Origins of a D-List Supervillain (4 page)

If I was being brutally honest, Monica Stringel probably thought that she had “settled” for the life she lived and tried to live vicariously through the accomplishments of her son. When my professional life took a hard left and dived into the dumpster both my dreams and apparently hers were shattered.

Hell, all it took was four weeks of being back home after I’d abandoned California for me to wear out my welcome and decide to hit the road and look for any place else—even if that landed me in Argos, Mississippi.

“I’m sure they’ll get what’s coming to them in the end.” I said, thinking it might be sooner now that I’d reached a decision.

“You know what they say about karma, Cal?”

“Let’s hope so. Well, I hate to cut it short,” I said, lying. “But I’ve got to get going to work. Let me know when Mom plans on having that surgery. I’ll try to make it back or at least send flowers.”

“You take care,” he said. “It’ll all work out in time.”

“Thanks Dad. I’ll talk to you soon.”

Hanging up, I shook my head. I looked at the round trip bus ticket in my hand. My beat-up, old Hyundai probably wouldn’t make the trip to and from Miami. Some kind of vacation was in order, plus I knew a pawnshop owner down there, who wouldn’t ask too many questions about a certain bracelet I possessed. Joey Hazelwood had the misfortune of having the same name as the captain of that tanker that dumped all that oil into Prince William Sound, and the equally dubious distinction of being my roommate for four years at UCLA.

• • •

“So the woman is dead and the husband has already moved on with his new girlfriend,” Joey said. “You better not be shitting me, Cal.”

He’d packed on the pounds and was fighting a losing battle with his hairline already. The truth was that Joey Hazelwood had gone to shit, but I’d beat him there by a country mile.

“I’m on the level, Joey. He’ll probably assume she hocked it for money,” I answered. “You could just as easily say it was a blonde in here and no one would be the wiser.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I can move this. Damn, Strings, remember when I was going to be a marketing genius and you were going to invent the things we were going to sell? Where did we go wrong?”

“Well, I think it was when you inherited this place from your uncle and switched coasts and I decided that Promethia would look nice on my resume. That’d be my guess. So, what’s it worth and what can you give me for it?”

“It’s worth about twenty five,” he said. “I’ll give you eight for it, because I’ll have to send it to a guy up in New York to sell it, which means I’m only going to get fifteen.”

Frowning, I wanted a bit more, but knew Joey wasn’t going to be able to go much higher. “I’ll take two and some store credit if you have any tech.”

“What do you need?”

“What have you got in the way of powercells?”

I’d been working with some class A “home use” powercells when I’d built my prototype compressor, Promethia and the US Marshals had confiscated those. The likelihood I’d ever see those again was about the same as Lazarus showing up at my trailer and delivering a personal apology. Along with my spare compressor, I still had one class A, but that wasn’t going to cut it.

“I’ve got a half-dozen A cells and two class B industrials. How about two grand and two A cells?”

“What about the B cells?”

He scratched all three of his chins. “Both of them need serious reconditioning and either one is out of your price range. I got them damaged from a construction accident.”

“I can recondition a powercell, Joey. How about I recondition both and you let me walk with one?”

It was Joey’s turn to frown. It was the second time today I had asked him to skirt the edge of the law. To own a class B powercell, you had to have some kind of paper trail. Class C and above required government clearances.

“Just write off the one as being unsalvageable and sent for destruction. Bust up one of the A cells and turn it in in its place.”

Smiling, I knew I had him. True, I was offering to do several thousand dollars’ worth of repair work for him at cost, but he’d hardly paid retail for them to begin with.

“Strings, my man,” he said. “You got yourself a damned deal!”

Instead of three days of Florida beaches and wasting my money chasing tanned bodies, I spent it hunched over a workbench in the back of Joey’s shop, but all that work scored me an industrial powercell, well, at least one that could hold eighty percent charge, but beggars can’t be choosers.

• • •

In one of my more paranoid moments, I bought a bulletproof vest. Fortunately for me, Barton wanted me humiliated and destitute instead of dead. Joey would have been awfully suspicious if I had asked him for one.

“Hey, Stringel,” Dougie said. “Anything going on?”

“No, I’m good.”

“Oh, it’s just that you haven’t been such a whiny little bitch lately.”

It was his way of giving me a compliment. Somehow, I doubted he had any training in spotting changes in employee behavior and linking that to criminal intent. His idea of profiling consisted of watching women walking by and seeing how big their racks were.

While building a pair of force blasters, I’d kept a low profile. That meant none of my usual outbursts at work for over two weeks running.

“I’ve accepted that there is nothing more to be done,” I replied.

“So, no more calls from lawyers and suppahero bidness?”

“If I never see another superhero again, I’ll be a happy man.”

Dougie grinned, giving me a look at how badly coffee and chewing tobacco can ruin tooth enamel. “That’s good. I just wanted you to know that if you keep this up, you’re in the running for employee of the month.”

“Thanks,” I said, hoping that I didn’t sound sarcastic. That honor would go great alongside my magna cum laude from UCLA. In a shop of seven mechanics and two women working the front office, competition for that coveted distinction, and the parking spot accompanying it, was positively cutthroat.

“Anything else, boss?”

“I’ve got a Durango that needs an oil change, flush and fill, and the rotors either need to be turned or resurfaced.”

Nodding, I told him I could take care of it. The job would consume the rest of my day and required only enough attention to make certain I didn’t forget to put the drain plug back in. That way, I could spend the rest of the day on my mental chalkboard designing my super powered crimesuit. Although, I will confess to a five minute interlude while I fantasized what my blasters could do to this place.

My high school guidance counselor always stressed the importance of having goals. If I ever go to my ten year reunion, I’ll have to look her up and thank her for that advice.

The class B cell was heavy, checking in at fifty pounds. Without my power compressor, I would have been forced to carry two or three to power my blasters, which would have left me virtually immobile without some kind of Waldo or synthmuscle exoframe. That was the beauty of my invention. It was really a lightweight capacitor and if my calculations were correct, I could squeeze eight full power shots before running the cell and the compressor dry.

Using a thrift store backpack, I crafted a harness that would carry my power supply. With the weight restrictions, I was pretty much limited to what I could carry in the deep pockets of a set of black coveralls. A red, insulated ski mask, from when I used to be able to afford that form of recreation, would cover my face along with a pair of those yellow tinted, light enhancing glasses. For the control interface, I had a belt with an oversized dial on it. It went beyond crude, but often the easiest solution to a problem was the ugliest. The dial had five settings. On the lowest, the blast would toss an average-sized man about ten feet and smash through most regular glass windows. The next settings up carried enough force to bust a door off its frame and seriously injure a human. Anything beyond that and they’d be scooping the body off the ground into a black bag, since three through five were meant for walls, bulletproof glass, and safes.

I had no plans to be a murderer, though I could convince myself to make an exception for a certain lawyer. From my point of view, it’d be justifiable, but I wasn’t sure the judicial system would agree.

My lack of carrying space left me with two options: banks and jewelry stores. Banks always meant federal agents and possibly superhero involvement. It was higher risk with greater reward. One big score could net me enough to build my powersuit. It also meant human interaction and I wasn’t interested in that. Jewelry stores meant more trips to Miami or other pawn shops to unload the goods. That path would add lengthy delays to my plans, but Dad always used to say that “slow and steady wins the race.”

At that moment, all I had was time.

• • •

Second thoughts? Yeah, I started having them as soon as the force blasters were finished. Up until then, I was just planning crimes. The day I test fired my blasters was when shit got real. The first place I decided to knock over was a chain jewelry store, figuring they would be insured. I toyed with the idea of robbing the pawn shops, but, considering I might need them to fence my goods, that seemed problematic. Also, I could easily be distracted by all the other shiny objects inside a place like that.

From the amount of sweating I was doing, I worried that the police would be able to track the water trail back to my trailer. Somehow, I doubted a double wide could ever be considered a criminal lair. It was around two in the morning, when the cops would be camped out by the bars and looking for easy ways to make their ticket quotas. Dialing the belt controller up to level three, I blew open the back door and scrambled through the opening. A second burst from my left hand took out their server closet. Unless they sent their security feed offsite, I’d just rendered their cameras useless and destroyed the recorded data.

Most crooks down this way wouldn’t even consider that,
I thought, mentally patting myself on the back. I blew the power panel for good measure, but the alarm had already been triggered. It was more for the sake of not listening to it while I broke into the drawers below the display cases and poured rings, necklaces, and earrings into a pillowcase.

Yes, I was using a pillowcase. Don’t judge me. Given my costume, I looked like a trick or treater, so it seemed to work. “Function over form” was what I always said.

At the two minute mark, I lumbered back out to the red Hyundai and tossed the pillowcase onto the floor of the passenger seat and then dropped the backpack assembly on the seat above my haul. It was a little uncomfortable with the cables running to the wrist mounted force blasters and the wires going to the belt controller assembly, but I pulled away before the fourth minute had elapsed. My route took me away from the direction the police cars would be coming. It was a twenty minute drive back to Argos.

Several times one of Barton’s legal thugs implied to the judge that my acts were criminal in nature. At least now, I’d given them cause to say that.

“I need a criminal name,” I said aloud, basking in the joy of my first heist. “Blasterman? Ultrathief? Nah, that one would be a dead giveaway. The blocky powercell, almost makes me look like the Hunchback of Notre Dame, maybe I should use Quasimodo.”

Since I didn’t have the synthetic muscle to make a pair of gauntlets, my force blasters were mounted on my wrist instead. The way the cables ran off of it made them seem like those shackles they make prisoners wear.

“Powershackle? Closer. What about Manacles? I like it. Almost sounds like my name. I’ve got it! ManaCALes!”

It didn’t seem like a stupid name to me.

• • •

One of the things I always found amusing about my time working with Patterson and his supersuit was that after he fought in a battle, especially the times he’d gotten beaten, the entire project would gather in an auditorium and watch every piece of footage of the battle—like we were a damned football team watching game film.

It was fun watching everyone trying to deflect the blame.

“If the offensive systems performed better, the shields wouldn’t have taken such a beating.” I patently ignored the comment from Owen, because he was full of shit and offensive systems wasn’t the reason Lazarus was resting in a hyperbaric chamber at that moment.

“Don’t look at maneuverability! Ever since the latest upgrades were installed, the suit is quicker. Maybe internal structure could work another shield emitter into the skeleton.”

Derek probably kissed a picture of Patterson’s ass every morning before he kissed his wife. He was the scientific equivalent of a cockroach—ready to scurry at a moment’s notice.

“There’s no wasted space in internal structure. If we cram anything else in there, we’d have to amputate one of the pilot’s limbs. Feel free to pitch that idea to the boss.”

Owen wasn’t done. “Maybe ATAI could have done a better job predicting Mistress Magma’s attack patterns.”

Rita took offense to that. “She shoots flames from her hands, it’s not rocket science! Her temperature exceeds the current rating of the suit shielding and armor. Block it, shoot her first, or dodge it.”

Todd’s response was a bit more succinct. He gave Owen the finger.

“Okay,” Ducie said, cutting off the bickering. “Mr. Patterson is recovering and we have forty-eight hours to get the suit back up and running and come up with a winning strategy against a five foot three she-volcano. I need ATAI to run simulations and determine a minimum safe distance, if Ultraweapon runs into her alone again. I also need team scenarios because I’d rather have the rest of the West Coast Guardians with him.”

Four members were responsible for the Adaptive Threat Assessment Index. It was a database of supervillains, and oddly enough, superheroes. Yeah, Lazarus Patterson was that paranoid. The ATAI team were a fun bunch; Todd, Rita, Matt, and Brad. They were a fountain of knowledge when it came to super powers. They ran simulation after simulation of Ultraweapon versus everyone else.

Whenever we upgraded the suit, they ran it against the “Imaginary Larry” test first. Larry was an insanely powerful telekinetic, with equal emphasis on insane and powerful. By all accounts, he was the strongest person on the planet. In over two hundred simulated battles, Ultraweapon only beat him twice in a stand up fight. The first time came after my force blasters were installed. I think I got a bonus that week.