“Get busy!” screams the superhero.

  We get busy. Dark Fire melts his way into the creature as Small Talk and Never Lies bust up its many legs. Eventually it stops moving and crashes to the ground with Dark Fire still inside. Neither Small Talk nor Never Lies seem to be worried about him.

  “Hello,” calls out the new superhero to Never Lies, “where’s the rest of your team?”

  She floats closer, sitting cross-legged in the air rather than flying like a normal super. I’ve seen her before, on the day The General tried to kill me. She’s Blizzard Master, and I’m happy to see her.

  “We’re it,” says Never Lies.

  “Three superheroes, one dead.”

  “He’s not dead, and there are four of us,” says Never Lies, waving at me.

  I feel pretty good about that. Blizzard Master lands lightly beside me and gives me the once over. Her eyes linger on my multiblaster as if she has never seen one like it.

  “Barely four. This guy takes a beating, but doesn’t give one out. He needs a bigger gun. You should give him one of yours, you seem to be carrying enough for a whole team.”

  Blizzard Master is the best. Never Lies snorts and aims her heavy gun platforms up towards the sky.

  “Hey Blizzard Master, I say, you probably don’t remember me, but you saved my life once.”

  “Yeah?” she asks without interest, “when was that?”

  “A little while ago, when The General was trying to kill-”

  “Oh, saucer. You’re that kid. Standing up to The General got me kicked out of my team and assigned to the team of total losers waiting in town.”

  “Ah,” I say, suddenly taken back, “sorry about that.”

  Dark Fire bursts out of the oblong, a glowing red crystal in his hands which he hands to Small Talk.

  “Hello, Blizz,” he says with a smile.

  “Dark Fire? They told me you were dead. Well, that explains pretty much everything.”

  “Do you have a bomb for the saucer?” says Small Talk impatiently.

  “I do, but we need to thin out these ranks of creatures before we make a move. They are coming right for us.”

  She was right; the sky was dark with creatures.

  “I can fortify the area with ice,” she suggests.

  Dark Fire nods and we prepare a makeshift castle of ice and dirt around the dog whistle. We each assume a role, with mine being to watch the skies.

  “I can see deathtowers, and more of those spider towers as well,” says Dark Fire. “It’s going to be a hectic battle.”

  “My team are protecting the town, and those moronic Bazooka Boys should be arriving soon for whatever good they can do,” says Blizzard Master.

  Waves of enemy break against our ice fort, and I do my best to keep the skies clear. An octo-ape wraps its arms around my neck but Never Lies takes it down with a well-placed plasma bolt. Two deathtowers approach and Dark Fire goes straight for one, burning right into it. Blizzard Master swoops towards the second tower, but it knocks her out of the air. She hits the ground hard and the tower looms over her. I throw my body over her and feel the blows of heavy fire on my back. It hurts, and I hope my shields can take it. The fire stops and the tower falls over. A big piece hits me in the head and I fall over.

  “You okay, kid?” asks Never Lies, helping me to my feet.

  “Sure,” I say, although I don’t feel okay.

  “Dark Fire and I can take the bomb now if the rest of your team stays here as a distraction,” says Blizzard Master.

  “Set,” we all say in unison, and Blizzard and Dark Fire take off.

  “Incoming,” warns Never Lies.

  A set of enormous missiles bombard us, smashing my shields and ripping Small Talk’s new body apart. One explodes next to Never Lies and flings her up into the sky. My shields are down to 20% and Small Talk is almost back to his natural suit, so I hate to think of how Never Lies is.

  “Follow her,” Small Talk orders.

  I’m too slow to catch her so I fly high to find her impact crater. Never Lies landed hard in the middle of a suburban garden, burning through the smooth grass and rolling through the rose garden. I’m not the first to find her: there are four superheroes in flowing red cloaks standing beside her by the time I reach her. I recognize them as members of the Bazooka Boys, a male-only team known for its brash displays of power.

  “Look here, boys,” says one, “we were waiting for the saucer and we find this instead. It’s one of them girl supers. Help her up. And let’s get those dangerous toys away from her.”

  They pull Never Lies to her feet and pull her gun platforms off of her, piling them to one side. She tries to push them away, but I can tell she’s still a little groggy from the huge hit she just took. I move to help her, but one of the Bazooka Boys grabs me. I catch Never Lies’ eye and she shakes her head slightly to say that now is not the time to kick up a stink. Besides, the guy is a lot stronger than me and I don’t even know if I can escape him.

  “Come on, idiots, we don’t have time for this. The saucer is coming,” Never Lies says.

  “Nah, no sign of the monsters. It’s going to pass us by, no problems.”

  The dog whistle must have been far too effective, and no monsters got as far as the Bazooka Boys. They don’t seem smart enough to have figured out what is going on, either.

  One of the Bazooka Boys shoves Never Lies.

  “And don’t call us idiots,” one of the idiots says.

  I struggle against my captor, but his grip is like steel. Never Lies looks angrier than I’ve ever seen her, but I can’t do anything to help her. She tries to fly way, but they mob her and force her feet to the ground.

  “So keen to leave? But we are having fun!” yells one of the Boys.

  “Yeah, it’s not often we meet a girl superhero,” says another.

  Never Lies punches one in the head, knocking him back. That only seems to encourage the others.

  “What kind of a superhero are you, punching another super!” one calls.

  “Treason!” agrees another.

  The world is burning, and the Bazooka Boys just want to find someone to bully. They shove Never Lies and she stumbles. The leader closes in on her, trying to grab her arm. That’s when she strikes, pulling a knife from her belt and cutting right through the leader’s shields and into his power pack, severing the lines that power his suit.

  She moves fast, and for a second no-one else realizes what she had done. She leaps at another Bazooka Boy, slaps his punch aside and takes him out with her knife before slamming him into the ground. Every move she makes is smooth and calculated, and the Boys don’t have a hope of stopping her with their clumsy punches. She cut their power, leaving them helpless on the ground, but she doesn’t hurt them.

  I would have, if our positions had been swapped.

  The only one spared her wrath is the guy holding me, and only because he uses me like as a shield. Never Lies open her visor and glares at him.

  “What kind of superhero am I?” she asks, “I’m the type who fights in the sky instead of hiding on the ground like you stupid losers. I’m the kind of superhero who took three of you out with a knife.”

  She kicks a downed Bazooka Boy in the leg and he tries to crawl away from her. Her gun platforms float into the air and fix themselves to her shoulders where they belong.

  “I’m the kind of superhero you don’t want to mess with, idiots.”

  The guy behind me takes the hint and lets me go.

  “Now,” Never Lies says, “why don’t you amateurs walk home and leave the saucer to me?”

  We take off and I fly next to her in the air, close enough so we can talk.

  “Those guys are a joke,” she says angrily. “Why do male superheroes think that women can’t fight? They were so slow and clumsy that I could have taken a dozen of them out if I wanted. Idiots. And were you planning on helping at any stage?”

  “Why? They don’t deserve my help,” I say.

  That almost earns me a smile.

  “Let’s go kill some aliens,” she says.

  “Yes ma’am.”

  The saucer explodes in the distance, crashing down into a forest and starting a raging fire. That’s the kind of problem that the fire department can deal with, so we ignore it.

  We find Small Talk lying on the ground within ten meters of the dog whistle. Our fort of ice and dirt lies in ruins around him, and a metal serpent is wrapped around his body. He managed to rip the thing’s head off before it reached the dog whistle. He’s surrounded by piles and piles of every kind of alien as if he was trying to form a wall of dead metal to protect the whistle.

  “Is he dead?” I ask.

  Small Talk groans in pain, and we fly down to unwrap him from his enemy.

  “He’ll survive. Just.” Never Lies says.

  We look up to see a flash of light from the other side of town as the downed saucer explodes. Dark Fire and Blizzard Master did their job well. I relax a little.

  I should have learnt my lesson: a dozen aliens teleport into existence right above and the fight starts again. Never Lies gets three of them, but one pins her and another smacks me right in the helmet.

  It’s a five-legged freak made of spinning blades and wicked spines. It slashes at my head, screaming in a high pitch squeal. My green shields take most of the damage but I struggle to fight it off. The pressure releases for a moment as someone pulls the alien off me and slams it against the ground. My rescuer is wearing dull blue, and isn’t someone I recognize. The alien turns on him, sticking a blade right through his leg. He staggers, yet still manages to punch the creature as it closes in on him. I blast it apart with my multiblaster, cutting its legs and arms off with focused blasts until it is no longer a threat. Never Lies has taken the rest of the aliens out in the same amount of time it has taken me to kill one. Blizzard Master was right; I do need a bigger gun.

  My rescuer lies gasping on the ground. He has a huge ‘TRAINEE’ printed on his chest, and the only weapon he carries is a short sword. His suit looks even less impressive than mine. I kneel beside him and put some pressure on his leg until his suit stops the bleeding. I wonder what kind of a person sees a huge alien made entirely of blades and heads straight for it. I mean, I would, but I realize I’m not normal.

  He reaches up, opens his visor and gives me a familiar smile.

  “I knew I’d find you here,” he gasps.

  It’s Tenchi.

  Back Story Two

  Only four people have successfully stolen a superhero suit, and two of those were idiots.

  The first didn’t last a month before he was hunted down by a Superhero Corps team of obedient superhero bloodhounds. His trial only lasted for four hours before he was convicted of treason in the highest degree. After that the Corps started putting tracers in the suits, so the second thief lasted less than a day. The Corps tried to take her alive, but the resulting battle set fire to a hundred acres of forest and ended with one roasted renegade.

  As I said, they were idiots.

  I lasted two years.

  I had it all planned out: I did my homework and found out how to deactivate my suit’s tracking device, then I faked my own death while on a mission, robbed a few banks during a saucer attack, and found a cave to lay low in. I hired a few lackeys and settled myself down for the good life. I traded weapons and other illicit treasures to keep myself entertained and built up a modest villainous empire. Nothing extravagant: enough to keep myself from getting bored, but not enough to get noticed.

  I hardly ever wore my suit. Occasionally I would take it out to rob a jewelry store at night or to hassle some of my competitors by burning down their warehouses, but that was more for fun rather than any real necessity. I liked the look on my rivals’ faces when I crashed through their roofs and walked through their bullets.

  It was a good time.

  My confidence that I had fooled the world lasted right up until the moment that Dark Fire burnt his way into my hideout and knocked me out with a Taser. In hindsight, it was lucky for me that I wasn’t in my suit at the time because otherwise I think he may have ended up killing me. I woke up on the Cerberus with a shock collar around my neck and a furious Dark Fire in my face.

  He was shorter than I expected; I would have considered taking him hostage in exchange for my freedom but he never took his suit off.

  He gave me the offer of serving or dying, and I chose not to die. I won’t bore you with the battles that followed other than to say that I was an adequate if reluctant soldier and my peers were an insufferable, arrogant lot with messiah complexes.

  Suffice to say we did not get on. I am physically small, and the others picked on me until I knocked one of them out with a slipper containing metal filings. After that we got along just fine, but I pined for my previous days of freedom. Life on the boat lacked the independence I had grown used to in my days as a renegade, and I made many attempts to escape. They all failed, and I began to despair.

  Then the fourth person to steal a superhero suit struck. He wasn’t as good at covering his tracks as I had been, but he wasn’t an idiot. He robbed a series of high value targets, sank a few ships and then disappeared.

  Secretly, I hoped he would succeed. I liked the way he was giving the whole world a super-powered middle finger. I was envious, even. I imagined myself in his place, flying unhindered through the skies, raiding banks and cargo ships.

  Then he attacked a town and burnt it to the ground. I don’t know why he did that, but that was the end for him. Dark Fire was still official dead in those days, and the Corps had been holding Dark Fire in reserve. The video of a renegade superhero shooting flames at innocent civilians quickly changed their minds. Dark Fire called me into his office and had me sit on a chair in front of his desk. It was a big leather chair with comfortable arm rests.

  “You and I are going hunting,” he said to me.

  “Why me?” I asked.

  “Set a thief to find a thief.”

  He must have been desperate; I didn’t want to catch a thief, I wanted to be one.

  “Sounds good,” I said as sincerely as I could manage.

  Dark Fire sighed. Metal straps emerged from the chair and locked down my arms and legs, holding me in place.

  “You must think I’m an idiot,” he said.

  The thought had crossed my mind… right up to the moment the chair took me prisoner. I struggled against the straps, but I couldn’t escape. Dark Fire produced a syringe of pink fluid and walked over to me. He injected it into my arm and my whole body went numb for a few seconds.

  It was not a good feeling.

  “That’s a poison that will kill you in three days,” Dark Fire said casually, “you only get the antidote if we find our quarry.

  I can tell when people were lying, and he wasn’t.

  “Better get on with it,” he suggested.

  Where would a supervillain hide? The world is an enormous place with an infinity of hiding places for those of us who can fly. My quarry had stealth, and he was smart enough to use it. A simple search was never going to work if he didn’t want to be found.

  So, what does a supervillain want? Answering that was easy: power, and superhero suits are power.

  I needed to get in contact with him. His suit had a radio receiver, but that was no good to me. My next step was to get back into really dark parts of the ‘net where the worst of the weapons dealers lurk. I still had my old login details, so I looked like a proper villain again. I even made a few new purchases while I was on there, just to keep my hand in. Besides, the Super Corps was paying. I spent the better part of two days there before I found what I was looking for: someone was buying every piece of illegal superhero tech they could get their hands on, and they were paying big money for it.

  The kind of big money that is only available to supervillains, corrupt government officials and other people with no conscience. Like investment bankers.

  I got in contact with the mysterious buyer and left him a voicemail.

  “Listen,” I said, “I’m an escapee like you. I have a suit with a power source, but it’s broken. I’ll trade it for two hundred million U.S. dollars.”

  A fair price, I thought, for a broken suit. A price he could afford, if he had half a brain.

  I received a reply in under ten minutes, and we were on. I set up a meeting at midnight in a desert far away from any people. I didn’t really care about the people, of course, but it was easier than arguing with Dark Fire. The idea was to let the supervillain steal the fake suit that we had packed full of tracers and other nasty surprises.

  Or that was the plan I suggested to Dark Fire. My actual plan involved stealing the supervillain’s suit and then making my own escape. I had it all planned out, and I was sure that this time I was going to succeed. Then Dark Fire called me into his office two hours before the exchange.

  “Ready, boss? We are going to nail this guy!” I said excitedly, “Let's go get suited up!”

  Dark Fire was already in his suit, of course; he never changed out of it. My role in the plan was to track the villain back to his lair and ambush him. I was looking forward to it, but not for the reasons he might have expected.

  “You still think I’m an idiot,” said Dark Fire, and then he tasered me again.

  I woke up in Dark Fire’s office ten hours later. I wasn’t dead, so I suppose he must have given me the antidote to his poison.

  “Ouch,” I said reproachfully.

  “You deserved it,” he said flatly, “Your plan worked out fine, by the way. We got him.”

  I thought about acting naïve about why he tasered me, but I couldn’t be bothered. It was something of a compliment that he trusted me so little and thought me capable of so much.

  “What happened to the guy?” I asked, expecting that Dark Fire had acquired him for the Cerberus team.

  “He was found guilty of treason and shot. We couldn’t have a man like that running around the world.”

  I was mildly offended by that statement; I am a lot more dangerous than that idiot was ever going to be. On the other hand, I still preferred life on the Cerberus to being dead. The food was better, for one thing.

 

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