Confessions of a D-List Supervillain

by Bernheimer, Jim; Hsieh, Fiona

  There’s no time to waste and I lumber over to Hermes and snatch her into the air. She lashes out with her rod and I take dozens of hits on my helmet and chest piece. Her legs bludgeon me with jackhammer-like kicks. Fifty amp defensive jolt! We’re briefly illuminated in a flash. It won’t hurt the Olympian too much, but the bug on her is toast. Correction, make that bugs. There were three of them on her. That says loads about her metabolism.

  “Stacy! I got one. Knock her out!” It takes two shots before the Olympian stops struggling. I toss Hermes to the ground, because I have a bigger problem and his name is Ares.

  With my pulse rifle out of reach, thanks to Hermes, I hit him with my single force blaster. It barely slows the God of War down. Pulling my power sledge out, I meet him head on. The weapon’s force field flares on impact. Ares screams but lowers his shoulder and bowls me over. We wrestle for a moment. His fists pound into my suit. Even through the armor, I can feel it. He rips my sledge from my grasp and raises it up. I shove my left palm into his face. Fire force blaster!

  The sledge falls and I hit him with a right cross, while rerouting some of the remaining bots. I’m not the only one who’ll be hating life tomorrow. Of course, he’ll have much better drugs. Two robots blast him off of me and try to slow him down. He rips them to pieces, but it gives me the time to snatch the sledge off the ground and really clean his clock. I knock his ass at least twenty feet backwards.

  To my disbelief, he starts to get back up. Holy shit, he’s tough! I don’t have time to process it as darkness becomes light. Apollo’s fireball washes over me. Heat seeps through the cracks in my armor and I scream. I trigger my jetpack and dodge the second one. Landing, I grab my rifle. It still has enough charge for eight more shots, or I can overload it and chuck it at Apollo and Ares.

  I like that idea. Five seconds and a massive explosion later, Ares is down a second time and doesn’t look to be getting up. Apollo’s in bad shape too – worse after I shoot him, twice. Staggering forward, I see Aphrodite fighting with Hera and Athena. Hermes gets another shot from my force blaster, for good measure. Hera’s force fields keep stopping Stacy’s psi-bolts while Athena’s energy spears keep my partner in crime on the defensive.

  Hera will never let me get close enough to use my sledge. Just like those old cartoons, I get a light over my head. In this case, the light is attached to a long metal pole and seconds later that streetlight is ripped out of the ground. Sometimes technology is overrated.

  I pound away into the force field and allow Aphrodite a chance to go on the attack. “Quit screwing around and take her out.”

  “She’s my friend! I don’t want to hurt her.”

  I take a break from trying to bring down Hera’s protective sphere and shoot “her friend” in the back with my force blaster, knocking her to the ground. Stacy finally gets the message and lays some smackdown on her party buddy.

  Out of nearly two hundred drones, there are nine still functioning. My armor is a bit worse for wear after only a minute or two with Ares. Fortunately, I get to go back to the drawing board. I assign four robots to keep Hera entertained and the others to make sure that Apollo’s chariot won’t be able to fly anytime soon.

  “We can’t take Ares or Apollo. There’s no way the cells will hold them. Hera is going to take too long. It’s down to the speedster or the Goddess of Wisdom. Which one do we take?”

  “Both.”

  “Two? You were hard enough by yourself and you know how quickly the speedster is going to eat all our food.”

  “It won’t be a problem. I’ll take care of both of them. You won’t notice a thing.”

  Why do I feel like she’s asking me for two puppies instead of one?

  • • •

  Stacy comes in to the workshop on the morning of the third day after our raid. “Cal?”

  “Yes,” I stop winding the artificial muscles into progressively tighter bundles. The denser it is the better. My suit held up against Hermes, Ares, and Apollo, but just barely. The pulse rifle wasn’t all I hoped it would be and I’m addressing that.

  The good news is that Stacy has been marginally nicer to me since we captured her friends. With her new “project,” she’s too busy to sit around and complain about how awful my base is.

  “I got a little distracted trying to talk sense into Holly and Keisha ... well, um ... where do you keep the bucket?”

  I savor the look of frustration on her face. “Interface with the palm pad at the base of the steps, it’s in the closet there. How are you at installing toilets?”

  “How do you think? That’s the other reason I’m here. Gloating doesn’t suit you.”

  I finish off the strand of muscle that I was working on and grab my helmet. “I’m not gloating. I’m truly enjoying this.”

  “Look, I’ve barely had any sleep and the only thing keeping them from going batshit is my psionic powers. All I’m asking for is a little bit of help. Please?”

  It’s tempting to make her beg, but I’m not that heartless. “Yeah, I’ll take a four hour shift with the girls. Why don’t you get some sleep?”

  Aphrodite gives me a thankful smile and says, “I just can’t believe how mean the two of them are. Holly actually asked me if my new haircut meant that I was a dyke. They’re supposed to be my friends!”

  “That’s just the withdrawal symptoms talking. Even with your psychic whammy, they’re still hurting. Have you managed to get anything useful out of them yet?”

  “If you count Keisha giving me a detailed list of anatomical suggestions, most of which are impossible, then yes. If not, no. I’m beginning to wish that you really had tanks of knockout gas.”

  I shrug, while she mutters about how she fell for that one. “It’s never easy is it? Just go get some rest and I will handle this problem. Do you happen to know what music they really hate?”

  Stacy winces, knowing what’s going to happen, “Keisha hates classical music with a passion. I’ve never heard Holly say that she hates any particular brand of music.”

  “Which do you think I should start with Wagner’s Flight of the Valkyries, or perhaps a tribute to the great Ludwig Van? It worked in Kubrick’s movie.”

  “What?”

  Oh, she did not just ask that! “Never mind. The white noise generator should keep it from bothering you.”

  “What have you been doing up here? New version of the suit?”

  “I’m that predictable?”

  “Yes. What was so wrong with the last one?”

  “The rifleman version was good for medium to long distance fighting. Ares got me into close combat and I don’t want to count on dumb luck again.”

  Stacy affects an air of interest. “Rifleman version? What’s this version going to be called?”

  “Screaming Cyclops. I’m keeping my hands free and moving the single force blaster into the larger helmet. If I simplify the arms and legs, there’s less of a chance of things going wrong and more room for extra muscle and shield modules. I’m adding a shoulder mounted grenade launcher for concussion grenades.”

  She leans over the schematics and I become acutely aware of her presence. “Okay, I get the Cyclops part. What makes it screaming?”

  “The thorax has a variable frequency generator in it?”

  “That’s a fancy way of saying that you copied the Bugler isn’t it?”

  “Um...”

  Now she’s genuinely laughing, “After all the bitching you’ve been doing about the Biloxi Bugler, you’re copying him?”

  “It’s not how it looks! ... Okay, it is how it looks, but sonic weapons have a much lower power consumption rate and it makes an effective secondary weapon that doesn’t take up much space.”

  “If you say so. Are you making a new rifle then?”

  I gesture to the six disassembled pulse pistols and the long cylinder. “I’m going to combine those into a Gatling configuration for medium to short range firepower. I’ll trade stopping power for rate of fire and still keep energy consumpti
on down.”

  “Sounds like it will work. Good luck with that. Thanks for giving me a break. Don’t be too hard on them, they’re my friends.”

  I’m shocked at her encouragement, she must be tired. “Get some rest, Stacy.”

  A few minutes later, I am indulging in the most useless waste of time ever. I’m listening to an addict rant. Holly Crenshaw is supposedly a level-headed woman – the Goddess of Wisdom. Hell, she’s led the Olympians almost as much as Hera.

  In between the usual insults, she tries to go after me about Stacy. “You know this is the only way you’ll ever have a shot with her, Stringel.”

  “You’re a lousy addict, Crenshaw. Of course I don’t have a chance.”

  She frowns seeing that I’m not biting and then offers up a new tactic, “But you could with me.”

  “No thanks, Holly. That didn’t work when Stacy was in there and we both know she’s way better looking than you. Besides, in a couple days you are going to smell pretty fresh unless you start taking care of some basic hygiene. Your kind offer will lose a good deal of its appeal by then.”

  Aphrodite’s psionic powers are helping them cope as they come off the bug juice and both are more coherent than Stacy was. It doesn’t stop them from being bitches, but their rants at least make more sense.

  She summons an energy spear and hurls it against the walls, protected by a force field generator. It’s creating a strain on my base’s power supply, but things are okay for the moment. With any luck, Hermes will detox in a few days because of her freakish metabolism. Three watching one beats two on two any day of the week.

  “You should cut Aphrodite some slack. She’s trying to save you. If it was up to me, I’d have picked Hermes and just left you. After all, you’re not really much of a leader, are you? You and the rest of the heroes let the world get overrun. Face it, Crenshaw, which one of us is the real loser?”

  I walk away from her cell while mentally patting myself on the back. The great and mighty Athena needs some help hitting rock bottom and I am only too happy to assist. Thirty feet later, I’m at Keisha St. Croix’s cell. I don’t have a force field generator on this one and the walls and door are already showing the effects of her sustained blows. I keep a white noise generator running so neither of the two prisoners can communicate.

  Instantly, she appears at the small opening. Tiny slivers of porcelain from the shattered toilet fly through the crack and ricochet off my helmet.

  “Cute. Ineffective as hell, but still cute. I brought you a bucket for when you need to go poopies.”

  “Better say your prayers now, metal man. I will make sure your death is so fast you won’t even know what hit you!”

  “No, I was stopping by to thank you. Beneath the concrete and metal of the floor and walls is a layer of kinetic receptors. All that running around you are doing and all that pounding on the walls, it’s helping to power my base. Considering how much you eat, I just wanted you to know that you are least earning your keep.”

  She snarls at me and begins yelling so fast and so profanely that I could swear there were ten comedians in there, all telling their nastiest jokes at the same time. I wish I had kinetic receptors in the floor and all kinds of other cool toys, but sometimes a lie is just as effective. The funny thing is that they keep right on believing me. Their cravings make them gullible and their ego reinforces the fact that no mere prison cell can hold them.

  I decide to see how far I can push this. “Listen, Keisha ... can I call you that? Anyway, I’m probably going to have to turn one of you two loose. I could probably be talked into letting you go if you’ve got some useful information. Otherwise, it’ll probably end up being Athena who gets to go back to the bugs. She’s been a fountain of information.”

  Hermes screams in rage, “Let me go! I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

  “Where are all the android heroes being held?”

  “Go to hell!”

  “Aw c’mon Keisha, it’s just you and me. You can tell me where those guys are. In fact, I just happen to have something you really want.”

  I pull out a plastic case and hold it up to let her see. Inside of it there’s a bug moving around. I’m guessing Stacy wouldn’t approve of this technique – too bad she’s not here.

  Keisha starts talking. She doesn’t stop for almost ten minutes, before refusing to say anything else until she gets the bug.

  Smiling, I open the service hatch and drop it in to the bucket. Interfacing with the cell door control, I open her side. She whips the box inside and frantically opens the top. I’m already turning down my external microphones as screams of anguish emanate from her prison. I should feel bad using a holographic chip to trick her like that, but I don’t.

  Instead, I start casually back towards Athena’s cell and grab the other holographic bug box, so I can get some independent verification. Activating the music system, I pull up a file of somebody’s Philharmonic Orchestra doing Beethoven’s greatest hits. I hope she enjoys the concert. After I get done with Holly, I think she should learn to appreciate speedmetal.

  Someone famous once said, “War makes good people do bad things.” If that’s the case, it also makes bad people even worse.

  Chapter Four

  Free Choice and Other Stellar Ideas

  “Thank you for reactivating me,” Andydroid says.

  “Two … well technically three victories in a row,” I answer. I’ll try not to let it go to my head, but I do think it’s a personal best.”

  Andydroid is an interesting robot. He’s got far more personality installed than any other mechanical construct I’ve been around. His creator was a partner for a time with Patterson’s grand pappy back in the day, but they had a falling out over the old quality versus quantity argument and parted ways. Promethia started churning out Type A robots as fast as it could to get into the mechanical arms race while the reclusive Mister Albright went the other way making robot heroes like Andy, the Cyber Dudes, and the Silicon Sisterhood were programmed to avoid taking life where possible and use logic to solve situations rather than brute force.

  “Still, the act requires gratitude, so I give it.”

  “We’re going to need all the help we can get and it’s good that you and the Dudes are immune. Too bad about the Sisterhood though,” I say wondering if there’s a robot heaven or some kind of great scrap heap in the sky. All that was left of them when we raided that warehouse were a bunch of spare parts and most of that went to getting the Cyber Dudes operational.

  “I’m just glad you guys don’t eat anything the way Hermes is running through my stores.”

  “What would you like me to do?” Andydroid asks.

  I like him more and more by the second. He’s a giver and not a taker – unlike the two recently rehabbed Olympians. They’re just a pair of bitches no matter what Stacy says. I’d throw them back in the cells, but we picked up a couple of super powered prisoners while liberating our new allies and I use the term super powered loosely. Over my protests, we brought back Rodentia and Gunk. The pair of minor villains hadn’t been useful for anything other than guard duty.

  Here I thought all the rehabbing females developed nasty hygiene problems. These guys were questionable even before the bugs and no one was prepared for excessive amounts of body hair and mucus, but hey, Rodentia can summon a legion of tiny rodents and Gunk can ... well, he spits and that cell is getting downright nasty. Clearly having them on our side tilts the balance of power, but I just can’t come up with a use for them other than to convert oxygen to carbon dioxide.

  “Andy, I appreciate you keeping an eye on the prisoners,” I say. “You probably want to put on a protective suit anyway. That crap Gunk spits is hard to get off and might damage your finish.”

  “Consider it done.”

  He leaves and I turn my attention to my other problem. Her name is Athena. Now free, she’s gone from an annoying nuisance to a genuine pain in the ass. We butt heads on a routine basis. Andy isn’t gone fiftee
n minutes before she comes in and gets up in my face.

  “Stringel! Who said you could task Andydroid? Where the hell is your inventory? I need to know what you have, how much you have, and I need to know it now.”

  Athena looks impatient while Aphrodite lingers in the doorway trying to decide if she needs to play peacekeeper.

  “I think it’s around here somewhere.” I fish around on my desk for a moment. Coming up with a clipboard, I toss it to her.

  She looks down at the pad of paper attached. “It’s blank.”

  “Oh right, here’s a pen. Let me know if you can’t access any of the storage closets, Holly. I might have a couple of them still restricted.”

  “What kind of shitty fly by night operation have you got here, Stringel?”

  I almost fall back on the backup base excuse, but frankly I’m tired of her griping and respond, “The same one that rescued you. You want an inventory, have at it or delegate it to your speedster and the other androids. I’m busy.”

  With a nasty glare, she says, “It’d go faster if you pitch in. As you’re so fond of reminding me, this is your shithole.”

  “Well let’s see, I could stop working on these concussion grenades and trying to figure out something that we can use to protect Hermes without weighing her down too much, but I don’t think so. Even though I’ve been dying to know how many rectal thermometers I have, I’ll just let someone else tell me. You want it done, feel free. Don’t forget to add the stick up your ass to the list. That’ll come in handy, I’m sure.”

  She storms out in anger. Beneath my helmet I’m grinning. Sometimes, embracing my pettiness is the best course of action.

  “You should try to get along with her. She’s under a lot of stress.” Stacy says, walking into my workshop. She’s out of her armor and wearing a very loose set of coveralls. Amazingly enough, all the spare clothing inside this base was bought to fit me.