Impatiently, I tapped my foot. At the current rate, I was going to be late for work.
These villains were so slow.
A green ogress of a woman towered over me. While I could have broken the binds keeping my hands behind the chair, I sat, waiting a bit longer for the last of them to show up so that I could crush them all in one go. Leaving loose ends wasn’t my style.
"Today we will show the Bureau of Superheroes who the real boss of Point City is," the green woman declared, with a villainous laugh that could have used a little work at the end.
"Sorry, I wasn't recording yet," the big, red woman with stubs of horns poking out of her forehead cried out as she fiddled with the camera. The tiny buttons on the camera were far too small for her beefy fingers.
Green grunted, "That's okay. I can start again. Where is—"
"I'm here," a girlish voice spoke up as the third and last of their group entered. She was a giant, blue woman. "Sorry I'm late. I got us tacos to celebrate."
She lifted her prizes with a big smile before she looked down at me and licked her lips.
Now that they were all present, I could finally break the charade.
"Rolling!" The red woman pointed the camera at the green one, finally managing to hit the right series of buttons.
"The Giantesses are recruiting. Come join us. We are the superior villain league. We’ve even captured the Deputy Director of the BSH.” She swung her hand at me in a sweeping gesture while she wore a satisfied smile on her face.
Oh, how they thought they had this one in the bag. It was sort of cute.
Smiling at the camera, I gave it a wink before I snapped the ropes holding me. Not wanting any potentially dangerous clips of my powers circulating, I then reached out with my power, grinding the camera to bits under a field of kinetic force.
Being able to control any type of energy had its perks. Mostly, that I could do as I pleased.
The green giant woman, apparently the smartest of them, tried to bolt. But I kept them all still as they strained to move.
"You." I pointed to the blue giantess. "You were late, and now I'm going to be late."
Her body suddenly combusted as I flooded her with thermal energy. She burnt from the inside out, but I kept the smell trapped in my kinetic bubble. Wouldn’t want that on my office clothes.
The other two had wide eyes as their biceps bulged. They had immense strength, but it was no match for my abilities.
"Won't work. I’m a bit more than just enhanced." I checked my watch, peeved at the time. "By the way, you are the third group to try to kidnap me since the start of the week. And it's only fucking Tuesday."
This was not how I wanted to spend my days. I should either be at work or settling into my new place with my three superpowered girlfriends. Every time I was away caught up in some kidnapping scheme, I swear I came home to some new decorative touch. At this rate, my entire house was going to have new, frilly furnishings by next week.
When I was home, they were too busy using the furniture, the bed specifically, to have any time to browse online. That sounded far better than facing off against the two women in front of me.
I looked back at them, having given them enough time to develop a healthy level of fear. "Okay, so now you know I’m serious. You don’t have to die like Blue. Just tell me who you report to."
"N-nobody," Green stuttered.
I believed her. "Any recording devices besides the camera?"
"No." Her eyes were wide. "Please don't kill us."
Finding this tedious, I continued. "Anyone else in this little group or outside of it that knows about your scheme to kidnap me?"
Red spoke up, trying to be helpful, “No, just us. We can stay quiet.”
“Perfect. That’s an excellent skill, but I’m afraid you’ve seen a bit too much of my abilities. And I can’t risk you going after others I care about, so, regrettably, this ends our time together.”
I snapped my fingers, and both giantesses were hit with a sledgehammer of kinetic force, enough to crush a backhoe into a pancake. I kept my word. They didn’t die like Blue; they died differently.
Luckily, their bodies did a fantastic job of distributing the impact, and instead, they both turned into blood-red spray that I contained in kinetic bubbles.
“When did villains get so stupid?” I sighed, shaking my head.
Liberator and his work to unify villains in Point City seemed to been a little too successful. Every villain was now trying to copycat his strategy, and most of them did not have the brainpower he did.
I looked around the room, confirming that there was nothing else I needed to destroy or take.
With my new role in the Bureau of Superheroes, or BSH for short, I’d become a prime target for all the new, up-and-coming villain organizations that Liberator had inspired.
And while they weren’t any threat to me, it had grown tedious to either be ‘saved’ by one of my women or remove any trace of myself after I dealt with them.
Keeping my superpowers hidden was getting much more difficult.
While the villain organizations hadn’t caught on yet, the BSH had a ton of mad scientist tech. If they ever got too curious about the disappearances, they might piece everything together. So, I tried to keep all loose ends tied up.
I stared at the three spheres of kinetic energy holding the remains of the 'Giantesses'. Motioning with my hands, I brought the spheres with me, compressing them down to less than the size of a nickel. I'd have to find a sewer grate on the way out to dump them in.
Heading out the door, I continued my trek to work after the interruption. I definitely was going to be late, but I’d been cut some slack after our heroic adventures at the end of the previous week.
It turned out that when you protected the entire city center from a scientist-made titan, you got some time for rest and relaxation. Though my heroes had been called in early for a mandatory evaluation, the Bureau was now reevaluating every hero. After a fight at that level everyone needed a fresh psych evaluation.
Even Kim had taken a day off. I knew it had probably driven her crazy. She was the workaholic type. I wondered what she did in her free time. For a moment, I pictured her in typical yoga wear, trying to find her center, but that just didn’t fit. She was more of a fighter. I visualized her in a boxing ring, taking her feelings out on an opponent, and I smiled. That felt more like Kim.
But Kim would be back today. There was no way she’d take two days off in a row. And that meant that the Bureau would be busy.
I kept up my pace, working to make up for the time I’d lost. Passing a grate on the sidewalk near me, I subtly slipped several compressed beads of the villains’ bodies down into the sewers.
There was a splashing explosion as I released the beads, louder than I’d expected. Two people behind me, who had been over the grate, jumped forward, worried some alligator sewer monster was about to come up for a snack.
And it was a valid fear; a lot of mutations lived in the sewers. I just cared that they wouldn’t suspect what had really made the noise.
Not looking back, I continued to the office. The remaining trip was uneventful.
I let out a sigh of relief. Thankfully, I wouldn’t have to deal with any more kidnapping attempts that morning.
"Miles!" Beatrix caught me as I made it to the stone bridge that led to the Bureau’s main building.
"Beatrix. Ready for the boss to be back today?" I asked the head analyst.
"Yes. She slept in yesterday. I didn't even know she slept; her wrathful immortality keeps her always looking fresh." The raven-haired analyst shook her head and put a hand on her glasses to prevent them from flying off.
"After the shitshow we had before, she deserved it. We all deserved some time off."
"Yes." Beatrix walked in with me. The entrance opened into a wide, marble entryway with a half-circle of steps leading up to the next floor.
Sure enough, Kim was back. Her fiery red hair was impossible to miss, even if she wore a muted pantsuit. She was on the phone but looked down at the two of us, pointing.
"I think she wants you, boss." Beatrix skirted Kim's gesture and headed up the edge of the stairs towards The Spine. That area was essentially an enormous bank of computers via which the analysts of BSH helped the heroes stay one step ahead of the villains.
Happy to catch up with Kim, I headed her way.
"—Well, that's your problem, not mine, General." There was a gruff squawking on the other end of the line. Meeting my eyes, Kim mimed talking with her other hand and rolled her eyes to convey her boredom. "All well and good, General, but that's outside the BSH's agenda—the agenda that is set by you and the politicians. I'm just adhering to the rules. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have something very critical that needs my attention."
She didn't bother to listen to what General Patton said in reply as she hung up her phone with a sigh.
"Critical?" I asked.
"I just wanted to get him off the phone. It isn't that bad. You took the weekend off to move, and I took yesterday off. I wanted to realign with my deputy before I dove into the rest of the work." She waved for me to follow her and headed towards her office.
On the way, I popped into my office to grab my tablet. I flicked it on, enabling the comms that would let me keep in touch with my hero team. We usually were supposed to keep them on us, but I often ‘forgot’ it at work. It was easier not to have any of the tracking on it around me.
My tablet blinked with 99+ in the little red bubble indicating messages.
"Can't leave that thing alone or you'll get buried. I already regret taking yesterday off,” Kim said over my shoulder as she whipped past me and slipped into her office.
I walked in, closing the door behind me before circling around her oversized, oak desk.
“That bad?” I asked. Catching up just came with the territory. I wasn’t worried about it at all. I’d likely be through it all by the end of the day.
Kim opened a drawer in her desk, one that I knew held a bottle of whiskey. She waffled her head back and forth before closing it again, deciding that it was too early to drink. Instead, she pulled out her own tablet and flicked it on with a bored expression.
"The general and the politicians want to change some things up. They want to give the BSH some additional responsibility in the wake of the Chimera. Naturally, the additional responsibility would put me right in the crosshairs of blame for the whole affair.” Irritated, she shook her head.
“Are you able to refuse it?” I asked. As my boss had reminded the general, it was the government that dictated the scope of the BSH.
She smirked at me. "I can't, but I can stall it long enough that they can't use me as a scapegoat for this mess. They were supposed to be managing Libertech."
"Wait, what?" I leaned forward. "The government was managing Libertech? They knew about it?"
Kim winced and double-checked the door before hitting a button under her desk. A familiar hum surrounded us. I recognized it; Kim used it for sensitive conversations.
"Since you have higher clearance now, I can tell you.” She eyed the drawer once again before sitting down in her chair. “The government has been throwing funds at several mad scientists interested in studying superpowers. As you can imagine, this all happening under their nose has them freaked, because they were funding Libertech."
I nodded, working to process what she’d told me. I went straight for the heart of it: “Why?”
"They need to find a way to keep humanity alive." Kim pushed against her desk and made the heavy leather chair rock backwards. "Right now, we are at about one man to seven women.”
"Right, and birthrates continue to make it worse. They’re at one to nine, and so the imbalance will continue to grow." Everybody knew the ratios. They were tracked, and they were frequently in the news. Kids being born now were only the fourth generation of supers. Before the mutation to the X chromosome, the sex ratio among humans had been about fifty-fifty.
Kim nodded. "What they’re trying to keep under wraps is that the government’s analysts think that we'll hit the one-to-nine ratio for the population by the time we are at the fifth generation, and it'll just keep accelerating. By the eighth generation, they think that only one in twenty people will be male." Kim paused, waiting to see me process that.
It also made me understand what the government was hoping for. "They think one of the mad scientists might be able to fix the gender ratios. And they’re willing to fund what it takes. They’re the ones that funded Liberator’s laboratory."
"Got it in one." Kim pointed her finger at me as though it were a gun, and her finger sprouted a little puff of fire that didn't go anywhere. "They want to put barriers up at one in nine. And they think they have a plan. The general and some others want to round up a bunch of superwomen and march them out into the wilds, to reclaim land for the cities and to gather extra resources that they need for their plans."
I winced. That was suicide. All kinds of monsters, mutated beasts, lived out in the wilds. Many of those superwomen would die; but I supposed that, when the government’s goal was to decrease the disproportionate number of women, losing women’s lives on a mission probably wasn’t the worst outcome in their minds. "What resources?"
"Cobalt, lithium. Things for chips and batteries. Mountain City provides enough steel, so we’re good there. But they also need better supply lines. Only so many supers can cross the wilds regularly and with ease." Kim rattled off the information. "But that's not our job; we just catch bad guys and keep people safe." She slapped her desk.
I nodded. Kim took good care of her heroes. She reinforced protocols that swept areas before heroes entered a site to make sure they would stay safe. She’d hate the idea of sending supers that weren’t well organized out into the wilds, and I didn’t blame her.
“So, given what we’re actually supposed to be doing here, we have some work to do. We’ve had eight new attempts to organize villains." She rolled her eyes at the tedium of the tasks ahead of us.
"Eight?" I was digging through my tablet and saw a report with six, but I didn't see eight.
"Here." Kim plugged in her tablet and then clicked around on her desktop a few times before scowling. "Where's B when you need her?" she grumbled as she struggled with technology like the old woman she was.
Even if she still looked like she was in her early twenties the immortal super was well into her sixties.
"If you want, I coul—"
She waved me off. "I’ve got this." A few keystrokes later, she smiled and spun her monitor so that we could both look at the report. “Eight."
Looking at the list, I was confident that there were only seven, but I didn’t tell her that. If I did, I’d have to explain how I knew that the group of giant women were no longer an issue.
"Got it. I'll prep my team to go after two of them this afternoon. Do you want to get Rocksolid's team ready for another two?" I asked, trying to divide the work. Rocksolid was a dependable super, with increased density that granted him a whole host of improvements to durability and strength.
"We need to crack all eight today. I swear, the groups trying to pull this shit are multiplying. Liberator's group showed them what coordination could do, and they all want a piece of that pie." Kim rubbed at her face.
I scanned the groups one more time. Every time I looked at the lists, a part of me held my breath, waiting to see Emma’s name among them.
My old mentor had made her presence in town known by clawing up a chair in my secret hideout. I hadn’t seen her since she’d been imprisoned for tax evasion, but I imagined that was what she wanted. She’d find me when she wanted to see me. Until then, I knew better than to hunt her down.
"We might be able to squeeze three in during our shift," I offered Kim. "Maybe you could send Miss Point City after one."
The Director of the Bureau of Superheroes scoffed. "We'll let her stay on kitten-in-a-tree and purse-snatcher duty."
"She's actually got pretty good metrics." I pulled her up onto my tablet. "A-grade powers. Flight, durability, and she can summon a badass shield."
"She would also pause for the cameras and let villains get away. She does great PR for our organization, but her priorities are completely off. I honestly don't even think of her as an actual hero. She’s more of a pretty, walking advertisement, not the type that saves people and makes a difference. You know, like your new, slimy girl." Kim eyed me.
I coughed into my hand as I felt my cheeks heat up. "She's not my new girl."
Kim looked smug as she twirled around her screen once more, showing me a map with a bunch of colored lines on it, many revolving around my house.
I knew she was showing me the trajectory of Angelina’s ankle bracelet.
Kim made a point of studying the chart with a confused face. "Huh, she's spending an awful lot of time at your new place not to be your new girl."
"Nosey," I grumbled.
"Just checking on her. By the way, you never told me how you found Melody so quickly." Kim narrowed her eyes over the top of her tablet.
There wasn't any point in hiding that particular secret. I could even hide the more important one by telling her. "Fine. Mindfuck was our source for finding Melody. Mindfuck had been invited to Liberator's organization. We used that as a lead."
"And you didn't bring BSH into it at all?" Kim pursed her lips, her eyes narrowing.
And now we’d gotten to the topic I knew would come up. Kim wasn’t one to break protocols, and I’d broken several of them when I’d gone to save Melody.
I leaned back in my chair. "No, I didn't. Stella and I went in to extract her, because at the end of the day, my heroes come first. If BSH went in loudly and we lost Melody, I couldn't have forgiven myself."
Suddenly, something clicked into place. I’d wondered why the girls had to come in so early in the morning when they could have done it during the work day, but now it made sense.
I leveled a glare at Kim. "You took my heroes in early today to question them." It wasn't a question. I knew Kim well enough at that point. She gathered intel and always got her facts straight.
They hadn’t brought them in for just a psych evaluation.
Kim eyed me across her desk. "Yes, I did. You broke protocols, and I don't need a Lone Ranger out there. I needed to understand your motivations better."
"That's bold coming from the woman who tried to lure the Chimera away, intending self-sacrifice," I snapped back.
What I had done was the best option for Melody. My boss would understand that if I could explain everything, but she couldn’t know about my powers.
I’d managed to save her using my alias as Void, a super who fell into a morally gray area and about whom the BSH knew almost nothing. Neither a hero nor a villain, Void did as he pleased. And I planned on keeping it that way.
Meeting Kim’s eyes, there was a tense moment as an invisible battle of our wills raged in the silent space between us.
Kim broke first when she shrugged. "Fine. What you did worked this time. Stella got Melody out, but I wish you would have trusted me, Miles. I would have backed you."
I mimed her, shrugging, too. "We didn't know where Melody was until after I left the Bureau to get Angelina's help." I switched and called her by her actual name rather than the distasteful villain name of 'Mindfuck,’ which seemed like an insulting name for a certified psychiatrist.
"Still could have shot me a call. We could have had backup ready." Kim frowned.
"And then I would have risked Liberator pulling out the big guns before I got Melody out. He would have unleashed that Chimera, and she probably would have been buried in the rubble. You know as well as I do that we’re still digging bodies out of that site.” I realized how loud my voice had grown while thinking about it.
Liberator had taken down a few city blocks. The idea of Melody being buried in there made me sick. “And now I know that Libertech was working with the government. I’m glad I didn’t bring anybody in; they could have gotten tipped off. They were well connected enough."
Kim put both of her hands on her desk and leaned forward, a challenge and a hint of passion on her face. "When it involves my heroes, I am always cautious. You can bet on that. I would have had your back.”
I stared at her for a moment before nodding and ceding that battle of our wills.
"Great, now where's my team?" I asked, annoyed.
"Training room seven." Kim motioned me away, the conversation over.
"Before I leave…" I stood up but paused. "I’m glad you’re back. There was that moment that I thought we’d lost you, and…” I paused. “If you see Void, give him my thanks."
Kim's eyes softened a bit, and she worked her lower lip as she remembered that moment.
Leaving her to it, I left the room and used my power to feel for vibrations behind me. Sensing them, I mimicked them into my ears.
"Stupid Void," Kim grumbled. "You'd think he'd stop in after something like that."
Chuckling, I let go of my listening and headed off to go collect my heroes.
If Kim wanted another visit from Void, maybe I’d give her one. But it was probably best if I didn’t use him more than needed and give the BSH more chances to uncover his identity.
I stored the thought away for my next therapy session with Angelina.