It was a tie, whether it was more of a pain in the ass working with Dominus or with Minotaur.
Yeoman kept his sigh to himself, and did his best not to listen to the pair of them, in the back seat of the black SUV like kids he had to babysit, bragging about what they’d do to the annoyingly-successful pair of villainesses once they captured them. They were, of course, absolutely certain that they would succeed, even though Avalanche and Meteor, both top-tier heroes with formidable powers, had failed.
Worse, when the League had sent a second team to find out why the previous pair hadn’t checked in and weren’t responding, there was no sign of them or the villainesses they had been sent to deal with.
They had finally been found the next morning inside the area’s largest and busiest shopping mall when it opened. Each hero stood on a four-foot metal disc that generated a powerful force field and, weirdly, played soft New-Age-y music. The two heroes couldn’t seem to stop babbling, confessing to any manner of transgressions and sins as soon as they were given any prompt at all. All efforts to free them had failed, but precisely four hours after the mall opened, both of the metal discs had shut down and all components within had self-destructed.
It was going to be a long time before the public trusted either hero again, but then, it was also going to be a long time before either got over the experience. It was questionable whether the League would try to sweep it all under the rug, and whether in a world with an open Internet they could. The ungrateful sheep who comprised the court of public opinion were less easily reasoned with than the legal system, and independent journalists and content creators were harder to control than the mainstream press.
Yeoman was less certain about their success. He wouldn’t personally have chosen this as a team: Minotaur’s sheer physical strength and resilience, Dominus’ psychic abilities, and his own mix of senses, stealth, and coordination backed by his extensive skills. At least, he’d only have wanted them as part of a larger team. He’d have preferred to fight fire with fire and bring along Techwright or Omega, who had high-tech toys to counter Eureka’s notoriously unorthodox-but-frustratingly-brilliant inventions. Both, if he had the option, since even though neither would admit it, she was better than either one. Why couldn’t the woman have just joined the League when she’d been told to, and channelled that talent into something actually helpful?
This was the team the League higher-ups had decided to send. Even if they were idiots, he’d follow his orders and make the best of it. The League wanted the two villainesses brought in alive, although damaged was acceptible. If he failed, it wouldn’t be for lack of trying.
The brazen pair, Eureka and her new sidekick Hologram, had scammed an RV dealer out of an enormous top-of-the-line bus-sized motorhome, convincing him that they were from the League. They’d vanished with the RV while the League’s lawyers wrangled with those of the dealer and two different insurance companies over who was responsible for the considerable price tag. As near as anyone had been able to figure out, they’d used a combination of hacking and disguise, probably hologram projection, to pull it off.
After several quiet weeks, a huge RV began to simply pop up at random locations. No one ever saw it driving there, no one could follow it when it left. Cameras failed and eyewitnesses swore they’d never seen it.
And what they did once they were parked, well… that was just appalling.
The League had received a tip that they were out again, this time in the parking lot of the same mall where Avalanche and Meteor had been left on display. The mall was closed, and there should, in theory, be no one around.
Yeoman turned off the headlights, trusting to the towering lights of the lot and his own acute vision, and circled the mall slowly, alert for any signs of life. As soon as he caught sight of the RV, he parked in a spot that was half-hidden behind one of the narrow, cement-bordered strips of grass, studded with stunted trees that barely deserved the name, that tried vainly to break the impression that this was an unbroken ocean of asphalt.
“Stay here,” he told the other two. Dominus looked like a stage hypnotist doing his best to project a Satanic vibe, from the slicked-back hair and careful goatee to the black suit; Minotaur had been forced to remove his horned helmet, since the SUV already strained accommodate his overmuscled bulk. “I’ll scout.”
“I’ll perform a psychic scan,” Dominus announced.
“You do that. But don’t get out of the SUV, and stay quiet. I’ll be back in a few minutes.” He opened the well-oiled door, stepped out, and eased it shut, just enough that it wouldn’t immediately swing open again. There wasn’t exactly a lot of cover around here, but there were a handful of cars despite the hour, there were poles for the lights, these sad excuses for trees… he could make it work.
Crouched in the shelter of a drop-off point for shopping carts belonging to one of the big anchor chains, he found he was close enough that he could, at least mostly, see. After all, his own vision was better than most binoculars.
The RV was parked so one side was facing the mall and any cameras manned by underpaid and uninterested security staff.
On the other side, under a small outdoor light on the RV, he counted just over a dozen people, occupying eight plastic garden chairs, the rest standing.
Three of the ones sitting down seemed highly emotional, doing serious damage to a box of tissues on a small matching table near them. Others were talking to them—sympathizing? Celebrating? He couldn’t quite tell. If they were doing what they had been reported to be doing, then he couldn’t even begin to fathom the mental space of the people involved, and had no desire to.
Two, both on chairs, each held a tablet, and they were very intent on whatever they were doing with them. Now and then, one or the other asked a question, and each time they received a patient answer from the one figure who certainly stood out like a swan in a flock of pigeons.
She was on the tall side for a woman, even more so in wedge-heeled white boots up to her knees; she was athletic but definitely had curves in all the right places. That dazzlingly-white short-sleeved catsuit-leotard-thing she was wearing practically glowed in the dark, and over it she wore… at first he thought it was a highly-fitted vest that narrowed at her waist but covered her torso up to just below the hollow of her throat, but he realized belatedly that it extended downwards as a short loose skirt. The whole thing gleamed with overlapping rainbow-anodized scales.
A rainbow-anodized collar circled her throat, and she had matching bracers around each wrist, reaching halfway up her bare forearms. A spectacular mane of pale multicoloured hair had been shaved on either side, around her ears… her… feline ears that were pink at the base but blue at the tip? And those were matched by her blue-tipped pink tail, extending out from under the skirt?
That was presumably Hologram, since the description mostly matched, but no one had mentioned the cat tail and ears!
Between questions, she chatted casually with the others, who waited respectfully when she needed to answer.
He couldn’t seem to make out what was being said, even when he took out one of his protective earplugs and strained to make it out. It was too distorted. The whole gathering struck him as somehow friendly, though. He wished he’d taken the time to learn to read lips, but why would he, when normally he could hear everything?
Then again, he couldn’t see enough of any civilian present to be able to identify a single one, and that was unprecedented, unlikely, and inexplicable.
A narrow door on the side of the RV, near the back, opened. Yeoman had studied the specs of the stolen motorhome; it included a substantial space at the back meant as a garage for dirt bikes, ATVs, or other recreational indulgences, and he thought that was what that door led to. He recognized Eureka immediately, as she escorted a middle-aged man out to the rest. Someone immediately vacated a chair so the two villains could help him sit down.
Escorting a man? That didn’t match with what he’d been told they were doing.
If only he could get a better look at what they were doing, better still inside, or at least hear what they were saying! He crept out of the shadows, hoping that he could gain more information if he could just get a little closer.
Eureka handed the man something that looked like a business card, and turned to one of the two that had tablets in hand.
Damn it, why did they have to do this in such a flat area so devoid of decent cover? His options were so limited!
The outside light turned red. Yeoman bit down on a curse. Proximity detector? Motion detector? Infrared? From Eureka, it could be anything, but it all meant the same thing: they’d lost the advantage of surprise.
Both supervillains looked up, then at each other. Neither said anything.
Then Eureka began to herd civilians into the RV via the more frontwards side door, the one that should lead to the main area. Hostages, perhaps? But the civilians seemed more than willing to hide inside. Hologram, meanwhile, circled the RV, presumably looking for whatever had triggered the alarm.
Yeoman began to creep back the way he’d come, since there was nothing more to learn and he needed to brief the other two so they could attack. What would be the best approach to take?
“Oh. Figures. Hi, Yeoman. And just what reason do you have for skulking around spying on something that’s none of your business?”
The voice, the harsh tone in sharp contrast to the sound of it, warm and velvety and feminine, came out of nowhere. Yeoman scanned the area with all his enhanced senses, and picked up absolutely nothing.
Light swirled dramatically, and out of it stepped Hologram, a sardonic smile on those deep red lips.
“What do you mean, none of my business?” Yeoman snapped. “You’re breaking the law.”
“Are we? Well, possibly you haven’t left us much choice, and when you’re trying to save lives, you do what have to. We can’t exactly set up crowdfunding, even if we have had people try to pay us without being asked. Hmm, they sent you personally, probably with a couple others since you don’t send your highest-level rogue in alone, you send at least a tank and maybe a mage-type… Let me guess. The League has finally called a Code Green, right?”
What the hell was she talking about? The last sentence made sense, at least. “Yes. Super-villain corrupting civilians. That would be you. Your boss is now a top-priority threat. We will stop you. If not tonight, then eventually. We won’t stop until we do.”
She laughed, but it didn’t sound like humour. “I know you won’t. I did some research, with my mistress’ help. Know why they call it Code Green? Robin Hood. A supervillain is, oh the unspeakable horror, actually behaving in ways that benefit the little people, the ones that don’t matter, down at the bottom of the heap, and is gaining an alarming degree of popular support. That has to be squashed ruthlessly at all costs, because you just cannot have nobodies making decisions for themselves. Right?” She spread her hands. “I’m right here. Just you and me. If you can take me down, you’ll weaken my mistress and seriously interfere with her plans. Don’t tell me you’re hesitating to hit me because I’m a girl.”
“You are dangerous and straight-up crazy. I don’t give a fuck whether you have tits.” He stepped to one side, circling, unwilling to just close and strike while she was waiting for it. She was much too calm and confident. What kind of toys and defences had her boss given her? That costume didn’t look like it had room to conceal much of anything, but he knew Eureka was terrifyingly brilliant and utterly amoral.
Something hard slammed into his back, just above his kidneys and just to one side of his spine.
He staggered, caught his balance, and spun around, but there was nothing there.
Light swirled again, dancing in a ring around him, shimmery and iridescent, a lot like the metal in her costume. Briefly blinded, he closed his eyes tightly, then reopened them, trusting them to adapt quickly.
Fully eight identical versions of Hologram surrounded him, and all of them were smiling mockingly.
“Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We control the horizontal and the vertical. We can shape your vision to anything our imagination can conceive. Frankly, I control all that you see and hear.”
This was not a marginal super, settling for a role as a sidekick and dependent on her boss’ gadgets and toys. This could only be an actual illusionist.
And he knew of one who had the odd habit of quoting the intro from that bizarre old sci-fi series, and who had gone missing after being assigned to stop Eureka. But that had been a couple of years before, and the hero in question had… been…
“Dear fucking god. Phantasm.”
Eight times over, her face twisted in disgust. “Eww. No. Phantasm is dead. He wanted to die. You lot kept trying to force him to stay on life support with no hope, no joy, and no reason to exist. I, on the other hand, have lots of reasons to want to live. Billions of them, in fact. And more joy and hope than your sad closed mind can even imagine, now I’m with my mistress.”
“If that crazy tinker bitch has figured out a way to do straight-up mind control…” His back throbbed. She’d gotten a lot of force behind that blow. Or kick. Whichever it was.
“… then she would be no worse than Dominus or several other so-called heroes, would she? But she didn’t, doesn’t, won’t, and thinks it’s revolting. You still don’t get it, do you? I’m a woman. I always was. Your League’s narrow little worldview almost killed me. My mistress gave me everything, including herself. The League exists to support governments, even if they’re oppressive, big businesses, even if they’re dirty, and the rich, even if they consider themelves above law or compassion—and in return they support the League. You’re on a tight leash and you either don’t know or don’t care. My mistress and I exist to help everyone else, all the real people trying to get through their lives, and if they can just find the way to live as their own best selves, the world will be so much better. For them and for everyone. Well, everyone except your masters.”
“What people? Freaks and perverts?” He turned in a slow circle, nostrils flared, searching for any trace of information that might tell him which one was real.
“Funny, in theory you’re supposed to be fighting to protect all civilians from the likes of me. So why are you insulting them while I’m protecting them, hm?” Eight times over, he saw her shrug. “I have much better things to do with my night. We still have eight more people to change so that outside matches inside. And it’s boring, arguing with you.”
That one. That one actually had a faint scent of fruity perfume, a heartbeat barely audible to him.
He lunged at her, grabbing for the taser at his belt.
He heard sharp clicking sounds from all the way around the circle, and threw himself flat. The volley of darts that came from all sides missed him.
The second volley did not.
All eight images of Hologram vanished, revealing eight small drones floating silently in the air.
Hologram strolled over and squatted next to him, as he lay sprawled on the asphalt, struggling to make his muscles respond. An uncomfortable heaviness seeped through his body from everywhere the darts had embedded themselves in his skin. Absently, she began to pluck the darts out.
“I told you, I will control all that you see and hear. And smell, too. For what it’s worth, you should actually be grateful. Mistress built a very strong force field into my collar that activates under threat conditions. Believe me, you really would not have enjoyed a close encounter with that. This isn’t going to kill you. But you are certainly not going to be any threat until, oh, sometime after sunrise, wth the dose you got. Tell you what. Since you’re all stealthy and junk, and wearing dark clothes on black asphalt, I’ll see if I can find some nice bright traffic cones I can set up around you before we leave. Just for old times’ sake, and to thank you for the combat lessons, although not the snarky comments during them. I’d hate to have someone run over you without seeing you. But first, I have to go help Mistress with whoever else you brought along to the party.”
Whatever this diabolical toxin was, he couldn’t fight it, not with all the physical and mental self-discipline he’d forced himself to learn and live for as long as he could recall, and all the toxic substances he had so diligently built up an immunity to. His traitorous body just would not move.
But Hologram… she was more terrifying by far than any drug. Phantasm had tested, at initiation, as a low-end C-tier super. What he’d just seen could only have been done by an upper A-tier, possibly S-tier, ability. Some powers grew stronger with use, but when had she had the time or motivation to practice that much? The hero he remembered had gone through the minimal motions necessary, clearly resenting every moment of it, unable to recognize the privilege inherent in being part of the League that protected the world from its worst threats.
Maybe, along with mind-control, Eureka had found a way to boost lackluster talents. That was a horrifying thought.
Meanwhile, if she’d told the truth, this was going to be a long night, and he’d get a reprimand tomorrow for losing so pathetically against a weakling freak who had been sick to begin with and had been brainwashed and boosted by a genius supervillain…