Secrets of a D-List Supervillain (7 page)

“So, if we were a math equation, I’m a constant and you’re the variable.”

Tilting her head slightly she brushes her lips against mine. “I suppose, and I was trying to solve for you and make you seven when you were always an irrational number.”

“Pi,” I say. “If I’m an irrational number, I want to be Pi. Who doesn’t like Pi?”

Laughing now, she shakes her head. “Whatever you want, Cal. I can do Pi.”

She recognizes her mistake by the look on my face. “Oh, for crying out loud! What are you? Thirteen?”

“You already did Pi!” I exclaim, through my own chuckles.

“Grow up,” she says, without any real malice behind the words.

I point an accusing finger at her and say, “Wait. You just said you hope I never change, and not five seconds later, you’re telling me to change. If anyone’s the irrational number here, I think it’s you.”

We kiss a few more times and my promise to not do anything with Stacy while I’m minding my daughter becomes more optional by each passing second. After all, the little maniac has probably another hour left on her nap. Just as things start to get serious, the buzzer goes off to inform me that someone’s on the elevator. A glance at the monitor shows Larry and Bobby coming back from fishing. Larry has a string of fish and Bobby has two, and looks perturbed. I can already tell that this is going to be one of those “he was using his mind powers on the fish again” arguments.

“Foiled again,” I say, and push the Olympian back a few inches.

As the lift doors open, I heard Bobby complaining, “You might’ve caught one of those by yourself!”

Larry just shrugs and floats his string of fish toward the kitchen. “When are you going to admit, I’m just better at this than you? If I was using my powers, I could pull every fish from that pond.”

“I still think you’re a cheater!” Bobby proclaims. “Cal? Can you make something that’ll tell me if Larry is using his mind stuff when we’re fishing?”

“Don’t drag me into this!” I protest. “I could probably rig up something, but that’d take me away from all the other things I’m supposed to be doing. Andy is still on my case about building him a better body.”

Extraordinary Larry shakes his head and says, “Go ahead and build one when you get the chance, Cal. I’d really like to see the look on his face when he realizes I’m that much better with a rod and reel than he is.”

Sighing, I tell them I’ll put it on my list of shit I’ll probably never get to, and we all laugh as I pop the top on a can of cola.

“Anybody hungry?” Larry asks. “I figured I’d go ahead and fry up a few before I inflict more damage on Bobby’s ego when I spank him at Superhero Showdown.”

“Maybe later,” Stacy answers. “We ate just a little while ago. Although I wish I could get my hands on some pie right about now.”

I about choke on the pop I am swallowing.
The wench just got me good!

Sputtering, I try desperately to reclaim my coolness, or look less like an idiot. The carbonation burns my nostrils like the fires of Hell.

When I can speak again, I point at her and change the subject. “You should see Stacy play. How about we grab two more controllers, and me and her wipe the floor with you two losers.”

Both men immediately forget the dispute about fishing, because that was trivial. I’d just thrown down the gauntlet and shit was about to get real!

“Robert, my good man?”

Oh boy! Here comes the gloating.

“Yes, Lawrence?”

“If I recall correctly, one of our recent victims said, and I quote, ‘Between my tactical genius and her phenomenal reflexes, we are going to take you losers to school!’ Or, at least, something to that effect. Is that what you recall?”

“Sure as shit, I do!” Bobby said, abandoning his fake accent. “I’m pretty sure we kicked their little asses!”

“Indeed, we did,” Larry drawled, now sounding like a professional wrestler doing his act. “A quick check at the final score, and it looks like the school bell is going to toll for them!”

I might not like to use the F word, but my middle finger is fully functional. Clearly, I am taking the loss harder than the Love Goddess. Then again, she doesn’t live with these two buttmunchers.

“Watch the language,” I admonish and point at the squirming child in my lap. Gabby’s imitation of a howler monkey proclaimed to the world that she had finished her nap. It either spoiled our magnificent comeback, or put us out of our misery, depending on your perspective.

“Like her mother watches her mouth?” Bobby retorts, with a sly grin. He has a valid point. When Wendy stopped trying to be “Little Miss Perfect,” she decided to go all the way. Most young women her age rebel and get tattoos and piercings, start sleeping with the wrong guys, and get knocked... never mind, the last two sort of fit. Our little wild child took the job of leading a rogue team of the most powerful individuals on the planet. It’s laughable that I’m even part of this, but I’ve come a long way from the guy who first laid eyes on this cave and considered going back to prison as a better option.

I answer Hillbilly Bobby by defending my daughter’s mother, “Well, running an unsanctioned super team, and flaunting it in front of her politically ambitious father as well as her hero mentor, carries a certain amount of stress. I say give her some leeway.”

Stacy agrees, “There’s a big rift between her and Bolt Action right now. I’ve never seen him that angry. Her father is probably the only one more pissed right now.”

“Honestly,” I say, and look at the woman beside me. “In every sim I’ve run, Wendy takes Bolt Action and I’m pretty sure the head of the East Coast Guardians already knows he wouldn’t win. As for the not-so good Senator, he’s used my book as an excuse to justify his little personal power grab. If it were up to me, I wouldn’t mind finding out what his Manglermal form would be. My guess is a weasel.”

The law of unintended consequences can be a foul tempered bitch.

“He would have found another way,” Stacy says and leans forward to make faces at Gabby, providing a stark contrast to her words. “Senator Laguardia wants to be in control as much as the Overlord. He’s just going to try and do it from inside the system rather than conquer it.”

“I’m guessing that’s part of the reason why Athena and Hera want to recruit us. Get us to toe Uncle Sam’s line?”

She gives me a look with those beautiful eyes of hers. “I already know your answer, Cal. You’re not going back.”

“It’ll be a cold day in hell before I let them watch over me!” Larry says, interrupting whatever I was about to say.

“Damned straight, that ain’t gonna happen!” I say to reassure him. My problems aren’t really with Uncle Sam, but rather the superheroes who jacked me over. Larry, on the other hand, has an ax to grind. The government gave up on trying to help him and focused on containment and getting what they could out of him. Somewhere out there were five children by the four volunteers or actresses who had played his high school sweethearts during each of his “resets.” It’s a safe bet that some three letter agency out there is running their own little improved human program.

As his memories of all his lost time returned, I found him out in the nearby woods, yanking pine trees out of the ground with his mind, with no more effort than I’d expend pulling a weed, and grinding them into pulp.

I don’t ever plan on getting on his bad side. If he ever decides to go on a rampage, I’ll either get out of his way or, more likely, join in.

“Hey, Stacy,” I say, figuring the conversation is headed in a darker direction. “I guess I’m up to the point in the story where I tell you about convincing Chain Charmer to loan me the necklace. My only question is can you handle the excitement of an obligatory super powered team up?”

“You didn’t have to sleep with him?” Bobby interjects.

“No!” I shoot back, and use my head to gesture at Ms. Mitchell. “Hello? I go that way.”

“I guess,” the big man replies. “But suppose the only way he would give you that necklace was if you would sleep with him. Would you do it?”

“Why are you even asking me this?”

Larry jumps in. “Now I’m curious as well.”

Glancing at Stacy for some help, I see she is fighting pretty hard not to laugh. Annoyed, I say, “To be perfectly honest, Jin never showed any interest in me. Let’s just leave it at that.”

“Not a chance, Strings! You’re all the time saying how Andy is your best friend in the whole wide world. So I just want to know how far you’d be willing to go!”

“I am so not answering that question,” I declare the matter finished.

Naturally, Bobby has other ideas. He nudges Larry with his elbow and says, “He would’ve done it!”

Larry concurs, as I consider going to get my suit and killing the two of them.

“Based on all available facts,” a new voice says, and we all turn to see Andydroid reaching the top of the stairs. “There is an eighty-seven point three six percent likelihood that Calvin would have complied with such a request.”

“
Et tu, Brutus?
” I ask

Andy does the mechanical equivalent of shrugging his shoulders and replies, “There is no malice in my assessment of the given scenario. Given your circumstances at that point in time, and that you hoped that accessing the reptilian magic would provide you with a weapon to use against your nemesis, it is the most likely outcome to that hypothetical situation.”

“It’s bad enough when I have to take this crap from these two butt nuggets, but you don’t have to help them.”

With no hint of emotion in his delivery, my mechanical
compadre
dismisses my comment. “Engaging in rampant speculation is one of the traits that separate the human race from the rest of the creatures who inhabit this planet. Of course, one of the principles my creator endowed me with was to seek out a greater understanding of humanity. By interjecting my analysis and participating in this conjecture, I have come one step closer to reaching that goal.”

Knowing Andydroid as I do, I am pretty sure that he is screwing with me. Sometimes he has a childlike curiosity to his actions. Last year, during the holidays, we watched
National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation
several times. Shortly afterward, Andy pushed Bobby down the stairs. The strongman was plenty angry, but Andy said that he knew the fall would not be sufficient to injure Bobby and that he wished to gather real-world data on the humorous effects of physical comedy.

I can’t say I was pleased six hours later when he dumped a bucket of ice water on my head, so I could see where Bobby was coming from.

“I think your calculations are off, Andy,” I say.

“Doubtful,” he answers. “You entered into a business relationship with a known criminal organization in order to build your next powersuit. A singular same-sex encounter carries a significantly lower level of risk than your actual actions. Therefore, my margin of error is less than five percent. Now, considering we have identified each other as being best friends, I will offer you a suggestion that you proceed with the retelling of the events that transpired, rather than invite further speculation on this matter.”

“I think he just told you to quit while you are ahead,” a red-faced Larry says, and pounds the armrest of the couch with his fist.

Bobby, the instigator of all this, is obviously amused. “Who says Cal was ahead?”

Stacy gives up on trying not to laugh, and I realize all is lost.

For my parting shot, I say, “You guys suck!” Then I start into the story before this gets any worse.

• • •

Flying a hoversled wasn’t my specialty. I was a little shaky at it and wouldn’t be doing any riding stunts anytime soon. I liked my jetpacks and my armor better, but after being shot in the arm, I shelved the jetpack in favor of using the weight for a stronger force field. It reminded me of that two week period in my life, just after I got my first paycheck from Promethia, when I was determined to master riding a motorcycle—or how I ended up with road rash, a cast on my leg, and selling my bike for less than I paid for it.

Chain Charmer was a natural at it, and made operating one look easy. He gave me a disgusted look and said, “Try to keep up.”

Sheila hadn’t been impressed by my injury while stopping some bank robbers, or that I’d killed one of them. Unlike the rest, I wasn’t impervious to small arms fire, didn’t have unbreakable magic chains that I could use as a shield, or the ability to fire streams of paralyzing goop that extrudes from my skin. So what if I killed one of the robbers in the process? They were the ones who brought automatic weapons to a force blaster fight.

Resisting my urge to be a smartass was difficult, but I was trying to keep my eyes on the prize. I needed to be... nice. For me, that was probably going to be more difficult than flying this piece of crap. Maybe it was because my first encounter with this technology was when I intentionally killed for the first time. I also saw how easily these things exploded and dropped from the sky.

It wasn’t very comforting.

Our hoversleds hadn’t been upgraded to the newer models, so the best they could manage was still one hundred and twenty miles per hour. It was funny how the other three Guardian teams got the better gear first—the trickle-down theory, as it applied to super heroics if you ask me. We were headed for Waco where there were reports of some villains running around causing problems.

To make matters worse, I’d had dealings with both of them in the past. Blazing She-Clops used to buy weapons from my catalog. Jeannie Richey De Gruccio shot explosive bolts from her remaining eye. The lost eye came from trying to escape Graham Adzima and his discs. They were struggling, and she tried to blow his head off. The Dynamic Discus’ energy absorbing and reflective abilities saved his life and made a terrible mess.

Her lackey was an old block mate during my stint in prison. The Passive-Aggressive Menace was decent to be around at select times. Dave Evans was twice as strong as Hillbilly Bobby and only about a tenth as sane. He was one of my more interesting students in the engineering course they let me teach. Every few minutes he’d switch from a shy introverted big man into a borderline lunatic—not too much middle ground there.

My thoughts went back to that lecture where I’d discussed how hard the Menace had to hit the Biloxi Bugler to splatter his brains everywhere. Even my increased shielding seemed dubious against his strength, but I wasn’t certain whether I should try to take him on, or pick a fight with a woman who could look at me the wrong way and blow me to pieces.

I was under no illusions. I was backing up Chain Charmer and not the other way around. Given a choice between having Stacy back or my suit at that moment, I was pretty sure that I’d take the hardware.

A backrub
, I thought two hours later to relieve my boredom.
I’d trade my suit and Stacy for a good backrub.
Toting around all that extra weight was murder on my neck and lower back. Maybe the Bulger was right all those times I’d told him to get some armor. Without synthmuscle this was more irritating than ever, and I realized that I should have packed the gear into a bag and put it on when we got to Texas.

Unlike a regular patrol where we circled around a general area and listen for emergencies that we could assist with, this requires us to go and meet up with the local police and coordinate our actions with them. It wasn’t anything like my villain days where I could just show up, blow open a wall or a safe, grab the goods and make a getaway.

Sure, I’d been through this song and dance before when I had my suit, but this time it was much more tedious. I couldn’t simply switch over and watch funny videos on the internet while one of the others hashed out the details. Instead, I kept my eyes on the scooter’s autopilot and watched Jin using his chain link appendages as arms while the rest of him was in an animated conference call with the state, local, and federal agencies.

Look at me! I can multitask! Oh wait, he’s pointing at me. Better see what he wants.

Switching over to the conference call frequency, I hear Jin introduce me. “I thought Stringel was already online, but he’s joined us now. Do you have any insight as to why She-clops and the Menace would be in Waco?”

What do you know? I’m the resident expert on the criminal mind.

“Well, bank jobs are always high on the list. It is college football season, so which major school is there... Texas Tech? No, that’s not right.”

“Baylor,” someone supplies, sounding annoyed. I was annoyed too. If I’d had my suit, I could have easily pulled it up. The LCD screen in the middle of the panel wasn’t situated where I wanted it and the controls were awkward to use.