I dropped. It wasn’t a move I’d used yet, and Ifrit couldn’t correct fast enough for his third launch to hit me before I disappeared behind one of the taller ruins, landing in a jarring crouch.
Tesla’s Elephant Surprise. That little dickens Ifrit had not spent the school year idle. He’d learned strategy and faked me out. I’d beaten so many people who got overconfident fighting a kid, I should have known better than to underestimate anyone.
Mom threw Ifrit’s buckets back, one by one. If this were a real fight, no way I would wait while he rearmed, but training and demonstration required slightly more good sportsmanship.
Enough waiting. I zipped along the ground between my wall and a second. Then a third. When I launched up from behind it, two buckets fired past the wall on either side. He thought he’d been prepared for me. Foolish. The space to cover was too big. He’d never have the reflexes to get me like that.
In the air, however, he could subject me to a high-speed barrage, and I spent the next thirty seconds dodging in the most random directions I could think of, never keeping to a course long enough for Ifrit to track. Projectiles whistled past me, way too close. He had to pause after each launch to bend down and pick up another, though. Sure that didn’t take long, but it took long enough. I unhooked my rotor disk from my back, and threw it down at Ifrit. About halfway down, I hit the controls on my wrist, and it lurched forward, picking up speed as its power kicked in.
He hadn’t expected that, but still threw himself out of the way. My disk plowed into and skidded along the dirt behind him.
We both huffed and puffed. I hadn’t been doing nearly enough supervillainy, and was getting out of shape again. Those fire blasts must take a lot of energy, too.
Mom threw Ifrit’s buckets back and we eyed each other, waiting for the next round. He gathered up half a dozen handles in one hand, to reduce his reload time. Not good. When the first two launched, I zipped down behind a multi-story wall.
He would be making a plan. I couldn’t give him time to do so. I jumped up into the air again, but only a hop, taking me into an open doorway on the second floor.
Ifrit’s arm darted up, expecting me to fly faster, farther. He didn’t waste a shot, but he did hesitate―juuuust long enough for me to give him a vicious grin, and flick the joystick on my wrist controls. The disk lying on the ground behind him shot up in reverse, smacking him in the back. I jammed a button, and gears slid out and clamped down around his arms and torso.
It wasn’t much of a weapon, but it sent him stumbling and struggling to get his arms free. If I’d had any other weapon, he’d be toast.
A few seconds of wrestling later, he realized that, and stopped struggling. He didn’t look ashamed, but stood there in silence.
I hovered down to the ground, and as soon as my feet touched the dirt, I fell off of them, swooning onto my back with an arm over my forehead. “So… tired! No energy… to gloat!”
Ifrit burst out laughing. “You are definitely the Audit’s daughter.”
Mom stepped into view, arms full of buckets. “That was more than just talent.”
Oops. Thankfully, an excuse stood right in front of me. “I did learn a few things over a semester of people trying to corner me into duels.”
Ifrit chimed in to help me out, without knowing he was doing it. “No amount of experience teaches you to think that fast, Mrs. Akk. She’s just good.”
I held up an arm and gave him a thumbs up. No need to fake exhaustion. With the excitement of the fight over, my body felt like lead.
That left my mom to start a conversation with Ifrit. Fine by me. I’d escaped my mother’s suspicion this round, but the noose tightened. Somewhere in her head, a few numbers had shifted. The very instant the possibility of my being Bad Penny stopped being a bizarre mathematical outlier, the Inscrutable Machine jig was up. Another little reminder to hurry up my escape plan.
Ha! Yeah, right. Any time my friends weren’t pushing me to villainy, my parents had declared would be spent grinding me with training more mentally than physically exhausting. I had less time and attention to plan than during school.
Okay, so this was way more fun than school, but criminy! What next?
ay, Claire, and I discussed these developments over fish and chips at that little place down on Sunset with all the blue tile. She sat beside me on the bench, Ray on the other side.
“Your mom can’t catch you on being good in practice, Penny. She knows you’re a tactical prodigy. You inherited it from her.” Claire waggled a french fry at me. It flopped, limp and crinkle-cut. The fish here was fresh and exquisitely tangy with vinegar, but the fries? About half-and-half mush.
Ray swallowed the last piece of his fourth plank of fried fish. For the first time, I wasn’t jealous of his physical powers. Hiding a super powered metabolism like that from my parents would be impossible. Before starting his fifth, he said, “It’s like your parents to start you on the public service part early. They’ve been active with that since they retired.”
I waved my hands around, frustrated. “I thought they just kept working because it’s their passion.”
Ray smiled sweetly. “They want it to be your passion.”
Claire bumped me with her hip. “And it’s not working. You need a break from justice, Miss Akk.”
I leveled a finger at her. “You always say that.”
Ray interjected. “Because it hasn’t stopped being true. You’re pushing yourself hard to not have fun.”
Uh oh. Double teamed! But I had the trump card. I pulled out of my backpack a little tarnished silver bird, with clutching talons and spread wings. “And what about this little break from justice?” I asked Claire, in my most arch voice. I didn’t have to fake that. Saddling me with loot stolen from Mourning Dove? Not cool!
Incapable of shame, Claire airily waved a hand. “Those piles were a mess. She never checks them, and you need equipment bad.”
“You do badly need equip―” Ray’s brain sped ahead to the real topic. He stared, wide-eyed and questioning, at Claire.
“Right off the treasure heap in the library basement,” I confirmed.
Ray recovered from the shock quickly. Was I the only person who thought stealing from Mourning Dove was a terrible, terrible idea? He swiveled a hush puppy as if he were shaking his head. “She can’t use it. We have no idea what it does.”
“It’s a ring. It does something that’s good for the wearer, and maybe or maybe not bad for someone else. We’ll figure it out.” To prove her point, Claire plucked the bird right out of my hand and slid it onto her middle finger.
Wow, she was right. The gripping talons were the ring part, and the wings spread over her other fingers almost like brass knuckles. Crazy.
Ray looked at me and shrugged. “Rogue actor is also taking all the risk, team leader. If she is caught, or turned into a pillar of salt, we can disavow all knowledge of her activities.”
Okay, that made me snort, and the laugh inclined me to mercy. “I do need equipment. I owe you villain time, Claire, and I want to, but the only weapons I have are linked to my hero identity. The teleport bracelets are defensive. The German Grenade isn’t going to subdue anybody. Annoy them, maybe.” I actually had it with me, and pulled it out of my backpack to hold up. Volume set to zero, of course. “All we have are your zombie rag dolls, and the machine control console.”
Claire rubbed her hands together as her eyes lit up with evil glee. “And what a combination that would be.”
“…except you have to be standing near them for the dolls to work anyway,” Ray pointed out.
Claire folded her arms over her chest with a bounce and a harumph. The accompanying scowl lasted… maybe three seconds. “I know. Your parents showed you how heroes strut their powers outside of combat. I knew it was up to me to arrange your lesson in how villains strut their powers outside of combat. And here’s our tutor now.”
Right out in front of the restaurant, where there wasn’t a legitimate parking spot, a
woman slid out of a sleek, black racing car, the kind with all the angles and indentations. I recognized Lucyfar instantly. Anyone would. Forget the long, black hair and thin, wiry, strong figure. I also didn’t need to have seen her face up-close before. Her intense eyes, too-tight, too-smug smile, and swaggering walk screamed ‘supervillain’ louder than casual jeans and a faded gray T-shirt could hope to muffle.
Criminy. Claire knew me too well. I was grinning! Lucyfar’s appearance heralded good times ahead.
Spreading her arms wide, Lucyfar declared, “Why, if it isn’t my favorite―one moment.”
A black knife appeared in the air, already speeding across the room to thunk into the wall next to the counter clerk’s head. She smiled at him, eager, challenging, and insincerely sweet. “A little privacy, please?”
He threw himself through the door into the kitchen area. A moment later, another door slammed.
Extending her arms again, Lucyfar stepped up between me and Claire. “Why, if it isn’t my favorite perfectly ordinary children. What would two delightful moppets who are not yet part of the Community and their friend who has no powers at all want from disreputable but not officially evil me?”
Claire tilted her head towards me. “The prodigy’s parents are making her do volunteer work. I was hoping you could show her what supervillains do with their powers when they’re not being professional.”
Lucyfar materialized a knife, tapping it with a finger, then another, then another, and so on as she rattled off, “Stealing, destroying, threatening people, smuggling, scaring the police away from powerless criminals, spying―”
Claire interrupted the list. “Other than things like that, yes.”
Lucyfar leaned over Claire to give me the full focus of her grin, and also a wiggly pinch on the cheek. “It’s not all scrabbling for money and paying the bills. We duel, go on rampages, break into each other’s lairs, and more besides, but they’re all different forms of the same thing. If you flaunt it, people will know you’ve got it. We show off!”
I opened my mouth, but Lucyfar blocked it with a finger, and made some ‘shhh shhh’ noises. “I know. So many questions, so many objections. Only one of those questions is important now. What would that scamp Bad Penny do with her power to make all the other heroes and villains admit she’s the best?”
By rights, that question should have taken hours of thought, but I stared past Lucyfar at the blazing hot parking lot drenched in summer sun, and the words came straight from my soul. “I’m going to make it snow in LA.”
The self-proclaimed fallen angel clapped her hands together, and straightened up. “Oh, we do have a winner. I hear you’re a little resource strapped at the moment?”
“Uh… a bit.”
She jerked her thumb at the car. “Get in, kids. A scurrilous not-quite-friend of your parents is going to take you for a ride you were too intimidated to refuse. Minions in the back. Team Leader gets shotgun. Rank hath its privileges, after all.”
“We wouldn’t have it any other way,” said Ray. He and Claire bolted to Lucyfar’s sports car. Ray held the door open for Claire, and after she slid into the back, he climbed in across her. Would he ever get tired of proving his artificially enhanced body was absurdly agile? I wouldn’t, if I were him.
Lucyfar and I approached at a more sedate pace. The car only had two doors, and I slid into a plush, dark, leather seat with plenty of room, unlike the tiny back seats Ray and Claire were squished into. Our host slapped her door shut, inserted the key in the ignition, and paused.
So very slowly, her head turned to give me that unholy grin. “Unless Penny would like to drive.”
“No.” I said it gently, but firmly. I hadn’t even studied how to drive, and was not foolish enough to think that telling giant spider robots where to go or flying spaceships in the open air counted.
“Come oooooon! Manual shift is so much more fun than automatic. My car has armor and a full range of mad science tech shock absorbers. You can crash as much as you want!”
“Even more no.”
She sighed theatrically. Turning the key, she started up the engine, then her right hand and feet leaped into a furious dance of pedals and stick shift. The car spun backwards out of what wasn’t a parking spot anyway, and screeched across the lot and onto the street in a streak of black fire produced by Lucyfar’s powers.
“Did your car upgrades come from Body Shop?” Ray asked from his folded-up slot behind the driver’s seat.
Lounging languidly in just as little space behind me, Claire corrected, “Body Work. Body Shop is the woman who claims to have inherited the First Horseman’s biosculpting techniques.”
“You are correct. I hang my head in shame,” said Ray, and did so.
Lucyfar shifted two lanes to the left, passed a car, then shifted back into our original lane in less time than it took her to say, “That’s right. He only works for the super powered community. Professional drivers and the super-rich beg to no avail.”
I started to unclench from the terror of Lucyfar’s driving, only to realize I wasn’t all that tense to begin with. She ran red lights, changed lanes at high speed, and did everything else a driver shouldn’t, but there was never a car where she wanted to go. Even when she dived between two cars on a two-lane street, they were just far enough apart for us to fit. Her quite possibly supernatural skill in knowing exactly what all the traffic was doing around her and what she could get away with drained what should have been terror at her berserk driving style.
That supernatural sense extended to knowing exactly when I’d cooled down enough that she could glance over at me and ask, “So, B and B have you doing the public service thing, huh?”
“Just how… common… is it?” I asked, feeling off balance and vulnerable because I didn’t feel off balance and vulnerable in the way I’d expected.
She shifted gears a few more times, then waved a couple of fingers in the air in a circle. “Oh, totally common. Maybe as common as they tell you. I’ve even done it once or twice, when my capacity for boredom overwhelmed my common sense.”
Perhaps to make up for his earlier mistake, Ray offered from the back seat, “Since Verdant turned herself into a grove of aspen trees, most plant-based heroes work with the farm bureau and don’t fight crime at all.”
The car swerved, hard. I had no idea where we’d been, and now I had even less of an idea, because we were driving down a concrete drainage ditch. A round, dark tunnel opened up beneath a road. The car plunged in, and angled down, rocketing along as if it weren’t one step up from jet black in a single-lane tunnel.
For a flashing second, everything opened up, and I swear we crossed a subway tunnel. Then we plunged back into the cramped darkness.
Finally, Lucyfar slowed down, braking moments before we pulled into a small, underground parking lot. A ragged van that would not have fit the way we came in was already parked there.
We got out. The air smelled damp and musty, and what I could see of the walls had been built of worn stone brick, like an ancient castle. No, an ancient shepherd’s lodge. The shiny metal double doors with the handprint scanner and keypad and yellow and black stripes looked completely out of place.
Lucyfar kicked those doors open, ignoring the security features entirely. Walking into the crowded room beyond, she spread her arms and shouted, “Welcome, and feast your eyes upon Cybermancer’s secret laboratory!”
The laboratory held plenty to feast our eyes on. Criminy buckets.
If I had made a prediction, it would be that Cybermancer had sneakily taken ownership of some college chemistry lab and filled the cupboards with ingredients like Eye of Newt. This was not that. This was chaos, a large room turned into a labyrinth by crisscrossing rows of machines. Some of them looked conventional, like the big table with the presses and giant blade for shaping metal. Some looked mysterious, like the blue crystals held in a brass orrery, with thick power cords attached to every crystal, and all aimed at a stand in the center. Some were blata
ntly magical, like a copper tank engraved in symbols with bundles of plants, teeth, and carved figurines tied to it.
Cauldrons, furnaces, tables covered with beakers and alembics hooked up with rubber hoses, stoppered bottles, oil drums, coolers, and stuff I generally associated with chemistry took up the front middle. The stuff I would actually have expected Cybermancer to have.
Cybermancer himself walked out from behind a set of shelves where screw vices pressed glowing books against currently empty canisters. He wore casual clothes, a sweater for the underground chill, and ragged jeans, almost entirely covered by an even more ragged lab coat, covered in stains and hanging down all the way to his shins. Classic mad science goggles perched in brown hair strewn wildly by the process of moving those goggles up and down. “Lucy, warn me before you bring―never mind, it’s the kids. Welcome to my laboratory, Inscrutable Machine!”
“It’s impressive,” I admitted, eyeing everything covetously.
That made Cybermancer laugh. Walking up to me, he pulled off his rubber safety gloves and shook his head. “Too much so. I used to work in a little USC chemistry lab, but Lucyfar insisted I move down here. I’ve never used three fourths of this equipment. She steals it just to show off.”
Claire pointed down a ‘corridor’ made of what looked like an automotive assembly line on one side, and a series of smelter ovens and chemical baths on the other. “What’s through that door?”
The door in question fit in with the decors we’d seen outside―dark, splintery wood studded and banded with rusty metal. Stripe after stripe of police warning tape made a spirited try to conceal the whole thing.
Thumbs hooked into coat pockets and smiling, Cybermancer explained, “Technically this place is part of the Undercity. Don’t go through that door. There’s an underground marsh of carnivorous plants on the―sorry.”
He directed the last to me. Claire and Ray hadn’t even waited for him to finish talking. They’d walked past Lucyfar heading straight for the door and I had to catch them by the collars. My minions feigned straining against that leash, arms and legs pumping.
Please Don't Tell My Parents I Have A Nemesis Page 5
