poor baby.” There’s no sympathy in her voice.

  “Bitch! After that, Promethia spread the word about my ‘poor performance’ and basically black-balled me from pretty much every high tech job on both coasts. I came up with a small power compressor, and when I tried to file patent on it, guess what? Promethia dragged me into court and said it was derivative from items they were working on, and the court took my invention and gave it to them.”

  She’s openly laughing now. “You must have been heartbroken!”

  “If you’re trying to get me to come in there, it’s not happening. Just finish your TV dinner and put it on the cart. I’m leaving. Goodnight, Stacy.”

  “You’re pathetic, Stringel. Go ahead and hide down in this hole, you rat. The moment you surface, the bugs will get you. Maybe I’ll let you experience them and then take your bug away, just to watch you suffer.”

  A quick jerk of the head shuts off the external microphones. I ran right into her trap. If she had held off, I’d have probably told her about the humiliating string of jobs in the months afterwards, or Promethia actually coming after me to garnish my wages. I finally did snap and built a crude version of my force blasters and took the name ManaCALes. After knocking over a few jewelry stores, I tried a bank or two in Biloxi. That’s when I got caught by the Bugler.

  A guy with a sonic bugle beat me! The lamest jackass to ever put on a cape kicked my tail. It was a bad omen to start my career as a supervillain. I served twenty-six months of a five-year sentence in prison, but the time in the joint was actually pretty productive. I made contacts among the bad guys that passed through the maximum security prison for “supers.” All that free time not trying to keep some stupid job and paying rent allowed me to design the MARK I suit.

  After being released, I didn’t even bother trying to reenter society. In addition to all of Promethia’s slurs, I now had the label of convicted felon on my resume. That wouldn’t look promising to most potential employers.

  That is, of course, unless those new employers were also convicted felons. Diabolical masterminds just can’t go through the Internet and arm their minions. I entered the highly competitive world of arms manufacturing for enterprising criminals. It’s true that much of my MARK I suit was built off of Ultraweapon’s designs, but I didn’t do the stealing. I bartered them off of one of his enemies and she traded them for four cases of first-generation pulse pistols.

  As I look at the MARK III lying on the bench and begin attaching synth-muscle to the actuators, I recall the good old days. Money was coming in. The MARK I was complete and I even got some revenge on the Bugler. That’s when I started working with Vicky.

  Contrary to Stacy’s assertions, I’m not a “nose picking, never gonna get laid” virgin. Vicky was a buyer for The Evil Overlord, procuring weaponry from independent contractors such as myself. She liked my work and she actually liked me. I became a preferred supplier to the Overlord’s armory and even started building the MARK II suit I’m wearing right now.

  With the left leg actuator finished, I take a break and bring up my favorite first-person-shooter on the main screen, after checking to make sure the bitch downstairs is still confined. I miss Vicky. After committing my first robbery in the MARK II, I called her. She was going to fly out for a celebration and take my presentation for building moderately low-cost powersuits to the Overlord himself. I would have had a backlog of work that would make me filthy stinking rich and Vicky was going to resign after she got the deal approved. It was the perfect plan. There was just one small problem standing in the way of that happily ever after.

  Vicky was in the Overlord’s Omega Base when he triggered the self-destruct, trying to destroy the Olympians and the West Coast Guardians. They all escaped, naturally. She didn’t.

  The new buyer was this sleazy suit named Paul. Paul also liked my work. In fact, he liked it so much that he had some of the Overlord’s in-house guys take the pulse cannons apart and reverse engineer the design to manufacture them without any markup.

  That’s Darwinism in the villain food chain. There really wasn’t much I could do about it either. Even the bad guys were finding ways to screw me. That forced me to resume the other side of the business, while trying to land the next big contract. I went back to being a goon for hire.

  General Devious recruited me into her Heroes Outmatched by Rampaging Destructive Executioner Squads. Yeah, I was a member of that idiotic HORDES group. The idea of over a hundred villains trying to w
ork together didn’t pan out as well as everyone thought.

  Against all four Guardians groups, the Olympians, and countless other solo heroes, things went from bad to worse. It’s the only time I ever actually fought against Ultraweapon. There’s not even really a long story to what happened. That fight consisted of less than a minute of me getting my ass thoroughly kicked. It took three months to get the suit right after retreating as fast as I could – at less than half-speed.

  Whoever upgraded those force blasters on his suit did a helluva job. I started on the MARK III that night, worked feverishly for two weeks, and then quit. I woke up and smelled the coffee. The bitter truth was I didn’t have the brainpower or the budget to compete with Promethia’s Research and Development department. There was no way I would ever be able to beat Ultraweapon.

  So, I went into semi-retirement, pulling the occasional job just to fill the coffers. I did custom orders for the lower-level criminals and tried my best to stay away from the larger crime organizations, and more importantly the upper echelon of heroes. Chickenshit? Yes, but it kept me out of prison while I struggled to make a living.

  Chapter Two

  Songs That Get Stuck in Your Head

  As the first week with my prisoner comes to a close, I’m seriously contemplating fulfilling her request, stunning and dumping her somewhere, like she wants. Becoming a true hermit is sounding more appealing by the hour.

  I trigger the external sound feed and hear her screaming, “Will you shut that damn song off!”

  “Oh, did I leave that song looping for the last six hours? I’m sorry.”

  “At least play something that isn’t shit!”