Free Confessions of a D-List Supervillain by Jim Bernheimer Page A

glad that’s settled. Now, I’m going to go take a long hot shower and get cleaned up. Mind if I use the one in your bedroom?”
    As I fumble for an answer, she sets the scanner on the workbench and laughs. “Funny, that’s basically how we met isn’t it?”
    “Yeah, if I hadn’t turned on the camera in the bathroom to record it we’d both be little drones right now.”
    “Do you have cameras in these showers?”
    Inside my armor I gulp and stammer, “No, just in the main rooms and the cells.”
    “That’s a shame. You could always bring a camcorder in and do it old school.”
    The world stops for a moment as I try to process what she just said. My climate control inside the suit seems to be failing. All I can manage to squeak out is, “Are you serious?” 
    “Yes. Tomorrow, we could die or worse, be turned into slaves. I want to do one last thing that’s my choice, of my own free will, and I’m feeling the need to work off the pre-battle jitters. How about it, Cal?”
    There’s absolutely no arguing with that logic. Count me in!

Chapter Five

War Dialing FTW
    This morning, I’m still trying to rationalize what happened. It couldn’t have meant anything to her. It was just a diversion, merely something (or someone) to do. Though she said she was impressed because she reached what she calls, “the second level,” something that doesn’t happen that often. It’s this other thing where she ends up venting some of her powers. All I can say about that is it got me right back in the game and both Holly and Keisha were giving her shit about it this morning because they caught some of the backlash. I try to push it aside and focus on the task at hand.
    “Listen, you two are essential to our plan to raid Promethia. We can’t pull it off without you.” I say trying to sound sincere.
    Gunk and Rodentia are lapping it up, just looking for a way out. They’re nowhere near cured and that’s exactly the point.
    “Our team here will head out to Promethia’s West Coast offices and our other team will assault the West Coast Guardians' base. We’re certain they have a weapon there that will stop the bugs. Rodentia, we’ll need lots of your furry creatures and Gunk, we need you to ... to start making mucus.”
    I finally came up for a use for these two losers – decoys. They will “escape” shortly and waste no time finding the nearest bugs. The bugs aren’t deep thinkers and are probably bigger suckers for lies than the heroes. With any luck, most of their super-powered drones will be hours away on the west coast when we attack New Mount Olympus, outside of Washington DC. That’s good, because we’re going to need time to get this all to work.
    One of the perks about being a bad guy is that I’m not above using people. It’s doubtful that any of the heroes would’ve come up with this one, except Stacy. She's probably had a lot of experience using people. I’ve recently been added to that list, or maybe I’m jumping to conclusions. Either way, I need to stop thinking about her!
    The reality is that we’re stealing one of the Gulf Coast Guardians’ planes and heading east.
    Smiling inside my helmet, I give them the key code to open the outer door and say that we’ll be letting them out of the cells shortly.
    Returning to the control room, I say to the rest of the team, “It’s done. All that’s left is to set them loose.”
    Andydroid, Aphrodite, and I have the technical part of the mission, making the Wireless Wizard’s equipment work with the throne. The rest have to protect us using whatever they can for as long as possible.
    • • •
    Amidst the hordes of Type B guard-bots, I fire my Gatling mini-gun wildly. Blasts of energy and concussion grenades strike my opponents indiscriminately. There is no shortage of targets. The Type B’s aren’t even humanoid; they’re just rolling balls with heavy stun guns attached on rotating stabilizers. The bad guys usually equip them with something much