Summus Proelium

So, on the plus side, I now knew where one of the missing vials was. And to get it, all I had to do was promise a favor to one of the biggest supervillains in the city.

Well, that’s what I had to do. There was also the matter of the favors from Wren and Blackjack. The former had agreed basically as soon as she learned what the deal was. She wanted to help anyway she could, after her stuff had been used to steal the vials in the first place. I had caught the guilty look on Fred’s face at that point. Good, he should feel guilty, even if he didn’t know how badly this whole thing would go.

As far as people who didn’t feel guilty went, I had a thought briefly about informing Ashton that the vial he’d left in the shop had been found and accounted for, but decided against it. There was a chance that, for whatever reason, holding that information back might pay off in the long run. And telling him wouldn’t accomplish anything aside from letting me feel smug for a few seconds. So, just in case, I said nothing about it to him and asked the others to do the same. He was probably counting on us not being able to get the vial away from Cuélebre, and I preferred he just go on thinking that.

Blackjack, for his part, had barely paused when the offer was brought to his attention. He agreed basically immediately, simply saying that he would rather negotiate with Deicide than Cuélebre, which… yeah. I was basically totally with him on that. She seemed infinitely more reasonable than the demon-dragon guy who had almost killed me. Even if I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something off about her. I wasn’t sure what it was, but I was sure that she was at least a better person to have this kind of deal with than Cuélebre, as far as incredibly powerful and dangerous super villains went.

And geez, how many of those was I going to come face-to-face with in a short time anyway? I was basically working my way through the list of the who’s who of the Detroit Fell-Touched underworld.

In any case, after everything that had happened, once I finished letting Wren and Blackjack know what was going on, I was beat. It had been a very long couple of hours, and the ‘rest’ I’d gotten while knocked unconscious hadn’t exactly been all that restful. So, even though it was still fairly early in the evening, I had gone home to crash, basically passing out immediately.

That lasted for all of about four hours. Then I was wide-awake in what amounted to the middle of the night. Seriously, this whole hero thing wasn’t going to kill me through violence, it was going to do it through fucking with my sleep cycle.

After the scare I’d had with getting captured and very nearly tortured, maybe I should have stayed home. Hell, that was the main reason I couldn’t go back to sleep. Tired as I had been, I’d jolted awake from some nightmare that vanished the second my eyes opened. But I knew if I closed them again, it would be back. I’d tried to watch a movie for a while, but I couldn’t focus on it. I just ended up looking around my enormous room with all my stuff and thinking about how it had come to be. That made me feel guilty. There were people out there on the streets who needed help. Who was I to sit here in my gigantic bed watching my enormous television? Was being scared because I’d gotten knocked out and almost really hurt that much of an excuse? No.

So, I’d gotten up and snuck out of the house. Now, I was back in costume, working my way through the city. There wasn’t actually much real crime going on that I could see. But I found another way to help. Or at least assuage my guilt a little bit, depending on how cynical one wanted to be.

Basically, I took a couple hundred dollars or so into an all-night grocery store and bought a bunch of sandwiches, chips, and other things. Boy had that been an interesting time, seeing the few people in there staring at me in costume as I made my way through the aisles. To say nothing of the look on the clerk’s face when I checked out. He kept asking if I was going to some kind of party or cosplay thing. I tried to keep things vague while still being polite, and he seemed to understand. Though I could tell he still had a lot of questions.

Taking the supplies in a few large bags, I made my way through the streets, handing them out to the homeless people I saw. Everyone got a sandwich, a bag of chips, a bottle of water, some basic toiletries like soap, toothpaste/brush, deodorant, and disposable razors. That kind of thing.

It wasn’t much. I wasn’t going to solve homelessness in an evening with a couple hundred dollars. I knew that. But it might help a few people, or at least make them feel a little better about themselves for a bit. Maybe I could do more later. Maybe I’d think of something else that wouldn’t attract too much attention. For now, this was all I could think of, and it kept me busy.

Not everyone was all that openly appreciative, of course. I did receive plenty of gratitude, probably more than I deserved. But there were also others who simply snatched what I gave to them and cursed me for looking down on them. A couple even refused, one man spitting at me. It wasn’t that many, and far from any kind of representative sample. But they existed, and I didn’t really hold it against them too much. Being cursed out even as my gifts were being accepted wasn’t that bad. I had no real idea about the kind of things these people went through, so I wasn’t going to judge them for being a bit nasty.

No, the ones who really bothered me were those who were very clearly not able to take care of themselves. The ones who were not all there in the head, who needed to be in some kind of care facility. Those were the ones who messed me up. I wanted to do more for them. I wanted to take them into a hospital, or something. I wanted to scream at passersby that these people were their fellow human beings who needed help, and why the hell were they just walking past the guy laying in the gutter muttering to himself?

But I couldn’t do any of that. It wouldn’t have accomplished anything. I just gave them what I could, told myself I would find a way to do more, and kept going.

Blankets. Coats. That’s what I needed to get. Blankets and coats. Jackets. Pillows. Things that could make them a little more comfortable.

Then I saw it, police cars and crime scene tape all around some convenience store. There were people watching from the sidelines as a lot of body bags started to be carried out to waiting vans. From the looks of it, there were over a dozen bodies. Through the glass windows of the store, I could see a couple uniformed cops standing by Dynamic and RePete, of the Conservators. Dynamic was a speedster who could temporarily drain superpowers from people she ran near and use the energy she gained from that to form lasers, shields, or weapons. As for RePete, people thought he was some kind of short-term precog for awhile. But apparently, his actual power had something to do with going back in time just a couple of seconds. There were some kind of limitations to it, but they weren’t exactly open about advertising exactly how it worked. All I knew was that from an outside point of view, he seemed to simply know when something was going to happen right before it did.

From the corner of my eye, I saw a man in a jogging suit step over to me. He was frowning, head shaking as he gestured toward the building. “Hey, when the fuck are you Star-Touched types gonna do something about this shit, huh?”

“What happened?“ I asked quietly, afraid of what kind of answer I’d get considering how many bodies were being taken out.

“The Scions,” another man answered. “Mostly Pencil, but somebody said there might have been a couple others around.”

Pencil. Of all the Fell-Touched in the city, he was the one who freaked people out the most. Others might have been more outright powerful or able to do more widespread damage, but Pencil was just… wrong. As far as anyone could tell, his only motivation, and by extension, the motivation of his Scions, was to worship the Abyssal named Typhon, and cause as much chaos and misery as possible. Sometimes they stole things from their crime scenes, while other times stuff that was incredibly valuable and just sitting there would be left alone. Sometimes they targeted big events full of rich people and other times they would attack a single house or even some random person on the street for no apparent reason. Sometimes they would go weeks or even a month or so without doing anything, and other times their attacks would come several times in the same day. Their creed apparently was to make everyone know that anyone could be a victim. They spread chaos, that was it.

They were all monsters, and Pencil was the worst. I had no trouble believing he was responsible for all the dead bodies in that store. He wasn’t the worst or most dangerous Fell-Touched in the world. The ‘honor’ of both those titles went to a woman called Casura.

But still, Casura wasn’t here in Detroit. Pencil was (when he wasn’t somewhere else in the general area). And he had to be stopped, these guys were right about that. But the problem was, nobody knew how to do that. The guy had been shot dozens if not hundreds of times, set on fire, hit with God only knew how many different kinds of Touched attacks, stabbed, left in an exploding building, dropped off several other tall buildings, and more I was definitely forgetting about. Nothing stuck. The guy was invincible, or something. He’d been captured a couple times and restrained, but that never got very far before his minions set upon the person who caught them. They were always there in the background, pretending to be part of the crowd. Any time you dealt with Pencil, you had to assume that some of the people in the crowd of onlookers that he was playing up to would actually be members of the Scions.

Realizing that the men who had approached me were still waiting for an answer, I hesitated before shaking my head. “I… I’m sorry. I wish I knew how we could stop him. He can’t just keep getting away with this.”

“Yeah,” the guy in the jogging suit snapped, “he can’t. So I say again, what are you people going to do about it? Stand here with your thumbs up your ass not doing a damn thing while that guy goes around and—”

“I’m very sorry that we got here too late.”

The words came from behind me, and all three of us turned. I was pretty sure we all had matching looks of astonishment, though for very different reasons.

It was my dad. Well, it was Silversmith, all gleaming metal as he continued. “Let’s not blame the kid here for not being able to magically do the thing we adults should have been able to take care of. I understand your frustration, sir, I truly do. I promise you, we are not going to let this or any of his other crimes stand. We will bring him in and he will face justice. True justice. ”

Neither of the men who had approached me seemed to want to argue with him. I could see the frustration on their faces, but they said nothing while backing off. As they moved away, my father’s head turned until he was looking right at me. “You okay?”

In my short career as a superhero, I had already had a few chances to be glad that I wore a helmet. Never more so than right then. It meant that he couldn’t see my expression at all. Not even the little bit he might’ve been able to make out with just the normal mask. He couldn’t see anything.

Staring at him for a moment, my mind remained totally blank. Luckily, I was pretty sure he was accustomed to that kind of reaction from people who first met him. It would definitely make sense that I seemed starstruck, right?

A sudden thought occurred to me, and I made a motion up toward my helmet. I was trying to make it look as though I was reflexively moving to adjust glasses on my face before the helmet got in the way. Hopefully, my father would add the idea that the person under the helmet wore glasses to his mental image of them. Of me. Making it look as casual as possible, I stopped when my fingers hit the visor before giving a quick, nervous nod. That part I didn’t have to fake.

“Y-yes, sir.” Oh God, I very nearly called him Dad. Seriously, it was right on the tip of my tongue. How bad would that have been? Even with my voice changer, that probably would have given the game away. How stupid did I have to be to—

“Don’t let them bother you,” Dad advised, with a nod toward the guys who had backed off. “They’re just… afraid and frustrated. They want all this to stop. They think we should be able to take this guy down, and frankly, they’re right. We should have brought him in by now. Everyone he kills is…” His voice cracked a little there, before he seemed to realize where he was, letting out a breath. “Sorry, it gets to everyone sometimes, so you don’t have to feel like there’s something wrong with you or anything.”

He extended a hand to me. “Anyway, I’ve heard a lot about you, but it’s nice to finally formally meet. Pretty sure you know the name’s Silversmith, but a lot of people just call me Smith, and that’s fine. Ahh…”

He trailed off, and I realized what he was waiting for. He was still holding his hand out. With a start, I took it and squeezed. I was shaking my father’s hand. Would he somehow suddenly realize the truth? Did he know me well enough to know what my hand felt like even through a glove? Some paranoid part of me thought he did. I was expecting him to suddenly say my name, expecting him to figure it out any second.

“Paintball,” I abruptly blurted, as if to introduce myself. Part of it was me wanting to shove that name into his head instead of my real name, just in case some psychic part of him was building up.

“Paintball,” my father echoed as though testing the name. He released my hand with a nod. “Like I said, I’ve already heard a lot of good things about you. You’re making a name for yourself pretty quick. It’s impressive. Especially that showing against Cuélebre. You even saved those civilian onlookers. Nice job.”

My throat went dry, and I had to swallow hard. “I’m just trying to help people.” And figure out exactly how your criminal empire operates in the process, so I can do something about it.

“Well,” Dad replied, “You’re certainly doing that. But nobody can fix everything, especially by themselves.” With those words, he looked over toward the convenience store all the bodies had been brought out of. “Everyone needs help, even if they are some kind of prodigy.”

Seriously, when he said that, despite everything, I felt a sudden, strong rush of pride. My father was a supervillain, but he was still my father, and he called me a prodigy.

How fucked up were my priorities?

“I’ve heard,” Dad pressed on, “that you’re not interested in joining the Minority. I… I do wish you might reconsider that. As well as you’ve been doing, it’s like I said, everyone needs help sometimes. You could really get in trouble out there without backup, without a team. And I’d hate to see anything happen to you, kid. With monsters like Pencil out there…” He sighed low and regretfully, shaking his head. “Just give it a little more thought, okay? I know the team would love to have you around. Especially That-A-Way. She thinks you’d really fit in.”

What was I supposed to say to that? It would look super suspicious if I just flat out denied him again. He might start looking into why I didn’t want to be part of their team. So, I forced myself to give a very short nod. “I’ll think about it, sir. I just… need to do this on my own for now.”

He seemed to watch me for a few long seconds then, before giving a short nod. “I can respect that, just so long as you think about it. Anytime you change your mind, or just want some advice, you know where to go. You’ve got that number, right?” When I nodded, he gestured. “I’ve got to head back in there and see if there’s anything else we can do. You should probably head on out of here. The bad guy’s gone, for now anyway.”

“I… yeah.” Trying not to let myself sound as freaked out as I actually was about being so close to my father while he was about to go back into a scene like the one that had to be in that store, I waved vaguely. “I’ll ummm, I’ll get out of your way.”

Stepping back, I watched for another moment as my dad turned and headed back into the shop. Glancing around, I closed my eyes and slumped a little, trembling despite myself before forcing my feet to turn and carry me away from that place, away from all of that death and misery.

I had made it. I’d gotten through my first face-to-face, of sorts, meeting with my father in costume. And, as far as I could tell, he didn’t suspect anything like the truth. That was a good thing, right? My supervillain father didn’t know that I knew who he was. That was absolutely, definitely a good thing.

So why did I feel so bad?