Summus Proelium

“So, not that I wouldn’t have brought him anyway,” Pack informed me in a slow, deliberate voice, “but why exactly do we need Twinkletoes?” As she spoke, the girl stared at me. Well, I assumed she was staring. That full face-covering black mask made it hard to tell sometimes.

We were standing in an alley, a couple streets away from the main Taurus repair facility. Pack had her lizards in their cage at her feet, aside from the chameleon (Twinkletoes, apparently), who lay draped over her left shoulder, watching me with a kind of lazy curiosity.

“That’s for tomorrow,” I replied. “I figured–well, one step at a time. You said you’d bring a hacker?” Pausing, I added a bit plaintively, “Please tell me it isn’t one of the lizards.” Immediately after I said it, my head shook. “Wait, what the hell am I saying? Is it? Because that would be awesome.”

“It would be, wouldn’t it?” the other girl agreed with what sounded like a grin. Then she sighed. “But no, sorry. He’s on his way. I told him where to meet us, and he should be here any…” There was a brief hesitation as she looked around. “He should be here any… aaaany miiiii…” Sighing, Pack waved her hand. “Never mind, that would’ve been really cool timing. I guess he’ll be–”

“I’m here!” The voice came abruptly from the opposite end of the alley, as a figure came rushing around the corner. With a splash, their right foot hit a puddle, sending water spraying everywhere as the person cursed, stumbling a bit and almost falling before catching themselves against a nearby dumpster with a very undignified yelp.

Dark as it was, the nearby streetlight at least gave me a good enough look at the person to make out details once they straightened from the dumpster. It was a guy, who stood about five foot eight or so. Thin, with an obvious costume consisting of dark gold pants (now with wet spots on them from the puddle), black boots, and a black silk shirt with what looked like ruffles on it that had gold piping along the sides. His mask was a pair of criss-crossed diagonal bands across his face, one stretching from the top left of his forehead and going down across his left eye and over his nose and right cheek, while the other did the opposite. One band was gold, the other black. His mouth was left uncovered, and he wore a black derby hat.

Snorting at his arrival, Pack gestured. “We were so close to timing that right, dude. Anyway, here we go. Eits, this is Paintball. Our, you know… friend, for now. Paintball, this is Eits.”

Blinking at that, I asked curiously, “Eights? Like… six, seven… eight? Crazy eights?”

The guy cleared his throat, pushing away from the dumpster to extend a hand to me while stepping over. He sounded embarrassed, and I could see the hint of a blush on what little of his face wasn’t covered. “Uh, kind of, but not exactly. It’s E-I-T-S, just pronounced eights.”

“Eits,” I repeated, hesitantly shaking his hand. He was a villain, right? These guys were both villains. So why was I shaking hands and being all friendly with–never mind, that was a situation to work out later. Too confusing to worry about right now. “I guess that stands for something?”

Releasing my hand, the masked guy nodded. “Yeah, it stands for Eye-In-The-Sky. You know, what they call security cameras in places like casinos.” He shrugged then. “Most people guess Crazy Eights like you did though, so I guess it kind of works as a twofer.”

“Eye-In-The-Sky? So, I guess your power is like… security system based?” I wondered if this was the right thing to be saying. Was it rude to ask people directly what their power was? Was the level of that rudeness magnified or lessened by them also being villains?

Either way, Eits apparently wasn’t offended, because he easily replied, “Sort of. I make these guys.” With that, he held his hand out, palm up. A moment later, a glowing ghost-like figure appeared on it. The thing was a humanoid figure, maybe five inches tall, blueish-green and faintly glowing. Like, again, a ghost. Leaning closer, I saw that it had four arms, two legs, long ears like a rabbit, and bright glowing purple eyes. It looked up at me, made a hissing sound, and showed its (rather pronounced and scary-looking) teeth.

“He’s not an enemy, stop that,” Eits insisted. “Sorry, he can’t actually hurt you or anything. See, no solid body.” His finger brushed through the figure, which I then realized wasn’t standing on his hand, but floating just a bit above it. “They’re just a bit… protective. I call them my Mites. Miniature Invaluable Technology Elves. I know, it needs work. But Mites works for them.”

“Uh, hi.” I waved, feeling a bit awkward before looking up to the guy again. “They’re not solid?”

His head shook. “Nope. So, you know, they’re about as much help in a fight as I am. Which is to say, not at all. It’s why I got the name Eye-In-The-Sky, because I don’t fight. Too… uncoordinated. But I am good at keeping track of a lot of things at once. Multitasking. It’s kind of a sub-power. And what my Mites lack in firepower, they make up for with… well… here.”

With that, he turned, rearing back his hand before hurling the Mite like a baseball. The ghostly creature let out a shriek of delight as it flew straight down and out of the alley before hitting a car parked out on the street. A second later, the car turned on, headlights flashing twice before the car pulled away from the curb with a squeal of tires. I swore I heard a loud gremlin-like cackle.

“He’ll be right back and put that thing where he found it,” Eits informed me as I stared at the empty spot where the car had been. “You get the point. They take over computers, machines, anything technological and control it for me. High enough security gives them trouble, but I just send more in to help. Anything from one of the good Tech-Touched out there basically takes my whole crew, so no taking over an entire army of super tech equipment. Plus if they’re good, they tend to install defenses against my kind of intrusion. Still pretty useful though.”

“You said you keep track of a lot of things at once,” I murmured, fascinated about this whole thing despite myself. “Does that mean you can see through them or… or something?”

“Basically, yeah,” he confirmed. “I sort of… see through my eyes and theirs at the same time, any time I want to. Then once they take over the computer or camera or whatever, I give it orders through them. They control it, but they’re doing what I ask. It’s a little confusing, but–”

“But he’ll get the point,” Pack interrupted. “Look, we could go on comparing powers forever. How about we focus on the actual reason we’re here, huh? I mean, we do have a time crunch.”

By that point, the car had returned, and Eits held his hand out that way. His little Mite thing came flying back, landing against his palm before fading from sight as it was… absorbed back into him or something. Then he nodded. “Right, yeah, sure. Sorry. Pack said you needed someone to help you take over a computer and change the maintenance schedule or something?”

Quickly, I explained the situation and what I wanted, ending with, “So I figure we can just put the thing we want onto the schedule to be picked up and worked on tomorrow morning, then quietly grab it on the way here. Then we just take it off the schedule so they don’t know it’s missing, do what we need to do, put it back on the schedule, and secretly give it back on the next trip.”

“Uh, yeah,” the boy agreed, “If we can get close to the computer that does the scheduling, my little guys can fix that much. They could even make it automatically add the thing back onto the schedule at a given time so we don’t have to come back. But how exactly are you going to get it off the truck ‘secretly’ without letting them know they’ve been robbed?”

“That’s what I keep asking,” Pack pointed out while idly scratching Twinkletoes behind his head.. “He’s being pretty secretive about it, but apparently it involves my little friend here.”

Flushing a little behind my mask and helmet, I protested, “I’m not being secretive, I’m just focusing on one thing at a time. We have to fix the schedule first. Then we can work on the plan for getting the thing off the truck without hurting anyone.” I stressed that last bit pointedly.

“He says that like we’re villains or something,” Eits intoned dryly before shrugging. “But sure, I get it. Anything to help Mel–” He grunted as Pack elbowed him. “I mean, Blackjack’s kid.”

“Which means getting into that place,” Pack reminded us with a gesture in the vague direction of the Taurus facility. “And I suppose you want that to be done without hurting anyone too?”

I nodded. “That would be nice, yes. Quietly and cleanly. I mean, beyond my own preferences, I’m pretty sure our whole plan would be in trouble if they had any reason to run a full scan of their systems or whatever, right?” Eits nodded, and I continued. “Okay, so we sneak in, get to one of their scheduling databases and let your little Mites do their work, then get out.”

“And how are you planning to do that all secretly?” Pack asked, head tilted as she looked at me.

“Uh, very carefully,” I replied. “But actually, probably easier now if the Mites can take over any of the security systems they can reach. They can deal with security cameras and alarms?”

Eits nodded. “Sure can, just have to get me close enough and they’ll deal with it. Only problem is that they can’t really get too far unless they’re possessing something like that car over there. They only last a couple seconds away from me without taking control of something. So whatever you want to get them into, I’ve gotta be pretty close to it.”

“I’ll get you inside,” I promised, stepping over to peek out of the alley at the building in the distance before turning back. “But ahh, it’d probably be easier with just the two of us.”

Pack shrugged, gesturing to herself, the chameleon on her shoulder, and the four other lizards in the cage at her feet. “Don’t worry, we know when not to be third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth wheels. I’ll just stay out here with my buddies and play overwatch.”

“And here I didn’t think you even had a computer with you,” I teased despite myself.

Despite the mask, I could tell her eyes were rolling. “I’ll watch to see what happens and step in if you get in trouble.” Her hand moved to scratch Twinkletoes. “See, the boy thinks he’s a comedian and a superhero. Which one do you think he’s best at?” After a brief pause as though listening, she gave a fake little scandalous gasp. “A plumber? Well, that’s just rude.”

Snorting at her, I turned on my heel to face Eits. “Come on, the best spot to uhh, jump in from is this building.” My hand patted the wall beside us. “I was scouting it out earlier.”

Unlocking the cage, Pack withdrew the bearded dragon. “You kids go on. I’ll send Riddles up to fly lookout. Anything happens, she’ll start screeching and we’ll play cavalry.”

With that, I took Eits by the arms, glancing up to the roof above. “Ready?”

“Uhhh…” He trailed off uncertainly. “Ready for whaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!” The last bit, of course, came because I had shot blue paint at the ground, caught hold of him once more, and used the paint to shoot the two of us upward. Painting my arm purple to get a good grip on him, I used my other hand to shoot red at the edge of the roof, yanking us that way before letting the paint fade so that the momentum shot us up and over to land in a couple rolls.

Scrambling over onto my knees, I looked at Eits laying there panting heavily on his back. “Sorry, sorry.” I winced at his reaction. “That sounded less assholey in my head. Are you okay?”

“Gimme a second,” he murmured, putting a black-gloved hand over his mouth before making a brief dry heaving noise. Then he nodded and slowly sat up. “Yeah. I uhh, sorry, I get a little… motion sick sometimes. But it’s okay, it only happens when I’m in motion.”

His words made me grimace. “Seriously, I am so sorry about that. I thought it’d be cool.”

He waved me off, sounding just as embarrassed as I felt. “Like I said, it’s cool. I suppose you don’t meet a lot of supervillains who get motion sick after a single jump.”

“Can’t say as I meet a lot of supervillains at–” Pausing, I sighed. “You know, now that I think about it, I have met more villains than heroes.” And at least one of the heroes I have met is actually a villain, which probably counts double, I thought to myself silently.

Shaking that off, I helped Eits to his feet before stepping over to the edge of the roof. “I umm, if you get motion sick, I’m really sorry about this next part.” My hand gestured over to the large billboard in the distance. “We have to jump over there, then go from there…” Slowly, I moved my hand, pointing to the roof of one of three buildings within the Taurus compound. “To there. Then we wait for the security guard to go past before making a run for the garage at the far end of the lot. That’s where they keep the delivery schedules, in the manager’s office. We get in there, you do your thing, and we get out again. Does my saying it all matter-of-factly like this make me sound confident enough to pull it off?” As I spoke, my suit turned solid black. Easier to blend in to the shadows.

“Uh.” Eits looked at me before giving a thumbs up. “Sure. Does my saying that make it sound like I’m going to avoid throwing up from all that jumping and falling?”

I duplicated his thumbs up. “Sure. Just try to aim away from me, huh? Ready for this?”

He nodded, giving me the okay sign. “Nope. I wanna go home.”

“Cool,” I replied, “go for it, as soon as we get that schedule set up.” I looked both ways then, making sure the coast was clear before wrapping my arm around his waist. Holding tight with a bit of purple along my sleeve and my pants, I activated it all, lunging out over the street with the boy clinging to me as he yelped. The ground rushed up, but I used red paint to get us the rest of the way to land on top of the billboard. Eits stumbled, but I quickly steadied him. “It’s okay, catch your breath. Halfway there. One more big jump. But uhh, you see that?”

He looked, as I pointed all the way down at the building near the one we were about to jump to. “The security camera going back and forth? Yeah, I see it. You want something done about it?”

“I figured we were gonna have to get real creative with hanging off one side,” I replied, “but if you could fix it, that’d be great.”

He nodded. “Yeah, one of my little friends can deal with it. If you time our…” There was a pause before the boy gulped. “…our landing for when the camera is at the far end of its turn, I can take it over and make it just send back the same view it did for the past few turns. They’ll notice if we take too long though.”

“Then we won’t take too long,” I assured him. After a brief check to make sure no guards were in sight, I checked the timing of the camera before taking hold of the boy. “Let’s go. Remember, barf away from me.”

That said, I held him firmly, used my paint, and leapt out. Eits made a noise suggesting that he was restraining a scream, as we flew out and across the rest of the street, passing high over the stone wall and electrified fence before I pulled us straight to the roof of the smaller building far below.

We landed, scrambling a bit. My eyes snapped up to see the camera starting its way back, but Eits was already on it. Even as he was still gagging a bit, his hand flung that Mite of his across the pathway between buildings, hitting the camera with it. The Mite disappeared, and the camera simply continued moving.

“It’s cool,” the boy assured me. “They’re not seeing any of this.”

I started to respond, then quickly yanked him down to lay flat with me on our backs. “Guard,” I whispered. “Stay down.”

We lay there, being as silent as possible as the security guard made his way past, keys jangling almost in tune with his whistling. As we were waiting, I had a moment to wonder about myself. Exactly what kind of hero was I? What kind of hero broke into a place to set up a high tech robbery?

The kind of hero that was trying to save a little girl, and who didn’t know who could be trusted, considering her father is both a supervillain and the lead hero in the city. And besides, we were just borrowing the thing. We’d give it back after we were done. There wasn’t time to go through all of this the right way.

But that didn’t stop me from feeling guilty.

Realizing the guard was gone, I snapped myself out of my inner debate, rolling over to peer over the edge. The building was only a couple stories tall, so it was easy to help Eits down with a bit of orange and black paint (the latter to keep it silent). From there, we made the run to the garage. He had to deal with two more cameras on the way, and once we were there, used a fourth Mite to mess with the electronic lock and attached alarm so we could get in.

The garage was pretty dark, and we really didn’t want to turn on a light. So it took some time to find our way past a few trucks, over to the stairs, then up to the manager’s office. There, I waited and played lookout while Eits and his Mite did their work. Every second felt like an eternity, but it actually went fairly quickly and easily. Within about two minutes or so, he had it set up. The bit we needed was on the list to be retrieved in the morning for scheduled maintenance. It would subsequently disappear from the list later, before the truck was scheduled to return for drop-off.

He’d actually even improved on the plan. There was a box of random supplies and parts sitting around the place. We taped that up and printed out a new shipping label for it with a delivery code. When we took the box out of the truck tomorrow, we would replace it with this one and, thanks to his little hacking job, the computer would switch the model number on the box we were taking with this one. That way, even if the driver knew exactly how many boxes he had, he’d still have the same number. And when he scanned the codes, they’d all come up as the right ones.

“Take this too.” Eits instructed, handing me a piece of paper with an e-mail and phone number scrawled on it. “I managed to give myself a backdoor into their scheduling system here. Shoot me a text, e-mail, call, whatever, when you need to return the toy. I’ll set it up to be delivered.”

“Thanks,” I murmured, looking at the paper before stuffing it away. “I guess we should get out of here, huh?”

He nodded slowly. “I don’t suppose we could use the front gate.”

“Probably a bad idea if we don’t want to get caught and interrogated,” I reminded him while patting the boy’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, one more trip. And hey, you’ve managed to avoid throwing up so far. If you keep up the record before we’re done, maybe I’ll buy you a pizza.”

“And if I don’t,” he replied, “I’ll buy you one.”

In the end… he owed me pizza.