Wearing The Cape: Villains Inc. (28 page)

“We’re attacked three times in three days and it’s a
coincidence
?”

“I didn’t say that.” He sighed, drawing himself up. Tap, tap, tap, his cane rhythmically beat the floor. He looked bone tired.

“Anti-superhero sentiment is rising.
Shankman
, the recent violence, the political battles…
Quin
tracks these things, but she tells me that, while our approval numbers haven’t dropped much, our
disapproval
numbers have risen sharply; many people who were personally indifferent to
superhumans
and superheroes are increasingly inclined against us. There has always been angry rhetoric, but now people are listening.

“I was aware of Nemesis—he’s always been one of the few
normals
on our vigilante watch-list. He was a fanatic bodybuilder and martial artist, a wannabe street-hero who’s had a hard time finding a target for his righteous anger. Last summer he got three years probation for beating up some drug-dealers, and went inactive so far as we knew.

I couldn’t believe it. “He thought he was a
Good Guy
?”

“Which makes you wonder who he thought the Bad Guys were. I will not be at all surprised if the industrious Detective Fisher finds evidence he’s been listening to
Shankman
and his ilk. Possibly even a confession tape in which he boasts of going down in a glorious battle against the false icons who are corrupting society.”

“How—?” I closed my mouth, and he sighed again.

“Doubtless, Dr. Mendel will suggest he was really acting out his envy; she believes that vigilante
normals
like Nemesis are generally motivated by their unconscious desire to be
superhumans
—or to at least to prove they can match us. He needed a better class of enemy, and
Shankman
gave him one. It is unwise, my dear, to blame a known enemy for
everything
that happens to us.”

I didn’t know how to respond to that, and in the pause the beeping machines reminded me where I was. Oh God. Chakra was lying behind glass and maybe fighting for her life, and they never said but they were together and I hadn’t even asked how he was doing while he stood there patiently trying to teach me an important lesson.

“I’m sorry. I—”

“Don’t be, dear child,” he said gently.
 
“Focusing on stopping more of this doesn’t mean you don’t care what has happened already.”

He turned back to the glass. Behind him, Seven shrugged helplessly and I wanted to scream. Chakra looked
so
pale, and suddenly I couldn’t breathe as my old phobia came up to bite me.

“I, I’ll go back to The Dome,” I said. Blackstone nodded without looking away, and I fled.

Whenever somebody asks me to define what a
hero
is, I remember
Latane
and Darley’s experiment, staging epileptic fits in front of one, two, or three observers. A solitary observer will help immediately if he’s going to help at all, but the larger the crowd the longer the delay. It’s the Bystander Effect: the wider the diffusion of responsibility, the greater the impulse to let someone else go first. The hero goes first.

Dr.
Mendell
,
Superhero Psychology.

Sometimes being the Good Guy sucks. I turned in my after-action report, showered, changed, and desperately missed Shelly. So I went upstairs to the gym and rang the gong—the strike-plate I used for a punching bag—till the walls vibrated with each hit and pain shot up my wrists, and tried to remember what Atlas had told me, to think strategically, like Ajax.

Most
supervillains
avoided
direct confrontations with superheroes. Fashion-villains were mostly really gang-bangers, petty criminals, or foot-soldiers for organized crime when they weren’t just posers—they were willing to throw down if confronted, but not likely to
target
heroes. Professional villains, bank-robbers like
Kitsune
and professional killers like Hecate, considered a
superpowered
fight a
failure
, win or lose.
Supervillain
terrorists—nationalists, religious fanatics, militant environmentalists, whatever—generally went for easy targets (with enough exceptions for our crazy security).

Blackstone was right; the Dome attack had been a desperation move (Why? What did
Kitsune
know?), and Nemesis’ brief rampage didn’t fit the pattern. He was probably just a lone nut who’d started talking to the walls and who’d latched onto
Shankman’s
hateful talk. He’d grabbed for glory and committed ‘suicide by cape.’

I switched to Mr. Smith, my favorite practice dummy for targeting knee and elbow strikes.

But we didn’t
know.

Tin Man
had been a surprise—a burglar with no history of violence till now. Even before that, Artemis had been out every night, scouring the underworld for leads, “talking” to people. She’d come up with zip, and we
still
had no in on their motivation and methods, outside of their tendency to use bodies as messages. We saw no reason why their fight should directly involve us, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t one.

Mr. Smith came apart and I decided to stop before I trashed the place. My ribs ached and my chest felt tight.
It can’t happen again. It can’t.

We
needed
Kitsune
, but how could we find a
shapeshifter
? How had
Villains Inc
. found her? They’d find her again and kill her, and we’d have nothing. Who else could—?

I dropped to the floor, panting, and fell back to stare at the ceiling.
The enemy of my enemy is my intelligence source.
Kitsune
wasn’t the only player who knew more than we did.

When you tell a friend “I want to go visit a mob associate and convince him to tell us all he knows,” she says “Okay!” At least if your friend is Artemis.

My
displacement activity of choice had been a workout; hers had been to dive into her intelligence-analysis role, and she’d been glad for anything that pulled her out of repeated combing of exhausted data. But once I told her exactly what I wanted to do, she put her foot down; this had to be off the radar, and we weren’t going in cold. The night was old and a day to prepare was non-negotiable, especially since we couldn’t tap Shelly’s special gifts right now.

Sternly ordered to
go to bed!,
I texted the
parentals
and the Bees, worried about Chakra and Blackstone some more, wondered how Shell was doing as my head hit the pillow, and dropped into sleep.

Warm spring zephyrs danced across the moonlit hills. I lay on my stomach in the grass, propped up on my elbows, and watched the parade of foxes circling the blooming cherry tree. As pale as the snow-white cherry blossoms, the foxes paced in silence. Glowing points of ghostly fire drifted beside each of the elegant creatures.

One fox in the strange procession raised its head and turned to look at me with shining animal-eyes. It pricked its silver-tipped ears towards our hill and the breeze changed direction, plucking blossoms from the tree to dance over the grass until they lighted on my skin like flakes of fragrant snow. The beautiful creature followed the breeze, bounding gracefully over the young grass to sit on the slope just below me. Its own spark of fox-fire followed along.

“How do you fair, human child?” it asked as I went cross-eyed trying to count its tails. Three? Five? When I tried to focus I just saw one, but it multiplied when I looked away.

“I’m not a child,” I objected, giving up. “I’m almost nineteen. And why can’t you be John?”

“I could be, but you’d object.” It stretched its neck, like it was sore. “And I didn’t enjoy that the first time.”

I jerked upright in bed, heart racing.

Great. I was dreaming in Disney-color and even the talking animal couldn’t take me seriously. Still, an epiphany was an epiphany, even if it was the head banging, how-dumb-can-I-be kind. Fisher was going to take away my Junior Detective badge. Pushing my hair out of my eyes, I found my phone. He answered on the third ring.

“Astra? What time is it?” He spoke carefully, like someone who’d drunk a few too many and knew it.

“Half past four,” I said, reading off my nightstand clock. I dropped back onto my pillow, trying to shake the sleep from my brain. “Sorry! I just thought—”

“Calm down, kid,” he said, getting clearer. “Now, what did you want to tell me?”

I took a breath, my free hand bunching my sheets as I stared at the shadowed ceiling.

“
Kitsune
.
Kit-
soo
-
neh
. Fisher, I—” I almost said
I know what this is about
. But I didn’t, though I could
feel
it. What did I know?

“Our elusive thief. Go on.”

“I can’t imagine why I missed it before. The fox on the business card.
 
And when I saw her in the Dome, she looked—”
Breathe. You remember how.
“She looked younger than in the bank video. Half-Asian.”

“I remember. And Jenny told me that
kitsune
is Japanese for fox. But the description you gave us doesn’t match anyone in our databases.”

“Yes, but—. Wait, did Jenny say anything else about the name?”

“No, just that it sounds like our thief is Japanese. In Japanese folklore foxes are
shapeshifters
. What are you thinking, kid?”

I pulled myself up, trying to remember.
Thunk
.
Thunk
.
Thunk
.
My head was harder than the headboard.

“I think… A
kitsune
is more than just a fox. Jennifer’s right, but it’s more than that. In Japanese mythology all foxes are spirits. They call them
kami
, I think. It’s complicated. I remember seeing a Japanese print—a gathering of white foxes around a tree.”

What else?
I’d known something when I woke up. “They can be male or female, but when they look human they’re almost always beautiful women.
 
And, and, as they get older they get stronger—the number of tails tells you how strong they are.”

“Number of tails?” He didn’t
sound
like he was laughing.

“The oldest and wisest have nine. I think the good ones serve a Japanese goddess, too—you see their carvings at a lot of shrines.”

“So we should look for a fox with a plethora of tails?”

“No! Here’s the thing; if
Kitsune
is a supernatural—not a traditional breakthrough—he might think like a real
kitsune
—I mean—” I sputtered and stopped.

“I know what you mean,” Fisher said reassuringly. “Do you remember anything from the stories? Motivations?”

Now I felt stupid. “No… I don’t remember them being greedy. Wait! I think sometimes they’d get attached to families. Do one a favor, and it might watch out for your children? Or if a
kitsune
actually married a mortal, it might watch over its family forever. Or take vengeance on anyone who harmed them.”

“That’s interesting. Where did you get all this?”

“Comparative mythology class. It’s all a lot more relevant since—you know. Does it help?”

There was a thoughtful silence on the other end, and I held my breath.