Almost Infamous: A Supervillain Novel (13 page)

In 1975, Radiation Queen was killed after a prolonged battle with the Protectors. Her daughter, Emily Ender, had been born with the same power of radiation manipulation and readily stepped into the identity as the new Radiation Queen, intending to take over her mother’s criminal empire and avenge her death.

The problem was, she wasn’t the only one to pounce on the Radiation Queen mantle. A street-tough chick from Detroit named Myra Mont who was born with similar powers (she could only manipulate the microwave spectrum) decided to start calling herself Radiation Queen around the same time.

Thinking this was a miscommunication, Emily kindly asked Myra to stop using the name.

She declined.

Emily then sent in her lawyers.

Myra sent them to the burn ward.

Emily then sent in some thugs to beat up Myra’s family.

Since they succeeded, Myra sent them to the morgue.

Finally, Emily went in herself to confront this rapidly escalating annoyance.

Nobody really knows what went down after that, but around six in the morning of March 24, 1975, one of the largest nuclear blasts in recorded history erased most of Detroit from the map. The Protectors responding to the explosion found Emily and Myra still clawing at each other and throwing balls of glowing energy, even as they were being haloed.

Detroit remains to this day one of the most dangerous and polluted places in America.

Rumor has it Emily and Myra share adjacent cells in the Tower.

#LessonLearned:
Avoid pointless rivalries whenever possible.

8

APEX STRIKE VS. CARNIVORE

If it weren’t so insultingly blasphemous to him, I’d say God bless Odigjod, because without him, life on Death Island would have been really boring. Sure, there were our hikes, and there were the classes and tests, but they all took something out of you. Sometimes you just needed to relax and unwind.

And I couldn’t think of a better way to unwind than watching Odigjod make one of the walls of the girls’ shower transparent… while the girls used it, of course.

The show included a full view of Nevermore, the Gnome Caller, and Apsara, a beautiful telekinetic girl from India who was kicking my ass in all our Power Perfection classes. (I would have held it against her had she not looked so good wearing a thin sheen of water and soap.) Contrary to what the Internet had taught me, girls’ group showers were not a nonstop lesbian orgy, but were still pretty nice. We made sure to be stealthy, and Odigjod said he could make it so that we could see them but they couldn’t see us. But, to be completely honest, the way they pranced and spent so much time lathering themselves up, part of me was pretty sure they knew and were putting on a show.

“You think they’re using a new shampoo?” Showstopper asked.

“Same as always I think,” Spasm said, munching from a bag of popcorn.

“Seems to be taking a lot longer than usual to wash out,” Showstopper said, stealing some of his popcorn.

“This one’s on me,” Circus said, smiling and bouncing back and forth spastically in his lawn chair. “Touch a bottle, change its molecular composition just so slightly that it still looks, feels, and smells the same but takes ten percent longer to wash out. Don’t all thank me at once.”

For someone who usually hung out with Carnivore, Circus wasn’t so bad. On the rare occasions when he dropped the cartoon look and slowed down, he was almost decent to hang around, at least as pudgy, fifteen-year-old Japanese nerds go. However, given his ability to hold complete control over reality within six inches of himself and the fact that puberty was hitting him like a ton of bricks, he could also be unpredictable and annoying as shit.

“Thank you,” I said before he might have decided to do something more attention-grabbing… at least more attention-grabbing than what he was already doing.

Some of the other guys were able to ignore him. Sitting right next to him, Spasm wasn’t.

“Could you restrain yourself, or perhaps just go to the bushes?”

Circus scoffed, “I see a hot girl, I’m gonna ogle. I see a hot naked girl, I’m gonna file that in the spank bank. I see
three
hot naked girls showering, I’m gonna jack it. It’s biology. Can’t be helped. Besides, I put up the censor bar! What’s the problem?”

I had to give him that. He did put up a floating black bar in front of his hand and crotch, but you could still see
what
he was doing, even though you couldn’t actually see it.

“Your bar’s too big,” Showstopper suggested.

“Yeah, but it’s still there! I’m totally fucking PG-13, cut me some slack!”

Spasm had less patience for Circus. He pointed at him.

The younger boy looked like he’d been kicked in the gut, jerking and falling out of his chair with a face that looked equal parts pleasure and pain.

“You’re done,” Spasm said.

“The fuck, dude!” Circus exclaimed. “Did you just—”

“Now wash your hands and let us watch in peace,” Spasm said, never once taking his eyes off the shower. Staggering to his feet and looking confused, Circus took on his cartoon clown form and bounced away towards the men’s showers.

“Thanks for taking one for the team,” Showstopper said, joining the rest of us in patting Spasm on the back.

Spasm shrugged, lighting up another cigarette. “I’ve done worse for better reasons.”

Too soon for our liking, the girls finished. Though this got some groans, it wasn’t the end of the world; the girls traveled in packs when it came to the showers, so we knew that more would come soon.

Unfortunately for us, that more happened to be Ghost Girl and Firewall.

“Okay, guys, show’s over. Shut it down, Odigjod,” I said, to the groans of the rest of the group. Though Firewall and Ghost Girl were probably the two least attractive girls on the island, they weren’t that bad looking, and these guys would take anything.

I couldn’t look in on
their
private time, though, something about it just felt… weird. So we went off in search of breakfast and Felix. Breakfast was in the mess hall, as usual (though boasting a waffle bar today), but Felix wasn’t. Since he hadn’t announced a hike, though, we had an idea of where we could hunt him down.

Sure enough, he was in a dark corner of the ruins, making out with Swashbuckler (Carnivore’s pirate friend).

Showstopper decided to announce our presence by touching a finger to his temple and making Felix and Swashbuckler engage in an elaborate tap dance routine.

“You’re getting better at these,” I said.

“That’s the thing about art, you always have to outdo yourself,” Showstopper replied. “Wanna join them? Make it a threesome?”

I shuddered. “Don’t even try getting in my head.”

“Fine, fine, ruin all my fun,” he said, letting them go. Swashbuckler bounced off a couple walls parkour-style and leapt over us, yelling a long string of British profanity (which, to my ears at least, wasn’t dirty in the slightest). Felix was only slightly less offended.

“Seriously guys, what the fuck? When’s the last time I ever cockblocked you?” he said, crystallizing the palms of his hands before smacking Showstopper and me in the backs of our heads.

“We’d need dates first, so, never I guess,” Showstopper replied, rubbing the back of his head.

Even with the pain, I started laughing like hell. “So we gonna plan a wedding for you guys or what?”

Showstopper poked me in the ribs. “That joke was funny until you started laughing.”

Felix took up most of our walk to the mess hall explaining how he and Swashbuckler weren’t serious, that they were just making the most of being the only two gay guys here and had what fun they could. He didn’t need to defend himself, not to me at least. Though Swashbuckler was a douche who wore more makeup than most of the girls here, I was glad at least someone in our group was getting some.

Of course, dealing with Swashbuckler’s friends was another matter entirely.

Swashbuckler, Circus, and, of course, Carnivore intercepted us before we could make the mess hall. As usual, Carnivore was angry, and as usual he directed that anger towards me.

“You shouldn’t have cut the shower show off. Some of us weren’t finished,” he growled.

Three-plus weeks on this island, and I still hadn’t figured out how not to feel like a deer in headlights around Carnivore.

“He was,” Showstopper said, pointing at Circus.

“But I wasn’t,” Carnivore said.

“Well, you could have always used your imagination, or did they remove that when they gang-raped your genes?” Showstopper goaded.

Carnivore hissed, flicking a snake-like tongue at Showstopper and baring his fangs. That got Showstopper to shut up. Taking a step forward, Carnivore put a clawed hand on my chest. Threatening, but not enough to set off his Creeper.

“Next time, I don’t care if it’s your girlfriends or your mommy showering, we’ll tell you when we’re done.”

“They’re not my girlfriends,” I said, trying to sound tough while hiding my shattered nerves.

Carnivore cocked his head, sniffing something on the wind, and turned toward the mess hall with his gang.

“We’ll finish this after classes,” he said as they walked away.

After classes? What was this, high school?

The hero-led classes were a mixed bag.

Most of them were like being in school again, at least, what I’d imagine being in an acting school would be like. We had classes on diction and inflection, on line memorization and stage presence, on boosting our confidence and being able to radiate an air of being a professional supervillain. These were all right, and I did pretty well thanks in most part to the superhero teachers, who seemed to like me. Frankly, these subjects weren’t the sort of thing I’d have thought the superheroes would be good at teaching, but since most of them did more film and TV shows than actual heroing these days, it made sense. Periodically we would get pulled out of these classes for a sit-down with a personal image consultant who would run us through ideas for costumes and ways of improving our supervillain persona. I was good here as well, so they didn’t have much to change, but Felix, Firewall, and Odigjod were run through the ringer with suggestions.

The physical fitness and fighting classes that Blackjack led ran us ragged, but after the first couple weeks (combined with Felix’s hikes) I was beginning to feel pretty damn good about myself. I was getting the hang of Cape Fu (the showy and deadly mixed-martial-arts all respectable supers prefer), and was starting to figure out how to merge it with the stage fighting courses so that I could look cool without killing whoever I was fighting. Some of us even got special training in weapons; Ghost Girl had become fairly lethal with a retractable quarterstaff that her consultant thought would make her look cooler.

The class that I always looked forward to and dreaded the most was my Power Perfection class, where all of us with similar powers were put into small classes to be taught by a specialist hero who could help us “maximize our superhuman potential.”

I looked forward to it because I got to sit next to Nevermore. Though she wasn’t telekinetic, her powers of projection were deemed close enough, so I got at least a good hour every day to ogle and flirt with her. And by flirting, of course I mean her looking good and occasionally giggling at me and me trying not to say the worst thing possible (as Ghost Girl would say).

She was good at flirting. I was pretty sure I was improving.

I dreaded the class because of pretty much everything else… like the fact that I was at the bottom of the class. Apsara, the two other guys whose codenames I could never remember, and Nevermore all had precision, enough to a point where they could safely use their powers to fly. I was easily the strongest one there, but no way was I going to risk trying to pick myself up off the ground. I could break things too easily, lift some things with a bit more difficulty, and according to my teacher I was a long way away from having control over my power. Hell, I’d almost killed myself with a mango!

My teacher was the other problem.

I didn’t doubt Helios’s credentials as a superhero. In his mid-twenties, he had the devastatingly handsome look of a movie star and knew how to pull off his white and gold suit. His mastery of telekinesis was impressive, as were his energy blasts and superstrength, and I’d seen enough of his commercials and movies to know he was a pretty good actor.

I also didn’t doubt that he had it out for me for what I did to Icicle Man.

While he put the others through basic exercises, he put me through the most difficult tests where I’d always make a fool out of myself. There were times during exercises where I’d be covered in mud and bruises, and the only sound I could hear was everyone else’s laughter. I was sure I was gone after each class, but I kept passing on to the next stage.

I was pretty sure he just kept me around to torture me, and nothing he said or did contradicted this theory.

Yet even after my run-in with Carnivore that morning, I was feeling pretty good heading to Power Perfection class. Not even Helios dropping the bomb that we’d have our fifth elimination test later in the day could ruin my mood. Our lesson of the day was to see how many clay pigeons we could shoot out of the air when ten were launched. Apsara, normally the overachiever, managed to get eight. The other two guys managed five each. Nevermore projected multiple tattoos at once, sending out a swarm of birds, a swinging bladed pendulum, and a stylized (and surprisingly limber) orangutan to destroy nine targets before they hit the ground.