Wearing The Cape: Villains Inc. (37 page)

“Delicious,” he said, in that nails-on-chalkboard voice. “You’ll be delicious.” His skin began to blacken and smoke, and my singing euphoria fled, leaving me cold.

“
No
,” I said. “No. You’re
served
.” Then he hit me.

I got the maul up, but the hit drove it back into me, throwing me down through the gas station’s weather-roof onto another pump. I lost the
maul
.

At least I’m keeping him in one spot
.

Scrambling dazedly, I got to my feet before he hit me again, hammering me into the ground. I twisted and rolled, throwing us through the corner of the station in an explosion of concrete blocks and glass. Free, I hit the smoking nightmare with a stricken Chrysler, sweeping him out into the street, and dove for the
maul
.

I grabbed it as he grabbed me and
squeezed
. My armor creaked, but it was like he’d forgotten I was wearing it.

“
Astra
,” Lei
Zi
shouted in my ear. “
Take him up and look west
!”

Okay… I tried to find
west
; it felt like any second he was going to crush my torso armor like a beer can, and then I wasn’t going to be able to breathe. My takeoff surprised him, and I pulled us around, away from the Lake.

“
Brace for incomin
g
!
” Shelly cried. Shelly?

I braced, and heard the missiles before they hit. One missed and auto-destructed ahead of me as the others caught us from behind, the fireball surrounding us. Villain-X took every hit and let go to fall, stunned. I reeled, thrown end over end till I didn’t know where the sky was.

“
I
said
brace
!” Shelly complained as I spun in the air, trying to find her.

And there she was, so
not
Robotica
. Okay,
Robotica
if you welded shoulder-launchers and hip-launchers onto her, covered her in molded tank armor, and put her in huge rocket-boots. Even her forearms were Popeye-huge to make room for weapon systems. In the middle of it all, her robot-head looked tiny.

She launched another volley of missiles, smoke-trails twisting like demented snakes as they bore in on Villain-X and blew him to the ground—right into the gas station entry. Which blew up.

“Oops,” she said as the fireball climbed.

“
Oops
?” I dove to catch the flying weather-roof before it came down on an apartment block, tossing it into the street before dropping down to find my dance partner.

He found me, rising out of the fire, his black jumpsuit shredded and burning and his unhandsome face made demonic by glowing eyes and bared teeth. He screamed as he climbed. Above me Shelly launched another volley, but I’d had enough; he took Ajax’ maul right between his eyes. Shelly’s smart-missiles swarmed around and past me, reaching out to hammer him as he fell to crater the street.

Atlas
wouldn’t have stood up after that, but somehow he got to his feet. “You can’t—”

I hit him, maul first, driving him so deep we shattered water mains and collapsed the street into the flood tunnels below. This time he stayed down, steaming as the water sprayed over us. I stood, panting almost hysterically.

“
Astra?
” Rush queried. “
We’ve got restraints.
..”

I nodded, gasping, then remembered to speak. “Bring them down,” I said. “He’s safe for now. Blackstone?”

“
Yes, my dear?
”

Between quick breaths I explained what Fisher had shown me while a blur that
might
have been Rush twisted our unconscious man into a titanium-wrapped hogtie. “
Hang on
,” Blackstone said before I’d half-finished. “
Chakra and I are coming out
.”

“But—”

They appeared in a puff of white smoke as Shelly and the team floater touched down behind them, Lei
Zi
, Seven, The Harlequin, and Riptide piling out. Shelly locked multiple laser-sights on Villain-X, and Blackstone and Chakra carefully climbed down into the crater while
Variforce
went to work laying a smothering cover of translucent golden force over the gas fire and Riptide directed water from the broken main to douse the secondary fires.

Chakra calmly knelt beside our fallen villain while Blackstone stood ready to vanish with her at the slightest hint of danger. She touched Villain-X’s forehead and her eyes widened. “He really is burning up inside,” she said. “If he were a normal person he’d be dead now.”

“Can you save him?” Blackstone asked.

She looked up. “It’s a different brand of magic, but if I can clear his chakras it might end the possession.”

“Do it. We need him alive.”

She put her hands on his temples and began a rolling chant, and he instantly relaxed into what I knew from experience was a coma-like sleep. I turned my back and climbed out of the hole.

Around me, Lei
Zi
organized the rest of the team to secure the area, assisted by multiple blurs. Rush, Crash, Sprints, and
Sifu
?
 
Sprints was an obvious call-in from the South Side Guardians, but Master Li? He’d left the Army when service in China had tipped his Buddhism into pacifism; just how bad had things really gotten while I was gone?

Quin
examined victims our speedsters hadn’t been able to get out of the way in time. Not many, thank God, and no fatalities. Nobody had been between us and the tree when the car flipped, and Chicagoans knew how to clear a street like nobody’s business. Customers in the stores had evacuated through the back and down the service alleys if the establishments didn’t have their own downstairs shelters.

My feet took me back up the ruined street, back to Fisher’s car, upside down, windows gone, bent in half where it lay by the tree.
Sorry, Fisher—I’m sorry
. Amazingly, his pack of smokes had been thrown clear, lying intact by the shattered driver-side windows. I bent down and picked it up.

“Kid? Could you give me that? And give me a hand?”

Of
course
I screamed.

Contrary to public perception, the Atlas-types, Ajax-types, and other superhumanly strong and durable breakthroughs, do not pose the greatest danger to national security. By far the gravest threat is posed by breakthroughs capable of unrestricted mobility, able to cross national borders undetected.
Shapeshifters
,
teleporters
, force projectors, and others who can avoid detection or interception can deliver an assassin’s bullet, a, bomb, or a weapon of mass destruction to the most secure target, and are therefore capable of doing much more damage than even the strongest Atlas-type breakthrough.

Department of Superhuman Affairs, Threat Assessment 10.4, Summary.

I got Fisher out of his car before the police and
newsies
arrived. He lit up a cig and
then
looked himself over. His suit jacket was thrashed, out at the shoulders so that padding stuck out, sliced by glass and ripped by the pulling I did getting him out, and he didn’t have a speck of blood on him. His hair was mussed.

I’d seen him crushed into his backseat by a flying iron mailbox, and his
hair
was mussed! How could I have forgotten about the weird moment at the Mercedes dealership? Or his not-real history?

He winked at me. “Later, kid? After we deal with what’s in front of us?”

I nodded reluctantly, listening to the approaching sirens as Shelly clumped over.

“Shouldn’t you be guarding Villain-X?” I asked.

“I’ve got a tag on him,” she said cheerfully. “If he twitches, Blackstone can get Chakra out before I double-tap him again.” She turned to Fisher.

“Hi, I’m Galatea.”

“You’re taller.”

“I’m Galatea 2.0, with heavy combat accessories. We got tired of watching Astra get beat up. Seriously.”

“Hey!” I protested.

Fisher laughed and dropped his smoke, rubbing it out with his foot. “If you girls will excuse me, I’ve got to go and stake out my jurisdiction.” He crossed to where a black
paddywagon
with DSA markings had pulled up, blue siren-lights flashing.

I blinked when the DSA agents piled out; they were all Platoons in
visored
helmets and body armor.

“Are you alright?” Shelly asked in a lower voice. I smiled up at her and knocked on my
cuirass
. “It worked like a charm, one more thing to thank Vulcan for. Why didn’t you tell me you were up?”

“I wasn’t until maybe five minutes ago—I was still hooked into a simulator learning how to use everything. Having nearly infinite computation-cycles helps.”

“So this is you, now?” She was seven feet of blue and white metal; with all the launcher packs, she’d need to turn sideways to squeeze through any door.

“Plus a couple of layers, yeah.”

“Well, smile for the cameras.”

The police kept the
newsies
back until the paramedics had removed everyone who needed a ride to the hospital and The Harlequin could make a statement. The Crew actually arrived right behind the emergency vehicles—another sign that things were getting bad. Gantry, Mr. Ludlow, waved at me as he headed for the gas station with a huge widget, obviously ready to plug the leaking underground tank.

Fisher left with Villain-X in the DSA wagon (Chakra kept him from spontaneously combusting) and Shelly-Galatea asked me for a lift back to the Dome to save wear on her boot-jets; grips in her shoulder pieces let me fly with her the way Atlas used to carry Ajax into a fight.
 
Lei
Zi
cleared us and we caught a lot of camera-flash as we lifted off.

“So?” she asked as we gained altitude and turned east. “Did I rock?”

I sighed. “Power Chick and Awesome Girl, together again, and I can’t believe we ever used those names.”

“Yes! Cause it’s been, you know, so
fun
riding along to watch you get kicked by everything that came by.”

Wait, what? Hadn’t she been cheering me on?

“So now I can really mess them up for you!” she gushed.

Oh God
. A grade-school flashback of a huge grin under a bloody nose nearly paralyzed me.

“Shell…” I said carefully. “This isn’t third grade and you can’t fight for me anymore. You know that, right?”

“Yup,” she laughed, cheer undiminished as we descended on the Dome. “But I’ve got your back now.”

We dropped into the load bay and the ceiling closed. I let go and she landed with bent knees, clumping over to a rack that hadn’t been there before. Robot-
waldoes
cranked out and started peeling.

“Besides,” she said as launchers and boot-jets and armor pieces retracted onto the rack. “That was just my battle-configuration.” I stared as a smaller Galatea emerged. Stepping out, she pulled off the helmet I’d thought was her
head
and red hair spilled down. She laughed, green eyes sparkling, and she was
Shelly
in seriously form-fitting body armor. Tucking her helmet under her arm, she grabbed my hand, still taller than me but not by much. “Didn’t I say you should trust me? Well?”