Caped Page 3

  “New York!” shouted the Crippler, a bald-headed beast of a man with the combined strength of the New Jersey Giants and a cholesterol count to match. He smashed his fist down on the table for emphasis.

  Evile winced—he’d had to put a deposit on the room—but the table remained intact. A former professional wrestler, the Crippler knew how to make a blow look impressive without actually breaking anything. Now if the Minx had done that . . . Anyway, he continued, “No, we can’t attack New York again, Irwin. Too many heroes there. They’d intercept the death ray before it hit the upper stratosphere. Besides, even if we did somehow manage to slip it by the Legion of Good, the Z-Men, and the Superheroes Benevolent Association, not to mention the Nucular Man, we’d fry all the Wall Street billionaires we’re asking to pay the protection money. Other ideas?”

  The Crippler sulked and muttered under his breath, something about why he never got to destroy New York City anymore.

  “Tierra del Fuego?” asked the Ocelot.

  “It does have a nice ring to it, I’ll grant you, but does anyone really know where that is?”

  “Southern tip of Chile,” said Singularity, in a tone that said anyone who didn’t know was beneath him.

  “Yes, that’s what I mean,” replied Evile. “We might as well blow up Antarctica. We need somewhere a little closer to home, a little more media friendly.”

  “How about Havana?” Sister Mayhem suggested, her antennae waving suggestively. “Close enough for the United States to notice, but not so critical they’ll chuck us all in Guantanamo.”

  “Not bad, but I’m afraid U.S.-Cuban relations being what they are, the president might give us a medal for that. We need some place that will scare the folks with the money, but not too much. Somewhere close enough that Americans have heard of it, but not so close that they know anyone who lives there.”

  “Maybe Nigeria?” suggested Outback.

  “That’s a country, not a city; and anyway it’s in Africa. You know how much attention the press pays to Africa. A communist dictatorship could fund mass genocide on the continent, and it still wouldn’t rate as much airtime as some teenager twerking at the Grammys. If we’re going to get their attention, we need somewhere closer to home. Maybe Europe?”

  “Paris, then?” said Big Ben, an alleged time traveler from somewhere in London’s future. “Damn frogs always annoyed me, anyway.”

  “Merde,” replied the Minx. She was Parisian and not shy about showing it. “If you think I let you rosbifs destroy zee center of Western civilization, as well as zee only city in the world who knows how to speak properly, then you and I, we will have ourzelves a dizagreement.” She reached for her purse.

  Evile held up his hands before the Minx could find her lipstick or, worse yet, her compact. “Simmer down, simmer down. Not Paris. I think we can avoid destroying anybody’s home town. Outback, I know you’re from Sydney.”

  “Damn straight, mate, and don’t you forget it.”

  “And, Big Ben, you’re from London. Who else wants to protect a city?”

  “New Orleans.”

  “Hong Kong.”

  “Jaipur.”

  “Salt Lake City.”

  “Shangri-La.”

  “That isn’t even a real place.”

  “Sure it is. Where do you think I got my powers?”

  Evile sighed. “OK, this is getting too complicated. Let’s try this. I’ll give everybody a box of red pins, and you put a pin anywhere you don’t want to destroy. Then we’ll choose one of the cities that’s left. Sound good?”

  Everyone nodded, except Monstro who continued to drool onto his corner of the map, and Singularity who was staring at the ceiling like Captain Miraculous’s secret identity was painted next to the fluorescent light. He was probably wondering why he was wasting his time with these luddites. Evile would have to see if he could butter him up a bit later. The chapter needed the new blood.

  Five minutes later the map was covered in red pins.

  Evile sighed. “Well, that’s it then. I don’t think we’ve left anywhere unpinned. We’ll just have to come up with a new plan.”

  “Wait,” interrupted Mr. Malevolent. “What’s this country over here on the Atlantic? Nobody pinned it.”

  “That’s Spain, doofus,” replied Mrs. Malevolent. “I pinned Spain. I don’t want to take over a world that doesn’t have flamenco dancing. Olé!” She snapped her fingers above her head.

  “No,” replied Evile as he inspected the map. “It isn’t. That’s Portugal.”

  “Really?” said Mrs. Malevolent. “I thought that was somewhere in South America. You know, with Carnival and all?”

  “You’re thinking of Brazil, honey,” her husband chided.

  “Oh, well, Portugal then,” she conceded.

  “How about Portugal, folks. Any objections?” Evile scanned the room. No one raised a hand.

  “OK, Portugal it is.” With a flourish, he swept all the red pins off the map; and stuck a big green pin smack into Lisbon. “Doctor, set the coordinates. I’ll prepare a ransom tape for the media. I believe a billion dollars is the going rate for not destroying a city. Suit up folks. It’s time to put Lisbon on the map.”

  * * *

  Major Evile scanned the back room of the Old Bridge Panera Bread. He’d had to move the meeting again. The Secaucus Marriott had booked a Fifty Shades of Grey fan fiction convention, and he didn’t want to risk getting the costumes mixed up.

  The Malevolents were missing in action. Captain Miraculous had thrown them into space during the recent battle on the satellite. Evile suspected they were just licking their wounds (or more likely each other) in their invisible base at the L5 point. He’d track them down eventually. Then he had to drive up to Newark to bail out the Ocelot—the police had picked him up for unpaid parking tickets—but otherwise everyone was present. The room was already quiet. No one much felt like chatting after the Lisbon fiasco, but Evile rapped his gavel anyway. You had to follow the forms.

  “Would anyone care to explain what went wrong?” Evile said in his most serious voice, the one he used when he caught a gaggle of sophomores smoking in the boy’s room, and already knew who the culprits were.

  Dr. XYY coughed uncomfortably. “The hardware worked as promised. If the coordinates had been entered correctly, the ray would have burnt Lisbon to ash.”

  “How was I supposed to know you calibrated it for English units?” said Singularity. “Why didn’t you use the metric system like every sane person on the planet? I know it’s too much to hope you’ll join the 21st century, but can’t you at least leave the 19th? What are you going to build next? A steam-powered torture chamber? A horse drawn battle tank? I have it, a zeppelin. We can drop water balloons on Upper Saddle River. The good guys will never see that coming.”

  “Listen, child,” XYY hissed. “Simply because you are still young enough to know everything does not make you intelligent. If you truly wish to see whose knowledge is greater, I will be happy to oblige.”

  The Minx’s pheromones had shifted from flirty to fearful. Evile didn’t want to be caught in the middle of a throw-down between XYY and Singularity. Intramural squabbles were the third leading cause of workplace injury on supervillain teams, behind only getting caught in your own death trap and stopping to gloat to a defeated enemy before shooting them. He needed to defuse the tension before he lost the deposit on the room.

  A cough came from the doorway. Evile swiveled his head to see who had arrived late; then shook his head and looked again. A short, balding man in a rather ordinary, non-spandex business suit stood in the door, shuffling his feet. He seemed to be unarmed. The briefcase he held appeared at first glance to be simply a briefcase. If he had a ray gun stuffed down his pants, Evile didn’t see it.

  “Is this the North Jersey Chapter of the Supervillains International Union?” said the man.

  “Damn straight, mate,” said Outback.

  Evile winced. He needed to remind Outback not to give up too much
information. The man looked too well-dressed to be a process server, but you could never be too careful.

  “And you are the group that recently attempted to deploy a satellite-to-ground solar energy beam?”

  “Satellite death ray,” corrected Dr. XYY.

  “And you are?” Evile asked before anyone could spill more group secrets.

  The man stepped forward and held out his hand. “Walter Smallwood, Chief Acquisitions Officer of Technological Energy Ventures.”

  Evile took the proffered hand out of habit and shook it perfunctorily. “Mr. Smallwood, this is a private meeting. If you could perhaps explain your business with us?”

  “Yes, of course.” Smallwood laid his briefcase on the table and snapped it open. He pulled out a stack of stapled paper. “TEV was quite impressed with your recent demonstration of the solar energy satellite and beam delivery system in the North Atlantic—”

  “It is a sun-powered satellite death ray,” said XYY. His right eye was beginning to blink menacingly. “Please give things their proper names.”

  Smallwood grimaced. “Yes, I suppose we might call it that, though our marketing team had some alternative naming suggestions I hope you’ll consider. ‘Solar Clean Wave’ tested very highly in our focus groups. In any case, from the specifications you supplied to the Portuguese government, we understand that the system discharges a directed solar energy beam—”

  “Death ray! It’s a death ray!” XYY slammed his fist on the table hard enough to make Smallwood’s papers bounce. His right eye was moving rapidly from side to side now.

  “Excuse me, a directed solar death ray capable of delivering . . .” he paused to read from his notes “. . . 1.1 terawatts of concentrated solar energy collimated into a beam expanding no more than .18 centimeters per kilometer.”

  XYY began frantically scribbling numbers onto a piece of paper.

  Singularity smirked. “Told you everyone used metric.”

  XYY ignored the dig. He looked up from his paper. “That is correct.”

  “We hoped you might consider selling the . . .” Smallwood grimaced, “ . . . death ray.”

  Evile smiled. Now they’d come to the heart of the matter. “I’m afraid you’ve wasted your time, Mr. Smallwood. We don’t sell our superweapons. If they were to get into the wrong hands, anything could happen.”

  “Point of order, we are the wrong hands,” said Big Ben.

  Evile couldn’t deny that. “Fair enough. OK, Mr. Smallwood, what do you propose?”

  “We would like to acquire all plans, personnel, intellectual property, prototypes, and other material assets associated with the solar energy satellite, excuse me, death ray.”

  “It sounds az if you are propozing a takeover?” said the Minx. Her bouquet of pheromones had shifted from fearful to dominant. Smallwood was beginning to sweat.

  “More of a talent acquisition,” he said quickly. “You would all be well compensated and offered significant positions within our organization. I believe your request for Lisbon was one billion dollars?”

  Evile nodded.

  “I think we can do better than that.” He removed a cheap ballpoint pen from his shirt pocket and scribbled some numbers on a piece of paper, then slid the paper across the table to Evile. Evile tried, and failed, to maintain a poker face. The number on the page was more than they’d asked for Lisbon, a lot more. Even split ten ways, he’d be set for life. He could build the secret volcano lair he’d always dreamed of. No more scrounging for back rooms on Route 9. He could recruit a small army of henchmen, hell a large army. He’d be the envy of supervillains everywhere. Most importantly, he’d finally be able to quit his teaching job, pension be damned.

  When Evile regained control of his emotions, he slid the note to Outback. The Australian took one look at it and began hyperventilating. Slowly the paper made its way around the table from one villain to the next. Even the terminally unimpressed Singularity made a face when he read the number. Finally, when the paper had returned to him, Evile turned back to the visitor.

  “At the risk of looking a gift horse in the mouth, may I ask what you are planning to do with our death ray, Mr. Smallwood?”

  “It’s simple, really. According to our engineers’ calculations, one of your satellites provides enough concentrated solar energy to power a large country, even after accounting for transmission losses on the ground. Less than twenty would supply the energy needs of the planet. At current electricity prices, we believe we can realize a significant profit, as well as eliminate many of the risks and externalities associated with current petroleum- and nuclear-based energy production.”

  Evile could almost hear the gears clicking in everyone’s heads as they considered the implications of Smallwood’s plan (except for Monstro, who was in the corner playing with the blocks Sister Mayhem had brought him). When enough time had passed for everyone to think it through, Evile spoke. “That hardly seems evil, Mr. Smallwood. In fact, it sounds, dare I say it, good?”

  Smallwood tugged at his shirt collar. “Well, yes, that is rather the idea.”

  “I don’t know if I’m comfortable with this.”

  “It is really a rather large amount of money,” said Sister Mayhem.

  “Take the money and run, I say,” said Big Ben.

  Evile looked at Smallwood. “It’s a good offer—I can’t deny that—but isn’t there any way this could be more . . . evil?”

  Smallwood shuffled his papers nervously. “I suppose we could contrive a few industrial accidents, maybe arrange a satellite to go a little off kilter and wipe out a trailer park or two. It still wouldn’t be anything close to the environmental destruction the petroleum industry wreaks on an average Sunday, but would that help?”

  Evile looked at the table while he thought about it. Melting a few double wides didn’t fill his insides with warm fuzzies like incinerating Lisbon. Then again, with the money TEV was offering he could bid on the new Ebola strain coming out of the Ukraine. He made his decision. “Yes, Mr. Smallwood, I think it would. Show of hands. All in favor of accepting TEV’s generous offer?”

  Nine hands went up.

  “Opposed?”

  The Crippler put his hand halfway up. “I’d still rather destroy New York,” he muttered.

  “I know, Irwin,” Evile said. “Maybe next year. Mr. Smallwood. I think you’ve bought yourself a death ray.”

  Return to Contents

  WHEN FUKAYNA DANCED HER LIBRARIES

  Jake Johnson

  The sun hung low in the blustering of the Gobi, outlining an endlessly rearranging sine curve of dunes. The protective clothing issued to Fukayna was a joke, and the mask was as stifling as any other. This could’ve been done in a corn field somewhere, but there was secrecy here. It was well-documented that the heroic Bibliosoph liked to be stored away from sunlight, in cool dry places—therefore no one would suspect her.

  In the helicopter, trying to enjoy the pinhole breeze of the AC, she ruminated that she should complain less. The pilot, Iachimo, was armed with something taller than he was and almost as wide, a sleek and glossy parody of a woman which spat nineteen flavors of death with the precision it would take to hit the moon. Though they were both Russian, he was born on native soil, and it showed in the pallor of his skin.

  It was a warlord today, located somewhere on the outskirts of Côte D’ivoire, who had the ability to birth children early. That is, or so she was told, he would rub his hand on a pregnant woman’s stomach and—whoosh!—she’d go through painless labor in an hour’s time. Her kid would grow up fast, too, ten times faster than normal. He’d been at it for eight years or so, building up a cult, then an army, then a micro-nation. They’d begun declaring war on neighboring areas in a quest for territory, and since there was nothing more pressing on her agenda Fukayna had to help out with him.

  She wasn’t allowed to know his name, or see his face. She used to wonder if the government hid those details from her because they were important. She never knew her fath
er, and it was entirely possible that he was one of the individuals she worked her magic on. After a few months she stopped believing her emotional state mattered to her superiors. She was being shielded from the knowledge because it would make her a liability to anyone else with the right talents. There were plenty of people who could see through her, or worse, given contact.

  When Fukayna danced her libraries, people took notice.

  In this case the question of whether she was the warlord’s daughter was a purely academic one, given that she was in her early twenties. The desert was more immediate than that, and frankly less pleasant, but it was approaching steadily to make port with her. She waited until they were hovering over the ground to put on the mask. It was a nondescript slip of black, like a shard of something deep in the earth, and its visor was tinted heavily enough that it couldn’t be told apart.

  When the shard-faced, jumpsuited woman ambled out of the aircraft, she found sand in all directions, whipped about here and there by occasional wind. She knew that, under a microscope, all of it would look beautiful. One of her earliest targets had been a science teacher (not on purpose, of course), and it was through him that she learned sand was nothing but tiny, almost-invisible gemstones. She pictured herself traipsing a landscape made of uncut sapphires, and felt a little better.

  Iachimo wasn’t always the one flying her, but they’d been out together more than the pilots had with her. He idled in the heli, watching her with the Gun lying on her seat, its butt filling in the depression she’d left. Fukayna didn’t have to get too far from them to dance, but she didn’t want such a ludicrous firearm in her periphery while she concentrated.

  Without the warlord’s name, they had a lot of informational ground to cover. To dance a library, Fukayna needed to pinpoint one person in the world out of all the others. The warlord had only become a viable target because he had become a member of a nation with under 5000 residents. A [brown-eyed] [male] [warlord] living in [The Court of the Holy Children] with [one arm] narrowed it more than enough.