Saving Supervillains 1 Chapter 3 (Patreon)

I walked back to my office, annoyed I’d have to wait the entire day to have the meeting with the BSG. Really, I was just annoyed that I didn’t get out of meeting the BSH. I liked keeping a more peaceful life, and part of that strategy was avoiding them.

As I walked, I was aware of more than a few women in the office peaking over their cubicles to watch me. Once in a while, I’d meet their eyes, watching them duck back down.

The way my office mates all looked at me sometimes made me feel like a gazelle on a prairie full of lions.

If I wasn’t careful, they’d all take me down.

I chuckled to myself. If they tried, they’d be very surprised.

“Miles!” Ben’s overly enthusiastic voice cut through all my thoughts.

I wanted to be grumpy with him given my mood, but it was like being mad at a puppy.

“Hi Ben.” I grunted, finding myself wrapped up in a huge hug.

He put me back down, and I pulled my shirt back in place.

Ben smacked me on the back, following as I headed to my office. “I hear you nailed it with your latest project.”

Reaching the door, I was thankful not to be in the bullpen with the rest of the cubicle workers. I had no issue with them. I just liked my privacy.

Closing the door with Ben inside, I rolled my eyes. “Candice, as usual, wanted to go in a completely different direction the moment we showed it to her. But data doesn’t lie. This was the right choice.”

“She means well.” Ben saw the best in everyone. “Don’t take it too harshly.”

“I have zero issues with her trying to pick it apart. But you should have seen the team’s faces when she tried to flip it.”

Ben winced. “They okay?”

“Don’t know. They now have the rest of the day off. The team worked last weekend, and it seemed only fair.” I plugged my laptop into the terminal and booted up the two monitor setup. “Can’t work them too hard.”

My impromptu office companion bounced his eyebrows. “Working late in the office? I’m sure you’ve noticed Kate is lovely.”

I laughed. Maybe he has horny puppy energy. But he was harmless; most of the women in the office would be eager to jump into his bed.

“No, we do actual work. I’m not coming into the office to bang some chick. That’s what bars and dating apps are for.”

“You don’t use either of those.” Ben pointed out. I kept my dating life low profile. I was pretty sure Ben didn’t know about the dates I had gone on lately.

I rolled my eyes, not wanting to discuss my dating life again.

But as I looked at Ben, I could tell it was coming, whether I liked it or not. Ben wasn’t going to take no for an answer until he got me to agree to go to the bars with him.

“Fine.” I cut right through the impending conversation. “As long as nothing comes up.” I didn’t lie, but I was sure I could find something that would come up.

“Good. Your team will be excited.” Ben smirked.

“My team?” I frowned.

“Kate, Mary, and Rachel all agreed to come to the bar with us.” Ben grinned from ear to ear, looked at me expectantly like a puppy waiting for his head pat.

I rubbed the heels of my hand into my brow. “Ben, I can’t date my direct reports.”

“Oh, come on. That sort of harassment stuff is only for when women date their male direct reports. Plus, they are pretty cute.” He said it like it was a temptation.

Melody had been hotter, and she couldn’t even tempt me into something more serious. “Ben, I’ll go, but only if you don’t push them on me.”

“Fine. But since you started this whole harem campaign, you should really set a good example.” His brows bounced, and he made himself at home in my office, plopping down on the couch.

I rolled my eyes once more, shifting my attention back to my computer.

Ben pulled out his laptop and put it on his lap, beginning to type like crazy. Ben was a wiz with numbers and computers; he ran the backend for most of our systems.

It appeared I now officially had an office mate.

Ben and I worked in silence for a while, both of us typing out emails before Ben reminded me again about my promise to go to the bar and left for a meeting.

I settled in. Time flew by in the strange monotony of answering emails and joining calls that seemed like a temporal vortex sucking my time away as the day progressed.

A knock on my door broke my focus and made me look up.

As soon as I saw her, visions of smashed buildings filled my head. I was brought back to hundreds of dead supers surrounding me in piles of rubble. And she was in the middle of it all, the only other survivor, wearing her torn up costume.

Horrible feelings of guilt, dread, and confusion welled up in me. I did my best to remind myself that I was not there. That was in the past, but it felt so fresh and real.

I worked to take even a single breath, pushing all of it down until finally, I was back in the office with Kim Smith, aka Wrath, knocking on my door.

She was a petite woman with hair that looked like burning embers, which was fitting for her powers. Because Kim was a woman, and like most female supers, she had two powers.

Her first was well known, she had wrathful immortality. She could recover from any damage, and all of that damage made her stronger. Her second power was pyrokenisis.

Together, she could become a raging bonfire while healing all damage. That kind of power had made her the number two hero in the world before she hung up her cape and took on a more coordination role, founding the BSH.

Now, at nearly sixty years old, she only looked twenty-five. Her immortality apparently worked effectively against aging as well.

“Uh, excuse me? I was looking for Candice’s office. The secretary was already out for the day.” The director of the Bureau of Super Heroes spoke from the doorway.

Kim squinted at me for a moment before she shook it off. Dismissing something.

She shouldn’t be able to place me with what had happened back then. I had been a kid back when she would have seen me, and now I didn’t look my ripe age of forty-six. I looked more like I was in my late twenties.

“Yeah. I think I’m in the same meeting. Let me show you the way.” Closing my laptop mid-email, I promised myself I’d finish it up on Monday.

“That would be great. So, you are the mastermind behind all the marketing?” She gave me a big smile with the compliment.

“Hah. My team did a great job on this one. But I think mastermind title would have to go to Point City’s very own, Wrath.” I made a grand gesture towards her.

Her tight navy blue pantsuit failed to subdue her flame-red hair. In it, she didn’t look a bit like the hero. “Oh god, it’s been years since I put on that suit.”

“I was a big fan of yours as a kid, even if you’d already hung up the cape.” I tried to help cement that I wasn’t old enough to be the kid from that awful day. The last thing I wanted was for her to place how she knew me.

For years I had hidden from every hero, and now I was going to be caged in an office with the one that had the best shot of recognizing me.

“Now I can do more good. I wish the BSH had been around when I was wearing a cape.”

Gesturing to Candice’s office at the end of the hall, I let Kim enter first.

“Candice. Wonderful to see you. Sorry for the late meeting. I’m kept far too busy.” Kim stepped right into the room and sat down. “Let’s see this thing.”

Candice looked at me suddenly, as if I was supposed to carry the presentation.

Luckily, I could spin up a presentation in the blink of an eye. “So, per the specs you sent us over, we ran an analysis over a wide demographic in the city. Candice, I sent you the presentation and the video. Could you pull it up for us?”

The older lady hunted and pecked at the keyboard to search in a way that drove me nuts, but I continued on, keeping Kim’s attention.

“We tried a number of mockups, and in the end, everyone responded best to a woman giving the message. Apparently, old stereotypes still fit.”

“That’s why we loaned you Miss Point City.” Kim nodded along with me. “Look, I trust you guys did your research. Why not just show me the finished product, and we agree that you took the right route?”

Damn, if she wasn’t tied to some of my most traumatic memories, I think I could have liked her.

“Sure, hit it Candice.”

The ad started playing, and I grabbed Candice’s monitor, twisting it around for Kim.

Kim nodded along politely with it until it came to an end. Then she gave us a few claps of appreciation. “That looks great.”

“Thanks. We knew it would be a hit.” Candice soaked up the praise despite having very little to do with the end product, and even trying to shut it down earlier that day.

And it didn’t escape my notice that her voice trickled with just a hint of her ability.

I hated her super power. She had subtle hypnotic elements she put in her voice to make people compliant.

Sensing what she’d done, I did what I always did and dismissed the power in her words before they reached me.

Nobody was able to sense that I could dissipate it like that. It was part of my ability that would definitely get me locked up in some concrete, lightless cell, given the threat it posed.

“Very good. I see why we keep coming back to this firm for all the work. I almost want to get a man and share him after that.” Kim said. “If you’d send that over to me, I’ll make sure it gets to the right people. Do you also have the other cities ready?”

“Unfortunately, those are still under production.” I cut in. “The original timeline was for the original scope. We’ll have to cut in regional super heroes for the other variants, and it will take maybe six weeks for all eight of them.”

“Oh. That works.” Kim shrugged, not caring in the slightest for the delay.

I gave Candice a look, pointing out that all it took was a bit of communication.

“We’ll need to shoot with each of the regional heroes in about four weeks.” I figured I might as well make the ask now.

Kim nodded, not surprised. “Give me a list, and I’ll have them fly in when you need them.”

“Wonderful! Kim, I’m so glad you could make time to swing by and see the finished product..” Candice beamed.

Kim shrugged. “I’m kind of old school. I like to talk in person.” She laughed to herself. “Thanks for meeting and thank you Miles for letting me put a face to the name.”

I nodded politely, but I would have rather she had no way of putting a face to my name.

“Oh, heads up. The city is going into emergency lockdown tomorrow, maybe for a couple of days, as we try to purge the bactimen.” Kim paused, letting us digest the information.

“Really?” I was surprised.

“Yeah. We have realized that we need to crush them outright now before they become a larger problem. We have a few irons in the fire on how to do a big sweep.” Kim shrugged like it was just another day at the office, which it was for her, given she ran the office that all super heroes worked for.

“You should bring your laptop home, Miles. You can work from home next week.” Candice smiled at me. She never liked that I left it in the office. It made it hard for her to make asks of me on the weekend.

And that was one hundred percent why I left it here. It gave me good separation.

“Sure.” I told her. Working from home might actually be a nice change of pace.

“Good. I’ll let you two get back to work.” Kim stood up and excused herself.

Candice watched her go and then turned back to me. “Bring your laptop home. You and your team need to finish before six weeks to make a good impression.”

This time she poured her super power into her voice, trying to manipulate me.

“Of course.” I replied, letting her think it had worked.

But once again, I shut it down. I was not letting her ability get anywhere near me. Even at full strength, it was just a powerful suggestion, but it still pissed me off. She loved to use it to get people to do a little more.

Bitch.

And now that she wasn’t even a buffer between BSH and me, she was becoming even less valuable to me.

I headed towards the door, done with her. If I kept letting her talk, she might piss me off and make me do something I’d regret.

As I headed out, I failed to grab my laptop. As I got closer to the entrance, I ran back into Kim, who seemed to be on her way back in.

“Forget something?” I asked.

“Yeah, actually.” She pulled a folded up piece of paper out of her back pocket. “You guys run the bounty website for us too, right?”

It was a different department, but we did. “We do.”

“Here, can you send this for them to update? It’s urgent to deal with the bactimen.” She handed me the paper.

Of course. I opened it right then and there. “This is a villain?”

“Yeah, Demon is extremely dangerous. We can’t get anyone close enough to contact her, the bounty is for getting her on the phone to talk to us.” Kim grimaced a little at the idea of asking a super villain for help.

I studied her. If they were pulling in a villain and enforcing a lockdown, the bactimen must be a much larger problem than anyone realized.

“You don’t have her power listed here.” I commented.

“No one knows exactly what Demon’s power is. Everyone and everything just dies when they get close to her location. Finding her isn’t hard. Getting in contact with her is. We know where she is right now.” Kim tapped on the address written down on the messy note.

I had to admit; I was a little intrigued by the idea of everything that got close to her dying. That was some power.

I looked down at the bounty. I couldn’t help but think about the idiots that would get themselves killed going after it. And the blowback we’d have to deal with when the lawsuits came.

Staring at the sheet, I wondered if I should take it. I was pretty sure I could handle anything a super threw at me.

Not wanting to tell Kim that, I just replied, “I’ll get this over to our systems team to upload tomorrow morning.”

“Thanks. There’s too much going on. I’m sorry to just drop this on you. But I would appreciate it.” She gave a shake of her head. She seemed overwhelmed.

“You and the heroes do so much for us. It’s only fair if I help out a little.” I tossed an idle compliment. Her bureau and the heroes were worthless in my eyes, but my job required me to be polite.

“Thanks.” Kim headed off. It was past six and getting dark early. The stars were already out as I headed into the lobby.

Outside, the pig-nosed guard leered at me as I crossed the threshold, but one look at the not so far away BSH director curbed any thought she might have to retaliate for the morning.

Instead of following Kim, I went back over to the alley that was still coated in blood.

The train wouldn’t be running for the next half an hour, and I didn’t really feel like waiting.

Looking every which way for a camera or person, I found nothing and sensed nothing with my super power.

So pushing light away from me and let it wrap around me rather than bounce off me. It made a faint warp in the air if someone paid too close attention, but at night there wouldn’t be an issue. Then I gathered kinetic energy. Using that energy, I lifted myself off the ground before flying up into the dark night.

I had the paperwork tucked into my bag, and my mind kept wandering back to this Demon. Her ability seemed like a challenge, and it had been a while since I’d had a good challenge.

And helping find somebody who could help against a major villain in the city seemed like a good reason to be too busy to go to the bar with Ben and my team.

AN-  I'm sure a few of you are scratching your heads. Miles only has 1 power, but it is explained next chapter.