The Wrath of the Con: Part One

By William A. Hainline

When Gadget and his friends arrive at Fantazmagoricon, they have no idea what is in store. Like mad scientist superheroines and even more mad supervillains. Aliens, time travel, alternate realities, virtual realities, vampires, werewolves. shapeshifters, Elder Gods, sentient programs, deadly fantasies, and dreams within dreams within dreams. It's all there, like many worlds collided, just like those angel-headed, cosplaying cyberpunks dancing downstairs, all burning for that heavenly connection to that starry dynamo of the Machinery of the night. To quote the Hacker's Manifesto: "Damn kids, they're all alike."

 

But so what? Right? Fasten your seatbelt, Buttercup, 'cause Florin is goin' bye-bye . . . to the outer limits and the twilight zones of strange, new worlds where no one has ever been before. (Either that, or they have been there, and now the Mirrorshades have them safely locked up on Altair 4. Don't worry; it's for their and others' realities' safety. Er, that is, I mean, uh . . . they're on a farm. A happy little farm somewhere. Promise.)

 

Say goodbye to the primal mainstream as Ensign Mariner Beckett sets the TARDIS's spare Spore Drive (damn, that's hard to say) to stardate 86753.09 beneath Sunnydale, California, and bounces a graviton particle beam off the main deflector dish. Doesn't really matter 'cause, umm . . . So anyway, if you're a Trekker, a Browncoat, a Jedi, a Whovian, a 'Scaper, a Whedonite, a Marvel buff, a DC fanatic, a Leaper, a Lovecraftian, a Shifter, a Furry, a SubGenius (or Pope), a reality-hacking Magickian, a video-game wizard, or a code-hacking badass, we bid you welcome to the Monkey House. Even if you're a more Casual traveler of these and other worlds, may the fnords be with you as you enter these dragon-haunted dungeons; might you live long and prosper as you have fun storming the castle; and may you scream, "Never say die, never surrender!" with all the other nerf-herding truffle-shufflers of tomorrow. . . as you run, screaming, your hair on fire, into the mad, mad multiverse of infinite improbability we've curated herein.

 

Please bring your towel, because I've got a bad feeling about this; never tell me the odds, dammit!

 

(This is Part One of a Three-part Series.)

• Language: English
• Publisher: William A. Hainline
• Release date: Nov 8, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223017066

Book preview

Table of Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER ONE

The Fandom Menace

1

THUNDER ROLLED IN THE clouds above the alleyway and lighting flashed, distracting Desirée Dizzy Weatherspark for only a second or two . . . but that was all the time Ravenkroft Evolutior needed in order to strike and strike hard.

Contrary to popular belief and comic book movies, an external metal contraption of clockwork and metal did not cushion one from the impact of blows sustained thereto;  in fact, it made them worse. She managed to fire her suit’s Tony Stark-inspired Repulsivators, just hard enough to right herself. She shook off the blow and got back to the fight within seconds. The Evangeliojaegers she and Ravenkroft battled in were both made of Alluzinium, an alloy of Dizzy’s own creation, based on the metallurgy of the alien saaucer she had safely stored away at the Mechanology research facility up in Boston. Alluzinium had ten times the strength and toughness of steel, but only a third the weight of aluminum. So the suits could take the punishment. The question was, could she?

And now, Weatherspark, said Ravenkroft, with a sneer, "You will meet your doom."

"Y’know, funny, I’ve always wanted to meet my Doom, she retorted, as she put up her metal-gauntleted fists one more time and they circled one another. I wonder if he likes cheese. Buffy liked cheese. She’s my idol. Her and Iron Man. But of course you knew that already. Viktor."

Your dated pop culture references won’t save you from what I have in store for you, Weatherspark. Nothing can save you now.

Yeah, about that. You’re right. Nothing can save me now. Except — wait, I know — killing you!

Ha! he said. "You can no more kill me than you can walk without that suit, little Dizzy. Remember . . . you kill me, you kill your ‘Unca Viktor,’ as you used to call him. We are one and the same."

You’re about as much the same as Viktor as my cat is a honey badger on meth, she said. "Now are we going to fight, or are we going to just orbit one another until my state of being reflects my oh-so-quirkily-chosen gamertag?"

"Gah! Enough with your attempts at being hip! Have at thee!"

He came at her in a flash, but she brought her leg up into a snap-kick — her purple bob-cut hair whirled around her round, emerald-green eyes at the edges of her helmet — and the actuators in the Evangeliojaeger’s leg let loose with a springing sound as her foot connected with the chest-piece of his Evangeliojaeger, knocking him back. She had barely missed hitting his Zero-Point Energy Reactor, and it was a damn good thing she had; just as with her suit, the reactor was the power source, and had she hit it, the resulting explosion would have blown half of Cambridge to smithereens with an Earth-shattering kaboom. The Reactor was a bulbous globe that glowed with ethereal, blue-and-purple arcs of plasma that curled and writhed from an electrode in the center. A large ring of metal wrapped in a tight coil of wire ran around the edges. It measured just eight inches in diameter . . . such a small thing to be a potential solution to the entire world’s energy problems. Yet another miracle mined from the alien saucer. Dizzy planned on gifting it to the world someday . . . maybe when it didn’t possess the power to blow an entire city to Fantasia and back if somebody sneezed the wrong way.

"Oh-ho," he said, snickering, backing away from her as she advanced on him. "I see we’ve been practicing our martial arts. Very good, young Desirée. But ah, what a poor substitute for the art of dance, eh? I remember, seeing you in your ballet shoes, when you were but yea-high to a grasshopper. You were quite talented, once upon a time. It is a pity your once-lofty ambitions were tragically laid low by fate, by chance, by chaos unbound . . . Tsk, tsk."

With a mighty yell, she kicked at him again, and her foot almost connected with his faceplate — but he caught it in mid-motion, and spun it at the ankle-joint of her Evangeliojaeger. She spun with it, crying out as her leg twisted, and landed on her back. She used the suit’s Repulsivators to spring back to her feet, like the goddesses of old rising from sacred waters. As she sprang back up, she hauled back a fist, and when she got to her feet — only a second and a half after going down — she whirled around and drove her fist mercilessly in his suit’s faceplate before he had time to react and block her. He staggered backward and into the wall of the alleyway.

Sit on that, buttplug, she said with a decisive nod. "You deserved that. You’ve crossed a line this time. You so do not frak with the people I love. You especially do not kidnap them."

She silently prayed to a god she didn’t technically believe in that Misto was still alive — wherever this evil nutball had stashed him.

"Is it really kidnapping when your prey leaves their doors unlocked? he said. More like securing an insurance policy with an unwitting volunteer."

He raised his right gauntlet. Luckily, he had telegraphed the move just before firing his wrist-mounted Disruptophazer and she dodged out of the way just in time. The purple-glowing pulse-blast hit the wall behind her, destabilizing the molecular structure of the brickwork; a blackened, burnt-out hole appeared instead. He fired again. Lucky for her — damn, apparently this was her night; well, knock on wood — the force field surrounding her Evangeliojaeger kicked in and deflected the blast; a soap-bubble-like glimmer flashed around her as it hit. The wise words of Han Solo echoed in her head: Don’t get cocky, kid. Right. Because the force field only worked for electromagnetic and nuclear forces — and it was horribly unstable, and only worked half the frakking time — so it worked peachy-keen for pulse blasts — well, sometimes — but it did frak-all for punches, kicks, bullets, or falling pianos. He made to fire a third time. Would her luck hold out?

Best not to find out. She ran at him — and hallelujah, the force-field held up against that shot! — and tackled him. They collided and hit the pavement; Dizzy felt the armor, gears, pistons, and wheels of her Evangeliojaeger bang and clatter against it, the motors and armatures whirring. His tentacles dug into the pavement — gods-damned things — with their pincers and lifted them up, holding them both aloft. Desperate to maintain control of the fight, she grappled with him, and yanked back a mechanized fist and then drove it into his faceplate. His head jerked to one side. He managed to heave over, his tentacles holding him up like spiders’ legs, and — whoa shit, woman overboard! — she toppled off of him and went rolling over, onto the pavement, and landed on her back, hitting hard. The force translated up through the metal of the Evangeliojaeger and straight into her actual back, the shock of the pain making her wince.

"Okay, ow, she said. That’s gonna leave a mark."

Pity you and I aren’t allies, Weatherspark, he said, as he sprang to his feet with the aid of his tentacles. "I could help you with that old spinal cord injury. Why, with just a dose of my serum — "

Ha! she said, as she scrambled back to her feet, and put up her fists once more — they circled one another like pro wrestlers about to start a match — "‘Your’ serum! Yeah right! You know as well as I do that Mutagenesis X-119 was dad’s worst. Idea. Ever. Not yours. Pure research scientists never see the light at the end of the tunnel as the oncoming headlamp of a locomotive made of pure frakkin’ evil."

"Indeed. It was," he said, practically hissing the words, a grimace of malice on his face. "And it was that which took Anastasia from Viktor. From us. And so now I carry on her work. Driving humanity toward its evolutionary apotheosis!"

Driving me up a wall frakkin’ sideways, is more like it, muttered Dizzy.

In a flash, Ravenkroft activated the Repulsivators in his suit; the pavement beneath him shattered, and — too late to react; frak! — he leaped through the air, and tackled her.

She hit the brick wall behind her. Her back screamed in pain again as he pinned her there by the arms with two of his tentacles, their pincer-claws grappling her forearms. A sharp twinge in her abdomen as he shoved a motorized knee into the ridged, flexible metal segments that protected it. He brought his faceplate close to hers, and aimed his left-wrist’s Disruptophazer right at her head. The coils inside in the barrel glowed with purple-white light. Gulp. Well frak. This didn’t look good at all, ladies and gentlemen.

Allow me . . . to be cle0.....2ar, he said, his voice like brittle ice. "I want the Tesseract Reactor, Weatherspark. And I want it now. Give me its location, and all will be well. I might even tell you where I’m holding your precious ‘adopted uncle,’ Michaelson, or ‘Misto’ as your so affectionately call him, in return. Tell me now, or you die. And of course, he dies, too. Pity. I rather liked him. Or rather, Viktor did, once . . . Yes, once upon a time . . . long ago . . ."

Jeebus Creepers . . . she had seen him up close before, but the sight never failed to unnerve her. Through the twin translucent, safety-glass face-plates of their Evangeliojaegers, Dizzy looked across at him and into his eyes. Twelve years. That’s how long he had been juicing with the serum. Or so she hypothesized. And ye gods, what it had done to him! His eyes had grown larger, and his irises cat-like . . . His nose had almost all but disappeared, becoming little more than two reptilian slits . . . His cranium had become slightly enlarged, to contain his enlarged brain . . . His skin had changed, too; it was now a pale, almost alabaster color, and slightly greenish. His hair had become white as snow, and he had lost too much of it for a man not even fifty-five. Ugh.

"You do realize just how butt-ugly you’ve gotten, right? she said. I mean, sure, with the right Mary Kay, and a little elbow grease, I’m sure I could pull a Montgomery Scott or a Geordi La Forge and work a minor miracle here. But even my considerable talents have their limits. Sorry. They just do. And besides. You kill me and you kill the secret to where the Reactor is. So, there you are. As my good and dear friend Captain Sheridan might say — stick it." She winked at him and grinned.

"AHH-AAAGGGHHH! he roared. Tell me where it’s hidden! He grabbed her by the segmented, flexible metal throat of her Evangeliojaeger with one of his tentacles, and used it to throw her to one side. She stumbled off to the right, her Evangeliojaeger’s Repulsivator boots clanking on the concrete as she caught her balance and steadied herself, then whirled around and fired her left-wrist Disruptophazer on the stun" setting. His force-field deflected the blast. Crap. She’d forgotten his Evangeliojaeger had those too. How the hell could she forget a thing like that? Heat of battle, maybe. Whatever. Had it really been six years since he’d hacked her private servers and stolen the design for the suit from her? Six years since she’d hacked his servers and stolen the design back, and incorporated the force-fields into her design? (The tentacles were just too frakkin’ hentai for her taste, if ya smelled what the Diz was cookin’.) And that wasn’t all . . . he’d also incorporated cell-repairing nanotech into his suit, which was the reason he couldn’t live outside of it for more than six hours at a time. Poor bastard. She’d thought several times about locating his hideout, breaking in, and simply stealing or destroying his suit, and letting nature take its course. But, no. Viktor was part of her extended family, even though they hadn’t spoken in years. And ya didn’t hurt — let alone kill — your extended family. Well, not much. At least no more than was good for them. Right?

Y’know, she said as she fired at him — his force-field deflected the shot — what’s the point of shooting at each other if only one out of every ten shots gets through the force-fields? They exchanged fire again. "You’d think that knowing only one out of every ten shots gets through, we’d each build ray guns that fire hundreds of shots a second — and again — like machine guns do, instead of slow, single shots that we have to fire-off individually. Once more,  they fired on one another. It makes no sense!"

He fired at her twice; her force-field absorbed both bolts. Perhaps you should have thought of that when you designed them! Once again, your incompetence shows itself!

She fired back at him and he fired at her; her force-field blocked the blast and so, frustrated, he came at her, blasting at her again and again and yelling with fury. The blasts ricochetted off the force-field one by one — or at least most of them did. Dizzy tried to leap out of the way as her force-field flickered and one of the blasts got through; the shot tagged her in the left shoulder-piece of her Evangeliojaeger. She cried out as sparks flew from the mechanism and sent an electrical jolt into the synaptic interface inside her helmet. She stumbled to the side and clutched at the broken shoulder-piece with her right gauntlet. Ravenkroft laughed, and punched her in the head as he closed the distance. Dizzy staggered back and saw bright splotches of color as her Evangeliojaeger tried to absorb the shock of the blow, her head reeling back and then forward again, her back arching. The Evangeliojaeger’s spinal column was a large, Alluzinium centipede of metal discs interspersed with electro-active polymers — artificial muscles — that reached up her back and connected the various pieces of the Evangeliojaeger; it moved sinuously to absorb the blow and distribute the force to the rest of the suit and refocus the tension so she could spring back faster.

I’m hit! she cried out. "Medic! Medic! Oh wait. Just me here. Frak."

Her left arm sputtered, moving jerkily, the motors making noises. It worked — but just barely. Her gauntlet ticked and jerked into a fist; she pulled it back and then socked him in the back of the head. Her fist made contact and he went stumbling forward and into the wall of the alleyway.

Tag, you’re It! she said. "Don’t know why you’d be a gigantic, interdimensional spider monster living under the sewers in a small town in Maine, but you’re It anyway."

He spun around to face her, and Dizzy pressed the advantage. She activated her suit’s Repulsivators; the pavement below her cracked from the antigravity force slamming into it, and she soared at him in a flying leap. She grabbed him by his Evangeliojaeger’s metal collar with her right hand, and then rocketed straight upward as his tentacles grabbed for her. They snaked around her as she dragged him up the brick wall of the alleyway wall — bright yellow sparks flew between the metal of his suit and the brickwork — and then up, up, into the night air above the buildings below. Rain drizzled down over the metal of their Evangeliojaegers as Dizzy let Ravenkroft dangle from her gauntleted fist in the air, the Repulsivators in her boots, her free hand, and the micro-Repulsivators elsewhere in her suit all holding her steady. His tentacles slithered around her body, grasping her like pythons. She looked down into his eyes with grim determination.

Put me down, Weatherspark! screamed Ravenkroft. Let me go at once! Or be crushed to death in my embrace! The tentacles wrapped around her grew tighter, grasping the metal and clockwork of her Evangeliojaeger tighter, denting and damaging some of the exterior mechanisms. Sparks flew from some of the servo motors in her spinal assembly; she couldn’t do this forever. She aimed her left-wrist’s Disruptophazer at the left mechanical boot of his Evangeliojaeger, and fired. He was so busy concentrating on crushing her with his tentacles that he didn’t mentally activate the force-field, and the shot hit its target. Sparks flew from the electromechanics mounted to the boot, and Ravenkroft cried out. Dizzy quickly fired at the other boot, but the force-field kicked in this time. She fired again and again, rapidly; on the fifth shot, his force-field flickered and the boot exploded in a shower of sparks. Good. He couldn’t fly worth a crap, now. And without flight capabilities . . .

"Now then, she said, in a loud voice, so she could be heard over the rain, the thunder, and the general noise of the city below, as she held him by the collar. Hows about we have ourselves a little chat, here, Rave? About life, the universe, and everything. See, I have this little problem. See, somebody went and kidnapped my dear adopted uncle, Misto. And y’know, call me crazy, but that sits about as well with me as knitting needles up my anus in a rocking chair. Now, if, perchance, someone were to know something about this kidnapping — say, where Misto was being held? — and they wanted to, say, come forward with that information? Like, right now? Mmm, yeah, that’d be great. So start singin’, Satine. ‘Cause I’m all ears."

You cannot win against a will as iron as my own, he replied. "You won’t get Michaelson back. At least, not all in one piece. Rather, in several billion pieces, I should think."

Uh oh. That didn’t sound good. Okay, fine. I’ll bite. What do you mean, ‘in several billion pieces?’

Because, said Ravenkroft, grinning at her, in thirty minutes, the timer in my waistcoat pocket will extinguish its remaining time, and send a radio signal which will be intercepted by the receiver I’ve set up in the High-Energy Laser Lab at Morchatromik U, connected to the firing mechanism of the Laser Accelerator Chamber. And then we get to see if your precious ‘Misto’ can withstand the force of ten quadrillion electron volts! He broke into peels of laughter, throwing back his head and cackling, letting the rain fall onto his face. "Now, be a good girl and tell me — where is the Tesseract Reactor?"

"You do realize that you’re not exactly in a position to be demanding answers, here, right?"

He snickered at her. You kill me, you kill Michaelson. The trigger is connected to my heartbeat . . . a simple sensor on my chest . . . as well as to the countdown timer. He laughed again.

Damn. Could he be telling the truth? That laugh — just a little too sincerely mean and yet just a little too carefree. As though he certainly had nothing to lose . . . and as though she did not. A vision of Misto tied up in the Laser Accelerator Chamber at Morchatromik U appeared in her head. Fresh, hot anger pulsing through her veins.

Misto was the fun-loving, free-wheeling, cool-beans adopted uncle that everybody else always wished they had; he had the whimsical heart of a ten-year-old boy beating in the body of a fifty-four-year-old African-American physics professor originally from Harlem . . . a rockin’, partyin’ physics professor who had grown up in the eighties, and who loved comic books, superheroes, practical jokes, and weird shit just as much as she did. He was a big, dorky sci-fi and fantasy geek by hook or by crook who fancied himself a pirate sailing the high-seas of fandom. A misfit, like her who adored fantastical fiction from every era, so long as it promised a cracking good story and daring feats of imagineering and invention. And when it came to the sciences, he was a true genius, a visionary; there was no scientific mystery that Misto could not apply his brilliant mind to unlocking. They had enjoyed endless debates upon topics ranging from the role of the mass media in society, to whether or not a Jedi could beat Superman in a fight, to whether or not the universe was indeed made up of nothing but mathematics and was a giant Platonic construct. They were peas in a body-snatcher pod, and Misto had promised her that they would one day clink glasses of grape soda whilst watching the robot apocalypse together from atop a Bond villain’s hideaway in the Alps. And goddammit, she was not going to let this asshole kill him. She tightened her grip. The tentacles around her tightened theirs.

Then give it to me, she said. "Give me the countdown timer, right now. And I mean Now, asshole."

Tell me where the Reactor is, and I’ll consider it! he said. He paused and cast his eyes downward, as though calculating his odds of survival if she were to let him go. "I will find it anyway, you know. And by the way, I know a secret or two." He leaned his head closer, and said in a low, conspiratorial voice, Want to know what they are?

Dizzy hesitated. She knew better than to take his bait. Yet something in the way that he said it unnerved her.

Oh, she said, like the secret that you like to dress up in a frilly French Maid costume and roll around in a kiddy pool full of pancake syrup?

No, he said.

Funny, she said, "that you didn’t exactly deny having that secret; you just said that wasn’t the one. But go on."

No the secret is . . . he said, leaning closer, "that I know you won’t kill me." He smiled wickedly. "I’ve known it for years. And also — this suit can still fly!"

Before she could react, he engaged what had to be hidden, backup Repulsivators. He flipped sideways and tumbled through the air, taking her with him. She let go, and righted herself using her own flight controls. He crashed into her mid-air in a tackle, causing both of them to tumble toward the Earth. Dizzy refocused the intensity of her Repulsivators, attempting to propel them away from the ground, and instead made them fly in a great, swooping arc just above the tops of the buildings below. Their two sets of Repulsivators acted against one another, and together they spun like a crazed top through the air, whizzing around like figurines mounted on a music box or a cuckoo clock.

Jeez. This was making her . . . well, dizzy. Scrambling, before they spun out of all control and crashed into the building beneath, Dizzy concentrated, and mentally activated the magnetism sensors in her chest-piece. They determined the magnetic polarization of the large electromagnet surrounding the Zero-Point Energy Reactor in Ravenkroft’s suit’s chest-piece. Once that was done, she activated the neodymium electromagnet in her suit’s chest-piece — a large metal ring with wire coiled around it, surrounding her own Zero-Point Reactor — and sent a massive amount of current flooding into the multiplier circuits. The electromagnet lit up with blue-white fire; lightning bolts arced between their suits, and —

The resulting pulse of oppositely-polarized magnetism sent Ravenkroft hurtling away from her, catapulting him off of her and shunting him through the air like an invisible hand whisking him away. He managed to right himself and come flying back after her — though at a reduced speed, due to his lacking the boot Repulsivators — as Dizzy headed back toward the ground and landed, the electrogravitic pulse from the Repulsivators cracking the pavement as she landed on it. A moment later, Ravenkroft crashed to the ground in front of her. Sparks flew from the pincers on his tentacles and as they caught the force of his impact with the pavement.

"And zing! Dizzy cried out, laughing. Napoleon goes sliding down the bowling lane yelling merde! Merde! Merde! Merde!"

Dizzy ran up to where he lay, before he could right himself, and quickly gave him a mighty kick to the flexible abdominal section of his Evangeliojaeger. He cried out and the tentacles pushed him upright and dropped him onto his feet. He whirled around and threw a robotically-enhanced punch at Dizzy’s chest, and his gauntleted fist smashed through the protective glass casing of the Zero-Point Reactor there. Blue-white and yellow sparks flew from the coils surrounding it as Dizzy stumbled backward and hit the wall of the alleyway back-first.

Gods-dammit man! she cried, looking down at her chest, her eyes agog. "Are you out of your frakking mind? You’ll blow both of us up and half the city with us if you crack that thing!"

I should think, he said as he approached her, "that the answer to your that query should be rather obvious!"

Well, yeah, kinda, she admitted with a shrug.

He hauled back a fist and rammed it straight at her head; she dodged the blow and his gauntleted fist pile-drove into the bricks of the wall instead; rubble and debris scattered everywhere. His tentacles rushed at her and pinned her in place, latching onto her arms and her legs and forcing her back against the wall.

You see, you are your own undoing, he said, and snickered. "You just can’t do it. Kill me, that is. You haven’t got it in you. It’s the sentimentalist in you, the moralist. The would-be superhero. I win because I live. Always."

He yanked back his arm and made ready to punch her again. She hit him with the electromagnetic pulse again, and blew him off his feet; he went flying backward through the air a good fifteen meters, and went skidding on his metal hindquarters across the pavement another ten, yellow sparks bursting between his Evangeliojaeger, its segmented metal tentacles, and the pavement.

"You really love to hear yourself jibber-jabber, don’t you! she yelled, walking toward him. Now give me that countdown timer, Ravenkroft!"

Ravenkroft scrambled to his feet with the help of his tentacles, and rushed toward her, firing both his Disruptophazers; five of his shots missed because he fired in such a blind fury. Her force-field held through three of the shots. Dizzy aimed her Disruptophazers at him and though she knew it was hopeless, fired on stun anyway — once from the left, two from the right. His force-field absorbed the first two shots, but the third one got through and hit the left arm of his Evangeliojaeger. Sparks flew. He cursed in frustration as that arm went limp at his side. He tried to use his right arm to move it; he could, but for the most part the left arm of his Evangeliojaeger remained immobile, heavy, and useless. Dizzy allowed herself a small smile; you savored the little Viktories, right? He continued to come at her, though; as soon as he got within punching range Dizzy raised her gauntleted fists and they engaged once more; he managed to hold her off one handed. Gods-dammit, the bastard sure knew how to fight. When the hell had he had the time to take up martial arts training? Between frakking mutations?

"Would you like to know another secret?" he said, laughing, as he blocked her next punch by grappling her fist mid-swing with his right gauntlet. He grabbed it and held it there, crunching her metal fingers in a fist of his own. Dizzy grimaced in pain; ow, that hurt, gods-dammit. The metal dug into the leather gloves she wore beneath the gauntlets and pierced the skin below. He grinned maliciously. "Do you really think this Evangeliojaeger only repairs me? Do you not think I’d not improved it since our last bout . . . so that it also now repairs . . . itself?"

He popped her in the face-plate with his left fist suddenly, his arm good as new. Dizzy staggered backwards, stunned for the moment, and he rocketed upward and away — all the Repulsivators in his suit, including both boots, now in working order again.

Dizzy cursed under her breath. Dammit, why hadn’t she seen that coming? Maybe she could incapacitate him if she switched the Repulsivators to beam mode. The beam would collide with his force-field, but unlike the Disruptophazer blasts, which were plasmic in nature, this wouldn’t just dissipate into the field; rather, it would hit the field with kinetic force locked inside of it, and the field would unlock that force and translate it into momentum . . .  throwing him back like a gigantic punch. Yeah, maybe that would work. She’d have to catch him first, though. Shit.

She blasted off from where she stood, the pavement buckling and shattering beneath the output of her Repulsivators, and took off after him through the rain and the cold air of the night that whipped around her as she flew through the sky. She could see him ahead of her — the purple-white output of his suit’s Repulsivators glowed in the dark — as he flew and then descended toward Broadway. Uh oh. That meant civilians. Lots and lots of civilians in the way between them, and not only that: Plenty of civilians to see them, take videos of them on their cell-phones and share them on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter . . . Ugh, she couldn’t let that happen. Not if she valued the safety of the public, Viktor’s life, her father’s company, her job there . . .

So far their private little war had remained a closely-guarded secret; no one but Misto — not even her father — knew about it. Which was odd, considering that Ravenkroft’s primary beef was with her father, and what had happened those thirteen long years ago between the two of them and Misto . . . Events she had been witness to — though as an outside observer on the sidelines, and at that, only from a great distance — and wished she didn’t know about. It darkened her father’s image in her eyes, took away from his greatness. But that didn’t matter just now. What mattered now — right now — was stopping Ravenkroft from hurting a bunch of innocent people, and of course, stopping that countdown — if there even was one. Even if that meant exposing the secret of his existence to the public and the police . . . and exposing her own identity as a superhero . . . and therefore, jeopardizing the public image of her father’s company, and — of course — her job status there. No pressure.

She dove after Ravenkroft, and they landed right in the middle of the crooked intersection between Broadway and Third. The pavement shattered as she landed and sure enough, she had to squint int the glare as two cars blared their horns and headlights lit her up. Two vehicles — a red Kia minivan and a black Mercedes Benz sedan — swerved around them just in time to avoid hitting them. More cars honked and swerved around them, the flow of traffic parting as Dizzy set her eyes on and prepared to re-engage the grinning Ravenkroft, who stood a meter or so from her, daring her to fight him here among the civilian traffic. He raised his right arm and aimed his Disruptophazer not at her, but at the swerving cars going around him.

No! cried Dizzy.

A blue Volkswagen Beetle and a green SUV raced around Dizzy, and a black Mustang convertible whooshed around behind Ravenkroft. His tentacles reacted to the cars as though they had a life of their own, as though they watched the passing traffic with mild annoyance.

You know, he said, "There are . . . Other options than this pointless little slobberknocker we’re currently engaged in, you and I. You could join me. Think of it. Join my cause of forcing the Human race to evolve. Our two genius minds, collaborating! Think of the breakthroughs in science and technology we could achieve if we but shared a laboratory! Think of how far we could take the Human race!"

A Corvette sped past Ravenkroft and its driver yelled something vulgar at them both as he passed. A violet Ford Taurus flashed its headlights and honked as it swerved around Dizzy.

I’d sooner collaborate with . . . She truly couldn’t come up with anything worse or more horrifying than that thought. Er, uh . . . with Supreme Leader Snoke or . . . or a Demogorgon from the Upside Down!

It wasn’t the best comeback. A yellow minivan and a Chevrolet Silverado sped past behind her, blaring their horns and yelling obscenities at her.

"Oh look! More pop-culture references! he said, as a Nissan Leaf and a Toyota Pris raced around him, honking madly. His tentacles writhed in the air menacingly behind him. Face it, Weatherspark. You’re as unimaginative as the people you set yourself above when you disparagingly call them ‘Mundanes.’"

"The only person I actually set myself above, she said, a Ford F-150 swerving to avoid her and almost crashing into a swerving Nissan Altima, is you, you six-demon-bag full of buttholes. Because you’re cruel. And a thief. And a liar. And just in general a total bastard. Not to mention a huge pain in the ass. Y’know, it’s not fair, the things you supervillains get away with, while the rest of us are forbidden from being such giant schwanzes, because we’re decent people."

"You do me too great an honor, Weatherspark! he said through his chortles, as a Honda Civic wheeled around him and honked. His tentacles continued to slowly undulate in the air behind him, now turning their pincers toward her. I know I’m the bad guy, in your view. There is such wonderful symmetry in that. You see yourself as the hero, serving the forces of justice. But to elevate me to the status of supervillain? Well, that is quite a promotion! Tell me . . . Does it do your ego justice to imagine this as a fight between a comic-book heroine and her patriarchal arch-nemesis? Does it help you sleep knowing that your cause is a Just one? Or, does all that smell . . . well . . . just a smidgeon like so much poppycock to ever be the truth? Wouldn’t it be truer to say that you enjoy wielding power . . . over me, over everything . . . in fact, over the world? Perhaps, in many ways, we are the same. I say to you again — join me! Let us rule over this Earth as two mad scientists. Let our science triumph over their puny gods and . . . ‘morals.’"

"Okay, just for that little speech, she replied, a Buick barely missing her as it zigzagged to avoid hitting her, I’m gonna kick your ass extra hard this time. Now. One last chance. Give me that countdown timer, or else."

Oh I don’t think so, he said. "You want to see real consequences? Watch this."

He fired his Disruptophazer — on full power — into a red Toyota Sienna minivan. The minivan exploded into an enormous raging fireball. Metal, wheels, engine parts, plastic, and fiber-glass went everywhere — and so did the people inside of it. The doors went flying off, the windshield shattered; the bodies of the people inside — on fire and screaming — went flying out, catapulted into the air in five different directions . . . two of the flaming, flailing bodies were those of children. Dizzy clenched her fists in raw anger as their bodies landed on five other cars that suddenly zigzagged out of control and crashed into other cars, which crashed into still others. Broadway became a mess of crashing cars coming to a halt; honking horns; smoking engines; bashed in windshields; hollering drivers; people getting out of their vehicles and getting into fights, arguments, some staring in horror at the flaming bodies on the original two cars that had crashed; people staring at them, as well, at the two people in mech-suits who had caused all this trouble; people screaming at the fiery, charred bodies; fire and chaos; the remains of the minivan scattered all over, the smoldering metal carcass still on fire . . . and in the middle of it all, Ravenkroft, still standing there, smiling at her, daring her to act in front of all these people.

And Ravenkroft laughed. He laughed.

Bastard was going to pay.

His four tentacles shot out and each grabbed a hunk of the flaming car-wreckage in their pincers — one grabbed a piece of the minivan’s broken door; another grabbed the pulverized windshield; the third grabbed the tire and wheel; the fourth grabbed part of the metal frame — and then all four launched the debris at her.

Dizzy dodged the door as it came skipping across the pavement at her; she ducked to avoid the flying tire and wheel; she spun in a half-turn to avoid the whirling bit of metal frame, and then leapt up in the air as the remains of the windshield came skidding across the pavement toward her legs. She landed back on her feet to the sounds of . . . applause?

A crowd had formed around them. People were filming them on their cell-phones. Dammit!

"Do you want to know the real problem with people like you, Weatherspark? cried Ravenkroft. It’s that you want to save humanity, but you don’t want it to change. You want — or at least, you say you want — mankind to evolve, but in reality, you don’t. You want the status to remain quo. You fight to uphold the slave morality of the weak, and thus you cripple the central mechanism of evolution, which arises from conflict between paragons of noble virtue. You want a humankind that is soft . . . timid, made weak, just as you are! Without your suit, you are a crippled girl in a wheelchair, and the humankind you wish to create is just as helpless. I, on the other hand . . . I want a humankind that is strong, powerful, and capable, a humankind that endures, and that science ennobles. You could choose to be like me. You could join me in my crusade to take humanity out of this Age of Weakness it finds itself succumbing to, its head down and skinning its knees in supplication. But, you won’t. Just like your curséd father, you lack the courage needed to see your convictions carried through to their natural, logical conclusions. I, on the other hand . . . do not."

Dizzy could only glare at him. The rage burned in her chest like volcanic fire, the lava spilling through her veins, catching everything inside of her on fire. And the hatred felt cold, like ice, though it did not cool the flames; instead, it burned, too . . . a biting, searing cold, a freeze that enveloped her soul and blinded her to all other thoughts but one: Killing him would feel so goddamned good. To hell with extended family. To hell with Viktor. To hell with everything. Run at him, the fire and ice commanded. Put the Disruptophazer to his throat. Blow his goddamned brains out. End him for good, screamed the frost and the forge in unison, a holy choir singing to her, beckoning her to righteous action at last. A searing blast of fuck this guy shot through her arteries and into her brain.

Dizzy screamed, a primal yell of fury, and ran