by Logan Jacobs
Personally, I didn’t understand the point of fighting supervillains if you couldn’t have a little fun.
When I’d first looked over Beacon’s suit, he’d only had very basic sensors installed in a single bright, glowing light on his chest that looked, naturally, like a ‘beacon.’ But since I always favored practical designs over flashy ones, I’d toned down the light on his chest in favor of smaller, reflective surfaces scattered across his suit. If he aimed well, he could use the reflections to blind his opponents, and that would help him in fights but also would let him stay true to his theme.
Then again, I didn’t really think that Beacon cared much about his theme, since it had been given to him by the Shadow Knight.
Beacon’s suit had been built with infrared and heat sensors embedded within, so it allowed him to sense the opponents around him. I had already upgraded his heat sensors to be able to sense motion, but I wanted to refine them now so they would be more sensitive to both heat and movement. Of course, I also didn’t want to make them so sensitive that it would create a bunch of false alerts, and that meant that the range needed to be short but effective at the same time.
“Let’s go ahead and add strength-boosting gauntlets to his suit, too,” I suggested. “It’s about time.”
“His fighting style relies more on agility than brute strength,” Aileen reminded me even as she grabbed the necessary parts.
“Yeah, but it can’t hurt as long as we still keep them lightweight.” I shrugged. “We won’t make them as powerful as Elizabeth’s or even Penumbra’s, but they’ll still boost his punches.”
I installed the gauntlets piece by piece into the gloves of his suit, but I kept Aileen’s advice in mind as I worked. Everything about Beacon’s suit needed to remain lightweight, so I used a light black metal alloy to add a sturdy coating to the wrists of his suit. It would work like a brace, but it wouldn’t weigh him down, and it would also help cut back on the shock of impact whenever his jabs landed on their marks.
I added similar alloys to the chest of his suit, particularly over his ribcage. It would probably fit him a little more snugly than before, but it was already much more protection than just the layer of spandex that the Wardens would have shoved him into.
“This is probably good for now.” I set aside the finished version of his suit. “Let’s take a look at Penumbra’s next.”
Her suit was interesting because I hadn’t outfitted any real armor for her yet, so it provided no real protection at the moment. Even though her fighting style never put her in too much danger, I knew it couldn’t hurt to give her a few defensive measures for when we went up against the Shadow Knight.
The super-strength gauntlets I’d given her were still an early prototype of the ones that I’d installed on Elizabeth’s suit, so those could probably use an upgrade, too. Of course, I didn’t want her to rely entirely on my suit to boost her powers since I wanted her to realize her own potential-- otherwise, she would never really grow or learn. So I didn’t want to add anything based around her levitation powers to the suit, but I could at least refine the gauntlets she liked to use into a more lightweight, sleek-looking design.
“That reminds me, I need to experiment with her abilities to come up with a better propulsion system for my own suit,” I told my robotic assistant.
“Would it be possible to harness her abilities yourself?” Aileen asked.
“Probably not,” I admitted. “I’d rather not cut her open to see how she ticks, but we can test some stuff out using her powers. There’s no physical remnant left behind to examine like the webs from Tarantulator and Arachne, so it’s just a little more difficult to determine where her powers come from.”
It would actually be a lot more difficult, but we didn’t have enough time to really experiment with what she was capable of yet. So for now, I’d just work on upgrading her suit, and I could run some tests on her powers later. Besides, it would probably be helpful if she was actually confident in her abilities before I tried to examine them too closely.
I installed a more powerful version of the same gauntlets that I’d installed in Beacon’s gloves using the prototypes as a base. Penumbra’s gloves would be bulkier than Beacon’s, but that couldn’t be helped since hers had more power that would flow through them.
“Soon, she may not even need these,” I said. “If she figures out that she can make her own mass more dense and heavy, she could pack a punch almost as powerful as Elizabeth’s all on her own.”
“If she can figure it out,” Aileen agreed. “I believe she still needs a bit more of a confidence boost before she will fully understand what she’s capable of. Much like Norma.”
“Come on, she has more confidence than Norma,” I laughed. “But her powers are a lot different than Norma’s, so it isn’t really fair to compare the two of them.”
Since I was already tinkering with Penumbra’s suit, I added a few bits of armor to some of her more vital zones but not in a way that would hamper her movement. She probably wouldn’t even notice the extra padding.
“Should I remove the skirt?” I asked my android assistant. “I could make it more of a leotard, like Elizabeth’s.”
“Keep the skirt,” Aileen answered. “It will make her feel like she has her own identity, instead of feeling like a knock-off of Elizabeth.”
“I do want to make their uniforms look similar,” I admitted. “Like a matching set. But I am at least going to leave her legs bare since she’s pretty good at avoiding hits, so I guess I’ll leave the skirt.”
I did have a new pair of knee-high boots for her to wear that would provide more protection than the gladiator sandals that she usually wore with her costume. I didn’t want her long, model-like legs to be completely covered, but the boots would give her a little extra protection while also still showing off some skin.
I was glad that Beacon and Penumbra’s suits were both already black, since that meant I didn’t have to start from scratch on either of them. My modifications were much easier to blend into their existing suits, and I had to admit that at least Slade had designed a decent basic suit for each of them.
He just hadn’t trusted either of them with any real gear.
“I think that’s good enough for now,” I told Aileen after a few hours had passed.
“Their suits are above satisfactory,” my android assistant agreed.
“We can continue to work on them and my own suits later.” I shrugged. “We should go let them know about Slade’s conference, since we now have a date for when we’ll be breaking into the Shadow Knight’s lair.”
“Shall I keep my physical body down here to monitor progress and make more upgrades?” Aileen asked.
“Sure,” I said. “Let me know if anything changes.”
“I will, Creator,” she replied and then went back to work on adjusting Penumbra’s suit to better fit the upgrades that I’d started.
Since Aileen had gotten a lot less pushy about joining us ever since the first test of her skin had been such a success, I left her behind and returned upstairs. When I came into the living room, I was pleased to see that Beacon had come down from his room and was now seated at the kitchen table with a plate full of sandwiches in front of him. Elizabeth sat beside him at the table and reached over to grab a sandwich for herself, Penumbra was channel-surfing on the couch, and Norma was wiping off the kitchen counter where she’d made the sandwiches.
“Good to see you moving around, Beacon,” I said as I joined him at the table and picked up a sandwich. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was, but I’d spent so long in the basement that I’d missed lunch.
“I feel a lot better,” the ex-sidekick assured me. “Norma thinks my condition has stabilized and that I’m mostly healed, so I should be ready to join you guys whenever you decide to go after Slade.”
I noticed that he still had a brace around his wrist, but that wasn’t a huge deal since I’d already accounted for that with his suit upgrades.
“Good,
because I already made upgrades to your suit,” I said, “so it’d be a waste if you didn’t come along.”
“Really?” he asked with a surprised smile. “Without me asking?”
“That’s what Miles does.” Elizabeth winked at me. “Consider it a hobby of his.”
“A useful hobby,” I added. “Everything can always be improved.”
“I think that the Shadow Knight has been using the same version of his suit since I first started as his apprentice,” Beacon laughed. “But he does love to upgrade his cars.”
“I’m sure they’re more than just cars.” Elizabeth frowned as she became all business-like again.
“Yeah, they’re way more than just cars,” Beacon said. “But, uh, you’ll probably see that when we get into his lair.”
“Do you think he’ll have already moved them all out?” I asked. “You mentioned that there weren’t as many left in the hangar the last time you were there, and that was already several days ago.”
“Maybe.” Beacon shrugged. “If he’s already moved them, then I know where he keeps his schematics and blueprints so we should still have an idea of what he’s using.”
“Good to know,” I said. “Because we know when we’re going to break into his lair now.”
That caught the attention of both Norma and Penumbra, and both women drifted over toward the kitchen table to sit down around me.
“He announced a date for his investor meeting?” Norma asked with a tilt of her head. “Already?”
“The press must have been getting to him,” I said with a self-satisfied smirk. “Thanks to me, of course. He might be able to get Optimo to save his ass as the Shadow Knight, but Dan Slade is still an easy target.”
“That reminds me,” Beacon said as he finished another one of the sandwiches. “I can speak up on your behalf to the people of Grayville, once this is all over.”
“Me, too,” Penumbra said. “We’re both pretty well-known as heroes of Grayville and as the Shadow Knight’s sidekicks, so they’ll listen to us.”
“It might not be enough to completely combat Optimo’s announcement, but it should help,” Beacon said.
“That’s a good idea, especially since I’m not planning to make the Shadow Knight’s death a public spectacle anyway,” I said, and then watched carefully for Penumbra and Beacon’s reactions when I mentioned the Shadow Knight’s death.
Penumbra flinched at the blunt mention, but Beacon was entirely focused, and I took that as a good sign. I also glanced at Elizabeth, but she was no longer phased at all by my intention to kill the Shadow Knight.
“Right, that makes sense,” Beacon said. “I mean, he’s still regarded as a hero, so you wouldn’t want the public to see you kill him.”
“Exactly, and Optimo has already made me out to be a villainous vigilante, so I’d rather not ruin my reputation further,” I sighed, because the idea of it still pissed me off.
Just because Optimo had hundreds of millions of followers didn’t mean everything he said was the truth, and it annoyed me how easily the public could be swayed. I wasn’t out for recognition or praise or anything other than to make the world a better, cleaner place, but it really annoyed me to be painted as the bad guy when I was the only one who actually gave a damn.
“Not that we would ever make our involvement public anyway,” Elizabeth added. “We didn’t do that with Mayhem.”
“We can probably figure out how to make it look like someone else was responsible for the Shadow Knight’s death,” I said. “He has a lot of other enemies, so it’s not too big of a stretch. But we can think more about that later, since we still need to figure out exactly what we’re up against.”
“Right, so when is his investor meeting?” Norma asked. “We want to go then, right?”
“Yup.” I nodded. “That’s our date, and it’s in just a few days.”
“He moves fast,” Elizabeth said as she frowned. “How much pressure did you put on him?”
“Blaming the prison explosion on Slade Industries was a stroke of genius,” I admitted. “It put him in hot water with his investors, and I just furthered that along with some social media manipulation.”
“Clever,” Beacon said as he grabbed another sandwich. “Let’s talk about our plan, then.”
“I was hoping you’d say that,” I replied. “Glad you’re on board with us.”
Penumbra had made me a little bit nervous that Beacon wouldn’t be immediately on board with the idea to sneak into the Shadow Knight’s lair, but as I caught Penumbra’s eye, she blushed and looked away, and I knew that she must feel relief that she had been wrong about Beacon.
“You’ll need me to come along to guide you to the entrance of his lair while we avoid all the traps on the way,” Beacon said. “It’s the Shadow Knight, so it’s nothing too lethal, but there’s a lot of knock-out gas and a variety of other nasty ways to capture invaders without technically killing them.”
“I’m sure I’ve seen much worse.” I glanced at Norma with a knowing smile that made her flush with pleasure.
“It’s also in the middle of a lake, so we’ll need to approach from a certain angle so we don’t get caught on his surveillance systems,” Beacon continued. “Unless it doesn’t matter if he knows we were there after the fact?”
“We don’t want him to know how prepared we are,” I replied. “It’s not the end of the world if he knows we were there, but I’d prefer if he didn’t.”
“He’ll also leave the investor meeting early if he knows we’re there, won’t he?” Norma asked.
“That depends on how angry his investors are,” I laughed. “He can’t afford to let his company tank, so he can’t just leave, no matter how urgent it is. Especially if he can’t come up with a good enough excuse.”
“He probably has one of those prepared, just in case,” Beacon said. “But you’re right, he can’t afford to make them angrier at him and risk letting his company go under.”
“So he’s trapped.” Elizabeth nodded. “That will give us time to go through his lair even if we don’t make a perfect entrance.”
“I would prefer if we sneak in undetected, but yes, it’s a good contingency plan just in case.” I didn’t expect anything to go wrong with my original plan, but it never hurt to have thought about all our options in advance.
“I also have a code that we could use to get in,” Beacon said.
“There’s no way it still works,” Penumbra sighed. “It’s already a different code than the one he gave me.”
“You’re probably right,” he said with a shrug. “But maybe it’s worth a shot?”
“We have no need for it, since Aileen still retains quantum supremacy over his AI.” I smirked since I was always glad to brag about my android creation. “She can get us inside.”
“Then the rest is easy,” Beacon said. “But Slade is pretty paranoid, so we shouldn’t relax even once we get inside.”
“I figured as much,” I said.
I fully expected Slade to have rigged his base with multiple self-destruct switches in case of emergency, and he might even be able to activate one remotely, so that was another reason why I really didn’t want him to discover we were in his lair. I didn’t think he was above destroying his entire base to try and keep us away from his information, even if it was a massive sacrifice for him. Still, if we were careful and followed Beacon’s advice, we should be able to avoid anything like that.
“So we’re all in, right?” I glanced across the table at Penumbra.
“I’m in,” Norma said immediately.
“Me, too,” Elizabeth growled.
“Okay,” Penumbra sighed. “Me, too.”
“Your powers will be useful if we want to take anything that belongs to him out of his base,” I told her. “So you’ll probably be more useful than all the rest of us while we’re there.”
“It’ll be okay,” Beacon tried to reassure her.
“I know, I know, he won’t be there.” Penumbra shook her h
ead. “I’m all-in on this, okay? I can handle it.”
The fact that she sounded offended at the idea that we’d doubted her was probably a good sign that she was growing into a more confident woman, and I was glad to hear her say that she could handle returning to the lair of her abusive mentor.
“Then we’ll take the next several days to prepare and go over what Beacon knows about the security system,” I said. “And I’ll make sure that we’re properly outfitted to sneak undetected into his lair. It will require a lot of coordination on all of our parts, so I expect all of you to fully understand the plan before we leave.”
The others around the table all nodded, and I let the conversation drift away from the Shadow Knight’s lair for now since I knew it wouldn’t be long before we could finally put my plan into action.
Then, all of the Shadow Knight’s secrets would be mine.
Chapter 11
The day of Slade’s press conference and investor meeting had finally arrived.
My preparations and plan to break into the Shadow Knight’s lair were plotted down to the last detail, and I had certainly been glad for Beacon’s help since he knew the specifics of how Slade’s security system worked. Although we both agreed that Slade had probably changed up his security since the last time Beacon was there, it gave me a good base to build the rest of my plans on top of.
Beacon considered the entrance to the Shadow Knight’s lair to be the most difficult part of our raid, but I knew otherwise.
I knew that the difficult part would be how to find all the secrets hidden so deep inside Slade’s lair that he’d never even shown them to Beacon.
The suit that I’d chosen to wear for this endeavor was more lightweight than my usual one, since I didn’t expect too much trouble. I fully expected that we would be able to get out of there before Slade arrived, so I didn’t need to be fully suited for a fight. Instead, I wore my older, bulletproof fabric version of my helmet in place of my new metal one with the horns just to keep myself under the radar a bit more. I had also removed my gauntlets and replaced them with regular gloves for this trip, so I could have the dexterity I needed to type quickly on Slade’s computer systems in case I needed to deactivate more of his security systems once we were inside.
