Supervillains 2 Chapter 14 (Patreon)

Melody was wiping the slime off her jeans as we entered the Bureau. “I can’t believe they tried to kidnap you again.”

I shrugged. It was becoming a regular occurrence, so much so that I felt like I was villain bait.

Maybe it was just being ‘only enhanced’ and being given an important position like the deputy director.

“It’s not so bad.” Stella jabbed the air and looked particularly vicious with some blood on her and three villains tied up at her feet.

Mona rooted around in my head. “He wants us to get them down to processing and hand the paperwork off to the analysts. Come on.” She was in street clothes, but arrived with her mask on, still trying to hide her popstar identity.

Each of them took a villain and continued dragging them down to lockup.

I enjoyed watching their rears. Mona’s started swaying heavily as soon as I realized it.

Shaking my head, I had other things to do and moved on to visiting the mad scientists, taking the elevator down.

Just as I stepped into the elevator, pushing the button to head down to the scientists, Kim shouted. "Hold the door."

I put my hand in the door to keep it open for her.

"Thanks. Great minds think alike, right?" She blew out a heavy breath and straightened up next to me.

"Still no report from them. Think they are all passed out on the floor in there?" I joked.

Kim didn't laugh. "They become like zombies when they haven't slept in a long time." She shivered. "Creepy mad scientists."

I nodded while making a gap of ki around myself. I wasn’t sure when or where one of them would use a sensor again.

"They can't be that bad." I replied, but she had a haunted look. I braced a little more for what we’d see when the doors opened.

The elevator doors parted, revealing the white, sterile room.

Mad scientists milled around with hunched shoulders and bloodshot eyes. The way they moved really did seem like zombies. They were all less coordinated, moving in jerking half motions, like they forgot what they were doing mid reach.

Kim shuddered beside me. "See."

"I admit defeat. But my brain is safe?" I joked.

She had a small smile. "Just don't bleed, and they won't notice you."

"That's sharks, not zombies." I chuckled, and my laughter drew the attention of more than a few of them.

Doctor Wells popped up from a huddle. "Director, Deputy. One moment."

She pulled off a pair of bloody gloves and threw them away casually as she stumbled over.

I guessed the huddle that I had seen earlier was actually an autopsy in progress. "Wells, how are things? We still haven't gotten a report."

She frowned. "I said by the end of the day." Then she checked her wrist that was missing her watch.

Patting her lab coat, she checked pockets, failing to find it. Moving over to her desk, she shifted a few papers around to reveal a partially disassembled watch. "It was really bothering me with how much it was beeping. I made it almost impossible to disable the sleep alarms unless I took the damn thing apart."

"Sounds like it was on purpose." I commented.

"Oh, it was." She smiled, despite the dark circles around her eyes. "Otherwise I can get too engrossed in my work, and it is terrible for my health. Give me a second; I'll put it back together."

I turned to Kim to make sure I wasn't the only one seeing the irony.

The mad scientist was taking tools off her desk to put her watch back together, to check the time.

Kim cleared her throat. "Doctor Wells, it's been a day since we last talked to you."

The scientist looked up and stared at us for a moment as it settled in. "Fuck. This is why I need this watch."

"Maybe you should fuse the casing together this time so you can't take it apart to disable it this time." I added.

"Oh good idea, let me go get my soldering set up."

Kim glared at me as she grabbed the mad scientist by the shoulders. "How about you give us an update and then go get some sleep before you burn your fingers off?"

Doctor Wells blinked owlishly at Kim while her hands continued to move, putting together the watch. "The secondary samples that the deputy had delivered to us have proven very interesting. One was just consumed and one was still dried out."

"The monster fruit." I gave it a name.

"Yes. Fitting." Doctor Wells nodded along with me. "The monster fruit appears to be a living cluster of cells, dehydrated for longer term storage. The cells are highly aggressive, functioning not that differently than cancer. They attach to a super’s body and use it for nutrients before metastasizing almost immediately and spreading throughout the body."

"So, they are giving themselves cancer?" Kim asked, dumbfounded. "Who would do something so stupid?"

I cleared my throat. "Easily. As someone who is just enhanced, I can understand the allure of power."

"They don't all end up as the cancerous giants though." Doctor Wells continued as her watch became assembled enough that it started beeping. "Those that have a more monstrous appearance have a mix of new cells in their bodies. The new cells seem to be distributed fairly evenly throughout their bodies and are both the cause of the secondary mutations and their increase in power."

"Does it give them a new power?" Kim asked. "Any issue with the second set of cells?"

The doctor shook her head. "I’d like a survivor to be male to help me make an apparent determination. But I can tell you it certainly changes powers and amplifies them. I just don’t know if it gives an entirely new power. So far, the second set of cells appears stable in the samples we have, but they are all less than a week old."

"So, does that mean that those who have already taken the monster fruit could become unstable in the future?" I questioned.

"My guess is the monster fruit is just being tested in these larger pools of subjects, so it will take time to see the results. But the research is certainly fascinating." The doctor had a loopy smile as her watch continued to beep.

I stared at her, amazed that she wasn’t more concerned that the larger pool of test subjects was villains in our city.

I saw it differently. If people discovered that there was something out there to reliably boost their power, it would become a nightmare. The city would devolve into chaos as dozens of people started turning into cancerous giants every day.

"Get some sleep, Wells." Kim put a hand on the doctor's shoulder.

"Will do. I have a cot down here somewhere." The doctor wandered off, and I headed back towards the elevator.

Kim waited until the doors closed and sighed. "I should tell you. Yesterday we picked up a few stragglers from Libertech trying to peddle a drug to boost powers, too. Though, theirs was purely chemical."

I thought back to Antiope and her escape from Libertech. She had warned me that his work would live on. "There were some incredibly strong supers when we pulled Melody out. They might have been using this drug."

"They were. Libertech had apparently started human trials." Kim replied.

I knew differently. When I’d rescued Melody, they’d been giving the drugs to college students. The more I thought about it, the more I was convinced that Stella's change in her power and her plight have been caused by a similar drug.

It just surprised me how quickly they had moved. Antiope had been the strongest I had seen in that underground lab. She must be making the waves.

"So, we have two competing organizations trying to improve supers, and they have started testing in our city." I summarized. "At what point do we have a real problem on our hands? So far, we are seeing the failures more than the successes. What if we have a group of enhanced supers forming in the city?"

Kim sighed. "I suspect that’s likely. And the followup question is do we have one group or two at the moment?"

"I’d rather know where the heck they are hiding." I didn't care if there were one or two organizations. I wanted to stop them before they damaged more people the way they had Stella.

"Given our inability to stop the cancerous giants without killing them, the teleporter is our most likely lead. The analysts are working to track him down." Kim reassured me.

I nodded, planning to put my own team on it as well. I wanted answers.

"If we don’t find them quickly, this could spiral out of control."

The doors opened at the lobby level again, and I didn't hesitate. I headed straight for The Spine to go talk to my analysts.

"Be careful, Miles."

I walked into The Spine, my eyes adjusting to the darkness as analysts leaned over their screens.

"Miles." Beatrix beamed as I entered.

I remembered how I’d flirted a bit to pull her attention from the villain group I’d deleted and cringed a bit. I needed to figure out a way to manage that.

"Beatrix. Lovely to see you, I have a report from my analysts; I'll catch you on the way out." I tilted my head slightly. "Did you cut your hair?"

She was certainly wearing it differently.

"No, I just put a little more effort into it today." She twirled her raven locks and batted her eyelashes.

I mentally hit myself. I had definitely flirted too much. As I headed past her, I gave a thumbs up and went into the pit of analysts.

 "Ben, good to see you working for a change."

The man was diligently typing at his computer.

Mary and Rachel turned to me, looking ready to report. Mary cleared her throat. "He's being put to work."

I could almost hear the whip crack in the air at her words. I made a mental note that she might be a good natural leader of my analyst team. She could keep Ben going.

Rachel's fox ears twitched. "We have information on Emma." She opened up a few files on her computer. "Somehow, she's moving around the city without being seen by most of the cameras."

I already knew she'd be doing that. Back when she took me in, she had shown me just how to do the same. "But you've seen her a few times?"

"We made a map." Rachel brought up a map of the city with red dots all over it. There were also a few circles. "We have been trying to figure out where she might be staying based on the frequency of cameras spotting her. The largest clusters are here." She pointed at a red circle enclosing where the art district butted up against New Liberty, a very expensive neighborhood.

"She'll stay in the art district. That is very much her scene. All these dots." I pointed to the ones going in and out of New Liberty. "These are her casing places to rob. How many have reported robberies in this area?"

Mary turned around to her desk and started pulling up records. There was clearly a high density of robberies being reported in New Liberty. "Shit, she's stealing all of this?"

"Potentially. Are any of them an expensive mom's charm bracelet?" I asked, thinking about what I'd seen on her wrist. It was different from her normal jewelry.

Mary scrolled through the list and stopped. "Yep. How'd you guess?" Mary stared at me, clearly feeling out of the loop.

I'd have to give them a little more. "She is trouble. She has always been a thief, and she came to visit me yesterday. I noticed it on her wrist; it’s different from what she normally wears."

"Do you need help, Miles?" Rachel asked, her ears flattening with her concern.

"No. Not yet, at least. Good work on finding her rough location. Keep an eye on her if you can. But I have something else to pile on top of your work. We have two more people of interest. One is the teleporting lizard man from the conflict two days ago. The second is Antiope, or at least, that's what she called herself when I ran into her last."

Rachel searched both of the descriptions in their files and pulled up two pictures. "These two? One was security at Libertech, the other was an unknown. Do you know anything about them that might not be in the files?"

They wouldn’t see the information from the scientists until they wrote their report, and at the current trajectory, I did not know when that would be. "They are both involved in power enhancing drugs that could lead to a lot of destruction in our city. One is chemical, the other biological." I pointed to the two subjects on the screen. "Antiope is trying to continue Libertech's work even after the Chimera incident."

"Drugs.” She repeated back, thinking. “So that means both of them need a producing facility and likely a network to run the drugs to the consumer." Mary nodded along.

"The lizardman has been running them himself. That's why we can't figure out a location. He has teleporting capabilities, making it harder to track him. Antiope hasn't shown herself since Libertech became an enormous hole in the ground."

Rachel nodded along, her fox ears bobbing. I really wanted to touch them, wondering if they were soft.

"So, Antiope will be the first target. We're on it." Mary confirmed. "Rachel, you and Kate take the lizard man. He has to eat sometime. Let’s see if we can't find out where. Ben, I need you to run a search for Antiope." They got to work quickly, seeming to forget I was standing there.

I stood for an extra moment, proud of my team. And also avoiding walking by Beatrix again for a few more moments.

I wasn’t sure what I’d do about that. I could use her on my side, but she also was a good person. She deserved somebody fully interested in her, and I barely knew her.

Deciding I needed to get moving and couldn’t put it off any longer, I turned to head back out of The Spine as the main screens started strobing red. A warning banner went across the screen.

Stepping up behind Beatrix, I was all business. "Beatrix, what's happening?"

"Titan sensors for Mountain City." Her hands were blurring across the keyboard. "Not an immediate concern for us."

A titan at Mountain City meant either The Fenris Wolf or The Roc were around.

"It's the balloon sensors." Beatrix cursed. "The Roc is headed towards Mountain City."

Kim burst through the door. "I have a request for help from Mountain City. Which titan?"

"Roc." Beatrix quickly answered.

Kim nodded, turning to go before she noticed I was standing there. "Want to go on a trip? They are going to request Venus to assist."

***

It hadn't taken Kim long to organize a plane and pull together a small list of heroes for the trip.

Seeing the other side of the organization for a titan was intense, but they have protocols in place.

We weren't bringing as many heroes as we had to take on the Leviathan, which surprised me.

But The Roc was a whole different beast. The titan was a bird whose wing span could shade an entire city. It was also one of the most terrifying of the titans because it was highly unpredictable.

The other titans would all approach from the ocean, but The Roc came from the air, from any angle. And because it was in the air, it was hard to manage collateral damage on the city in any fight.

I looked over, noting that Kim seemed entirely calm. I was a little anxious. Apparently, the three directors of Mountain City had asked for me personally to lead this mission.

I was currently strapped into the plane with one hand wrapped around Stella while the other held a microphone for the plane's speakers.

"We will arrive and organize with Mountain City's team. They will take the lead. Those designated for direct combat with The Roc will organize on the east edge of the city. The rest are on collateral control. Be ready. The greatest danger to the city is the hurricane-force winds it will generate with its wings even getting close. Many of you are on damage control."

The heroes on the plane were nodding along with me. I didn't recognize many of them, but Miss Point City had joined us, along with Victor and his overly large camera.

They looked more like they were going for a photo op than a titan attack.

"I'm so excited I get to fight the titan. Thank you, Miles." Stella rubbed up against me. "Going to pluck that overgrown turkey's feathers."

"Prioritize your safety." I narrowed my eyes at her.

"I will monitor her." Melody agreed from next to us. "Besides, we need to try our new combo attack."

I remembered them mentioning something about the combo attack in a training report. They were working together and I was happy about it. I realized I should probably understand how it worked.

"Go over it again for me?"

Stella grinned. "She increases the gravity on me so I can get really heavy. Then I can put more power behind my punches. Or in this case, if I do a dive on top of The Roc, I’ll have much more momentum and force." Stella jabbed in the air playfully.

I smiled through my stress. Stella always lightened the moment.

"I will try to land a finisher on The Roc." Venus reminded me. "I do hope my augmenter shows up." She wasn’t a talented actress, but she was good enough that others wouldn’t pick up on it.

"Hopefully he's drawn to another titan fight." I agreed. "I'll be rooting for all three of you from their central command center. Apparently, the directors that run Mountain City's BSH branch want to talk to me."

"Oh, I think I've heard about them. Can't one of them see the future?" Melody asked.

I nodded, having heard the same rumors. Not much was really known about the directors. Kim hadn't given me any clues, but she told me to trust them.

If she put so much faith in them, the least I could do was give them a chance.