3: Consequences

Later:

There's a bar in town where the superheroes gather. Through an unspoken agreement--and I'll be honest, a fear of what might happen otherwise, the villains mostly leave it alone. It's a place they can go to socialize and relax.

That's why no one is prepared when a rivet-studded brass sphere careens through the door on a jet of steam. That's why in the nearly a full second it takes for it to find the Justice Three, deploy a wicked steel spike, and nail itself to the table through Cannonade's stack of pancakes, no one reacts to stop it. They're still staring dumbfounded at it when it activates its payload.

The top pops open, and a napkin-size translucent screen shoots out, along with a lens and mirror, making a tiny portable movie theater. Scratchy black and white footage plays, and the audio has a tinny quality but it's perfectly intelligible.

"Blood calls out for blood, heroes," says my image. "You killed one of mine and I'm calling you out. Come out and face me like adults, or die cowering."

In moments they've burst out the door and spotted me standing across the parking lot. Cannonade points at me and shouts, "We took a petty criminal off the streets yesterday, and now we'll take down the mastermind!"

I stand, shoulders square, both hands on the head of my cane, as my opera cape flutters gently in the breeze. They're forming up for their standard attack, and I'm processing several trains of thought.

They've dismissed Ray as a "petty criminal." They're not entirely wrong; Ray was convicted of a class C felony auto theft of a car worth less than two thousand dollars; you could call that "petty." They didn't seem to know or care that Ray had been staying out of trouble and looking for work for over a year before he heard about the place that gives ex-cons a second chance. They didn't know or care that Ray had been seeing someone for nine months, or that her kids were starting to call him "dad", or that he'd come to me for advice about affordable engagement rings.

I'm good with tech, but not so good with people, and apparently I've been misreading these people all this time. Stupid! I thought I had someone who understood me, someone who enjoyed playing the same game that I did. I was wrong.

I rapidly consider a dozen different bon mots to sum up the situation, but they're all villainous cliches, and we're not doing that today.

Cannonade raises his gun toward me. It finally sinks in that all this time, he's actually been trying to hit me. Fulcrum is in the process of gathering for a leap, and the Crimson Quiver is quietly preparing to loose an arrow at me, after I've been put off balance by the other two. This is a setup I'm familiar with, but only now do I realize that this isn't a well-rehearsed opening number. They just don't know any better.

"Didn't you ever wonder?" I ask.

Fulcrum is in the air now, fist ready. Of course, she no longer has any way to alter her trajectory, and it's a simple matter to determine where she'll land. Normally I'd make a show of diving out of the way, and put myself in position for a followup attack from one of the others. Today, I simply step to the left, putting a light pole between myself and the Quiver.

"Wonder what?" says Fulcrum as she smashes the pavement where I was just standing.

"Why there were never any bystander casualties?" Time is disjointed, as it always is in these affairs. Surely we shouldn't have time for this much conversation. But we do.

I smack the side of Fulcrum's head with my cane. Of course, her flesh is invulnerable to any physical force I can muster. It's also transparent to magnetic fields, and the concentrated pulse from my cane triggers a cascade of uncoordinated activity in her motor cortex, leaving her collapsed on the ground for the next few seconds.

The Crimson Quiver is moving to his left to restore line of sight; I keep moving to my left and we mutually pivot around the light pole, although this puts me directly into Cannonade's field of fire.

"I used live ammunition and explosives, and no one ever got hurt. Did that never seem unusual?"

As I say this I pause and spread my arms wide, as though inviting an answer. It also invites plasma cannon fire, and Cannonade responds. "Your antiquated junk is no match for us," he says as he levels his gun.

One of my drones puts a 25mm tungsten core nylon-jacketed bullet through the armored shell of his arm cannon as he fires. My targeting software normally ensures that every bullet ends up someplace harmless. Today, it ensures that a few ounces of tungsten are in Cannonade's pulse generation chamber at a bad time. My brass goggles black out my vision for a moment, but I can feel the flash on my face. The goggles go clear in time for me to see him crumple, his arm a smoking wreck. Hmm. The feedback through the control circuits knocked him out; I'd expected his systems to be better than that.

The Crimson Quiver has taken the opportunity to position himself for a shot, and looses. Those arrows of his are made of some good stuff--I regret never having the chance to compare notes on material science with him--and they're moving damn fast for arrows at about 140 meters per second. They'll cut through my soft body armor pretty easily, and this one is headed straight for my heart.

Of course, at this range, it'll take nearly a tenth of a second to make that trip. The optical tracking systems on my area defense automata have dozens of milliseconds to spare as they hit the arrow with the beam from a compact fiber laser. The arrow explodes in mid-flight, and I see one of the feathers spiraling to the ground.

I'll give the archer this much: he's thinking about as fast as I am, and he's realized that he's in a real fight. He's reaching for another arrow, and you know how super archers work; it's going to be optical chaff or a LIDAR jammer or some other clever way of shutting down my area defense.

Normally, I enjoy that interplay, but today's not normal. A pair of fire support drones on a pre-programmed response surround him with a barrage of flash-bang grenades.

(Does it seem like I have rather a lot of drones with me? Well, automata are one of my specialties, and I came here prepared for a wide range of contingencies.)

While he's flinching, I shoot him with a tazer dart from my general purpose pneumatic sidearm.

On schedule, out of the corner of my eye, I see Fulcrum getting her limbs back under control. Before she has a chance to stand, I toss a gas grenade her way. As tough as she is, a few lungfuls of that stuff leave her drooling into the asphalt.

It's quiet except for the ringing in my ears. The crowd in the bar are staring through the windows in shock. I tip my hat to them.

"When the Justice Three wake up, let them know that they still draw breath because Professor Cogsworth, in his mercy, has allowed them to live."

"This time."

"Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a funeral to plan."

I jet away.