Origins of a D-List Supervillain (14 page)

That explained why General Devious, or Elaine Davros as she’d been known before, eventually murdered Lazarus Patterson’s father. In retribution, Lazarus had shattered her spine with his prototype powersuit. They had created Maxine just as they created me. In a strange and twisted way, that sort of made us kin, at least in spirit. She appeared to genuinely believe the story she just told me, but, having been raised by one of the most notorious liars in recent, or perhaps all of history, I took it with a healthy dose of skepticism.

Think about this too long, Cal, and it will give you a headache!

I didn’t need any further convincing. “Okay, I’m in. I’ll start working on it right away, but I want the C cell up front.”

Maxine agreed and said she’d have it delivered to the storage locker in three days. I sat down and thought, after she left, and didn’t even work on the suit. The more I considered it, the more I didn’t mind Maxine killing off Lazarus with my assistance. Sure, I’d like to put the pompous ass out of everyone’s misery, but if I did that, I’d be a marked man. Every hero in North America and others around the globe would be out for my blood. Even this hole probably wouldn’t be deep enough for me to hide in forever. Max V, on the other hand, was a top tier villain and had her aunt’s organization at her disposal. She’d have a better shot of weathering that shit-storm.

Besides, there was always F. Randall Barton. He’d make an acceptable consolation prize and wouldn’t be nearly as dangerous.

Getting others to do your dirty work should be a villain’s motto,
I thought and concluded that I would be better off letting Ms. Fast and Homicidal do the heavy lifting.

Spreading out the original blueprints, I began following the paths around the flight system. The flight system was considered sacred during all of the design meetings I’d been forced to attend. It was one of the few things besides the synthmuscle that Lazarus had actually done himself. One of the first things Joe Ducie had told me was to, “never mess with the flight system.” Chances were that the one in his current suit wasn’t that different from what I was looking at right now.

Familiarity breeds contempt, or that’s how the saying goes.

When it came to Promethia, I had lots of contempt built up.

• • •

There was a nervous, jittery feeling as I triggered the mechanism and slid the larger and more capable powercell into the cradle. A whine came from the connectors as they screwed down onto the ends. The shielded plate on my stomach retracted and locked into place and the meter surged from the red level up into the green.

Yeah, boy! It’s on now!
I thought.

For the first time since I calibrated the power systems, NOMINAL flashed on the bottom right corner of my heads up display and I resisted the urge to break out into that one Muppet song that sounded like that word.

Aloud, I said, “It’s really a powersuit and not a really slow jet pack with a forty-two minute flight range!”

Sure, it didn’t move with the grace and speed of Patterson’s and there was still plenty for me to do to it, but I wasn’t just Cal Stringel anymore. I was much more than just ManaCALes. I’d given plenty of thought to what I should be called when I’m wearing it.

I am Mechani-CAL!

Bobby rounded the corner into my workshop and bedroom, “Cal! You gotta come see this.”

“What’s up?” I asked, enjoying the digitized sound of my voice coming from behind the helmet. It was a little too loud; I’d have to adjust that later.

“It’s Maxine,” he said. “They’ve got her on the TV.”

I ambled after him to the big screen in Central Command. A pair of talking heads was at the studio desk, with an inset of a chopper circling over a cluster of buildings and three more with other idiot know-it-alls in them.

“...still following the action. So far what we can tell you is that the high speed supervillain Maxine Velocity has taken several Promethia employees hostage inside the industrial park and is demanding only one thing, that Ultraweapon come and face her.”

The anchor at the news desk nodded and tried to sound grim. “Do we have any word about the condition of the hostages, Lori?”

“No, Dan, we don’t,”
the traffic lady answered the obvious question. It’s not like Max V would contact the helicopter.

“Thank you, Lori. Let’s bring in Doctor Yun Lee, our superhuman expert. Dr. Lee, thank you for joining us on such short notice. What do you make of the situation?”

The Asian doctor, known for his encyclopedic knowledge of heroes and villains steepled his hands before saying, “Without demands for money or anything other than facing Lazarus Patterson in combat, we can only surmise that today is about humiliation or perhaps even misdirection. She did not stipulate that he appear without his armor, so she must clearly want a fight.”

“But is it a trap?” the female co-anchor asked and I wondered where they got these people.

“It depends on how much thought Maxine Velocity has put in to her plan. She has shown time and again to be rash and impulsive, so this may be a spur of the moment attack or a carefully laid trap.”

“Way to hedge your bets there, Doctor,” I said, scoffing at the image on the screen.

“They sure do repeat themselves a lot,” Bobby added, while they turned to their next expert, an associate editor at
Superhero Weekly.

“Of course the last time someone tried to trick Lazarus Patterson into coming without his armor, it turned out to be Ultraweapon’s teammate Rakashsi, the shape changing Buddhist monk, so Maxine would probably anticipate such tactics.”

“How can her super speed be used against Lazarus Patterson?”

“I’m not entirely sure, but one possibility Doctor Lee just mentioned is that she’s fast enough to get away. She may be working with someone else, and luring Ultraweapon into a confrontation guarantees that they know where he will be. This whole thing could be just to get Ultraweapon away from their real target.”

They continued to debate back and forth for several minutes, and I was about to tell Bobby to come get me when the action started, when the windbag in the anchor chair, said, “I’m getting word that Ultraweapon is approaching the hostage situation.”

The inset with the traffic copter’s view expanded. In the distance, I could see the tiny streak of something flying through the air—Ultraweapon. Naturally, he was heading directly for the chopper to ensure he got his promo shot.

“Kelly, you’ve been close to Ultraweapon in the past, what must be going through his mind right now?”

Considering the co-anchor was blonde and attractive, I had little doubt as to what she might have been doing in such close proximity to my former boss. Odds were that her interviews were conducted when she was flat on her back.

She seemed a bit startled by the question, but hid her blush well. Clearing her throat she said, “Lazarus is a phenomenal multitasker. He is probably evaluating three different ways to take her on, as he approaches.”

I knew those attack plans were being generated by the ATAI database and he wasn’t nearly as great as she made him out to be. Still, even I had to admit that he could think on the fly.

He’s a world class douchebag, but he does actually have to run the suit.
Given all my minor mishaps, I had a new appreciation for just how much work went into that.

Ultraweapon sent a series of bolts from his force blasters, which was really just gauging Maxine’s ability to compensate and react.

“C’mon, Max!” I shouted. “He’s calibrating his targeting system for your speed.”

Maxine burned through two of my pulse pistols sending a barrage of energy against his flaring shields.

“I’m concerned about that object on Max V’s belt,” Doctor Lee spoke over the action. “Can we get a close up of it?”

The producers of the show struggled to comply and they focused on the item strapped securely to her belt. My latest invention was on national TV. It was black, about the size of a cantaloupe that had been cut in half, and I said a quick prayer for my ass if it didn’t work, because I knew Maxine would have my sorry behind.

I tried to tune out the commentators and focus on the action. Ultraweapon scattered his fire, allowing his targeting system the opportunity to predict where she might be next. So far, Maxine continued to give as good as she got; hitting him repeatedly with the pistols I built for her. At some point, Patterson would have to land to take the strain off his systems. Running flight, shooting weapons, and absorbing damage with his force field generators took a toll on his personal power grid. My guestimate, based on what I knew of his armor, was five minutes for his old suit. How long he let this go on would tell me how much more efficient his platform had become, and give me something to measure my suit against.

Sadly, I knew my suit could go “all out” for a whopping two minutes and thirty seconds under the hoops Max V was making him jump through, and I was still nowhere near as comfortable flying in the suit. The bastard made it look easy!

To be certain, I was pulling for Maxine Velocity to take him out, but I had that sinking feeling in my gut that it wouldn’t happen. Lazarus was a sneaky piece of work. I told her if she gets him and thinks he is dead, to go a little overboard to make damned sure he wasn’t just faking it.

It’s what I would do, given half a chance. Too many times his opponents had thought they’d finished him, only to be proven wrong.

Maxine disappeared behind a series of shipping containers and came out on the other side with a shoulder launched Stinger missile and fired it right at him. Clearly, she’d brought along some heavy artillery.

Ultraweapon’s energy pulse detonated it, but the shockwave bounced both of them around a bit and he dropped from the sky. Immediately, he fired his weapons into the asphalt surrounding them, sending chunks of pavement flying in her direction. It also made her path to him more rugged and difficult to cross. It was a good strategy to slow Maxine down.

Not one to be deterred, Maxine circled and sent a steady stream of beam energy from what must have been her ninth and tenth pistols. From the satchel strapped across her back, she produced a series of grenades and tossed them at the besieged buffoon. They exploded in a sea of blinding light and thunder—a dozen flash bangs mixed with several standard fragmentations lit up the battlefield.

Patterson tried pulling a runner right there, and fly away, but Maxine was ready for him. She stopped right behind him, yanked my device off her belt, and slammed the flat side of the hemisphere just above his attached jetpack, where the control circuitry for his flight system should still be.

It was a moment of truth as the Stringel “Chilly Pimple” (patent pending) sent a burst of liquid nitrogen fueled cold in a six-inch wide circle. Realistically, Ultraweapon’s fuel lines were too insulated for my weapon to freeze the lines, but the temperature monitoring system wasn’t protected nearly as well. The device didn’t have to cause a blockage; instead it needed only to trick the failsafe mechanism into thinking the lines were clogged. Automatically, the flight system would go offline for no less than ninety seconds while the pumps recirculated his fuel to clear something that wasn’t actually there.

Good old Lazarus had his takeoff aborted and he dropped back onto the rubble in a rather undignified heap. I smacked my gauntlets together and gave myself a mental pat on the back for the success of the Chilly Pimple.
Way to stick it to the man, Cal!

While I was making my internal victory lap, Max V wasted no time and emptied two more pistols before diving back into the alley separating two of the buildings, and returning with the first two of her Boomrings—made from a circular detonator wrapped in a layer of C4 explosive. Like some psychotic carnival gamer, Maxine played the most deadly game of ring toss ever imagined. Her first attempt missed and she detonated it next to Patterson, tossing the so-called hero into the side of the shipping container. Her next attempt was snatched out of the air, but before Ultraweapon could hurl it away, she blew it up as well.

C’mon, Maxine, finish him!

With the symbol of everything wrong in my life dashed to the ground and struggling to rise, the blue streak of the woman who may or may not be Patterson’s half-sister darted to where she’d staged more Boomrings. This time she had four and was a bit sluggish, for her, getting back. She paused about thirty feet away from him and it felt like my heart wanted to stop.

No! No! Don’t stop to rub his nose in it. Just end it!

Every second she wasted caused the gnawing pit in my stomach to grow. Just as Maxine Vivian Davros started to move, there was an explosion that was followed by several more in the surrounding buildings, including the one where the Promethia employees she kidnapped were held hostage.

Disbelief flooded my soul as the scene unfolded and I tried to comprehend what had just happened. Two of the surrounding buildings were heavily damaged and another had partially collapsed. A police chopper closed in and blew the dust cloud away as I swallowed, suddenly concerned for the fate of the fifth fastest person in the world. Maybe she’d been able to get clear if she realized quickly enough what was happening. The optimist in me hoped, but the engineer in me doubted, that she could get far enough away from ground zero to save her psychotic ass.

As I feared, Ultraweapon was still moving, but he was obviously in bad shape and I wished that Maxine had brought some backup. If I was there, I could’ve finished him right then!
Dammit to hell!
But I wasn’t, and neither was anyone else.

She’d failed. Her failure felt like my failure and I looked over at Bobby, who shook his head and cracked open another beer.

“Damned shame,” he said. “She was okay, in my book.”

• • •

It took me a couple of hours to figure out what had happened. The rings Maxine used were detonated by a radio signal from her controller. Beaten, Ultraweapon broadcast on every frequency and triggered the explosives she held and the ones in the surrounding buildings. Now, I was watching a hastily called press conference where Patterson’s spin machine was trying to put the chaotic mess in a positive light. His latest PR doll was a “retired” model and though I couldn’t say for certain that he was doing her, if he wasn’t then I had even less respect for Lazarus—if that was even possible.