Menace #10: The Breaking Point (Part 1)
Mrs. Coplin would wake up every morning at five in the morning. She would shower, eat breakfast, and change into her jogging clothes so that she might take a run around the block each morning, to help stay in shape and keep a healthy heart. She was a fairly attractive woman, just under forty (although, anyone who saw her thought she was on the later cusp of her twenties), with short, brown hair and bright green eyes. Every morning for the past ten years she had done this — in the rain, the sun, the snow — and, without fail, she had never seen another person running on her morning trek. So, in the middle of the prior week, when she saw what looked to be a young man looking strikingly like her son, with dark hair and blue eyes, she was perplexed. She considered the possibility of it being a mirage or a dream that her tired brain was concocting, for the boy was moving unreasonably fast. In the end, she had made the decision that the occurrence was, at the very least, an anomaly. That is, until she saw the boy again the next day. On the third day of this occurrence, she called out to the boy, hoping he was real and that she was not a crazy lady about to be screaming through the streets at five in the morning. The boy did not respond. Well fuck, Mrs. Coplin thought, I guess that means I’m crazy then.
The Bloodhound woke up in her jail-cell. The top of her head was still sore from when that hero, whatever his name was, smashed her on the head with a quantity of cement. Her orange jumpsuit was too large for her body, and it hung loosely around her arms, legs, and waist. She went to wipe a tear from her cheek, but realized it had dried a short time ago. Marie could smell all of the disgusting people around her, around the cell. She could smell dried urine down the hall, some fecal matter that had, unfortunately, missed the toilet of her neighbors cell, and the rodents squirming throughout the building. She could smell her own, unadulterated sweat as it dripped inside her jumpsuit. Everything about the jail felt warm and pungent. Her own cell, while she attempted to keep it as tidy as she could, still smelled of the former resident; a large, bulking, sweaty man (as far as she could tell). The super-villain wing of the county jail was small. Only herself and two more residents occupied the cells, and, from what she’d gathered, they, too, were recent occupants. She wondered why she was not sent to the Chambers, the normal holding cell for super-villains, but realized, as she sighed in agony, that her powers hardly merited a holding of that magnitude. Marie cursed her own powerlessness as she sat in the cell, and thought, ironically, that the last time she felt so weak was when she was at the Chambers. She thought back to Nate Coplin, her best friend at the time. She hadn’t thought about him in years.
Eloise was worried. She sat on her couch — which, she always noted, looked far more comfortable than it was — and sent Nate another text to say good morning. He hadn’t responded for almost two weeks now. She curled her hair with her finger as she set her phone down on the coffee table and fiddled with the remote to her television. She sipped at her coffee as the seven o’clock news began to play. Marie’s warning to her at the Spring Praestan had affected her more than she’d have liked to admit. She was waiting for something to happen to her. Every noise, every movement in the corner of her eye as she walked down the street, every awkward conversation with friends and customer service employees all shook her to the core. She knew the risks of leaving the coalition, and she knew they would come for her eventually. Now, however, she could feel the presence of the villains on top of her, like a hot, moist breath in her ear. She decided to text Nate again. A knock came swiftly across her door.
The Forge’s eyes opened slowly to see his clock read: 7:30 A.M. He was surprised at this, being unable to recall the last time he had woken before noon. His computer lay open to the other side of his bed, and he remembered that he’d fallen asleep earlier than usual last night, as the fan fiction he’d chosen to read was poor at best. His room was a cluttered mess. He glanced down to the foot of the bed, where he’d somehow thrown all of his sheets over the duration of the night. A pile of clothes was reaching four feet high to the right of the sheets, and he stripped off his shirt and threw it to the top of the pile. He yawned, then looked towards the left of his bed, where he normally placed the Forge of Creation before he slept. The fact that it was missing immediately forced his eyes open, and brought him to his feet. He hopped from his bed, and began to make his way through the house. “If somebody’s here…” He shouted cautiously as he walked down the stairs, “come out now and I won’t hurt you.” Little do they know, I’m lying, Liam thought to himself. At the base of the stairs, he looked towards his kitchen table, where he noticed the sizable, black, metal ball. On top of it rested a few words scribbled out on a Post-It Note: Sorry, had to borrow it again. I’ll do my best to tell you next time — Menace.
Pygmalion had been missing the toilet on purpose. His jail cell had begun to stink of shit after the first miss, so he decided that, since he’d already have to deal with the consequences anyway, he may as well finish the plan. He realized, shortly after coming, that no guards wanted to clean any of the villains cells, especially ones who were purposely missing the toilet, and so they began to punish him by refusing to clean the cell. He laughed internally as he knew that this meant his plan might function without a hitch. Pygmalion was gifted with the powers to turn any non-sentient humanoid into a sentient, functioning, human-like creature; he preferred to work with marble and clay, crafting giant, beautiful creatures like his lovely Galatea, which that wretched rabbit hero so rudely destroyed, but he was willing to work with more mundane materials, should he have to. He had lost all concept of time inside the jail cell, and so, he figured, as soon as his platoon was constructed, he might as well get on with the show. He began working quickly, and diligently as he laughed maniacally while working in his own feces.
The Mutation had not seen Nate in weeks. On the night of his battle at the Spring Praestan, Nate had sent him two texts: Sorry, something important came up, and, a few hours later, I need to disappear for a bit. Anthony had no idea what the second text meant, but figured it was just another example of Nate’s pretentious bullshit. When Nate stopped showing up for hero duty, Anthony began to worry. He contacted Eloise and the White Witch — the two people who he thought Nate would tell everything — but neither of them seemed to know where he was either. He then sought out his mother who, despite not having seen him, did not act particularly worried about his disappearance; although, as far as Anthony could tell, she was looking nervously aside as though she were hiding something. The Mutation decided he should take on Menace’s shift in addition to his own, and began working double, which, somehow, was bearably. All crime in New Monmouth City had come to a shaky halt in the past two weeks. Anomalies like this had happened before. Anthony knew, perhaps better than anyone, that this meant something big was something. He laughed awkwardly as he began his shift: it was going to be a long one.
Earshot was nervous about Menace’s disappearance. In her hero experience, heroes only went missing if they were captured by villains or about to become a villain. She had always liked Menace, even back when he was still going by the name “Goggles,” and she did not want either eventuality to befall him. Ever since they had worked together to take down Pygmalion, she was feeling less and less enticed by the prospect of working with Lionheart, the leader of her hero-team. He was nice enough, she settled, when off-duty, and he looked like he was trying very hard when on the job, but she couldn’t help but resent him for his incompetence. She was ready to fight, she wanted to fight, and he wouldn’t let her fight. He wouldn’t let the Forge fight either, so she did not take it so personally, but the anger still boiled inside her. Her team was assigned to cover the North end of town, specifically, the Spring Praestan for the next six hours: it was a known villain hideout and warehouse, and Lionheart believed (and petitioned passionately) that a group of heroes standing in front of the building would scare away all evil doers. She fixed her mask as she began driving towards the North side of the city, deciding that this would be the last day she worked on Lionheart’s team.
The Engine hated Eloise. He hated every fiber of her being, hated every strand of hair on her head, hated every colorful pigmentation she ever placed into anything she owned. Unfortunately, he was a hero, and, even when not officially on duty, he had to chase after the screaming lady. He was not sure what he had seen at first. He was walking towards The Royal Jester for lunch when what looked like a bridge constructed entirely of bright, glowing particles manifested in the sky. A man covered in a large, black hood ran across the light bridge, holding a beautiful, blonde girl as she screamed and kicked in opposition. When Jake recognized that the girl was Eloise, he took pause. He didn’t want to help her. Even looking at her sent pain coursing through his body and forced his fists to clench. He stood on the sidewalk of downtown New Monmouth City. Steam began to rise from his body, as though independent from his stream of consciousness. “Ah, fuck it.” He decided, and ran, faster than a speeding bullet, in the direction of the light bridge.
Magnet Man still refused to believe that he had been beaten by the Mutation brat and his little friend. Moreno then that, however, he lamented the system that provided that two heroes could mercilessly beat him in the center of a bank, and he would go to jail for it. It was unjust! Furthermore, the unnecessary cruelty of cuffing his hands behind his back was clearly against the constitution, he thought. He thought many things, actually. Confined in his jail cell without much of a view, and no access to his powers or any form of entertainment, he had much time to think. No amount of thinking, however, would prepare him for seeing a four foot tall monster composed entirely of shit walk down the hallway of the jail, pass his cell, and walk straight into the warden’s office. Nor would he comprehend that same monster, walking back past his cell with the set of the warden’s keys. He could easily understand, however, when Pygmalion approached his cell with a handful of shit-covered keys, smiling like a maniac. He slid the key into the lock of the cell.
Lionheart stood in front of the Spring Praestan with a large smile across his face. He had his whole team with him, it was a beautiful day, and he was doing good for the community. The beautiful, old building that stood behind them was a national landmark (or, at least, he felt it should be), and the ability to guard it with all his might was something he was extensively proud of. He could not understand why Earshot and the Forge stood so glumly next to him, despite the pounding of the heat of the sun at noon. He was practically sweating through his campy mane, but he still bore a wide grin as he felt he was doing good. Little did he know, or could he know, that the Spring Praestan was no longer the base for the super villain coalition. About a week earlier, they had all quickly evacuated from the building and not scene there since. No hero would have understood the reason why; the heroes mentality always remained the same. “Villains will do bad until heroes stop them,” Lionheart stated aloud, trying to raise the morale of the group of heroes he was leading. This was the universal mentality that all heroes had bashed into their heads, even from a young age. However, the statement is not always true and is, in fact, a majority of the time false. Evil men don’t stop doing bad, even when opposed by heroes. This coalition of super villains certainly would not evacuate a good hideout simply because heroes discovered them. The only thing that could have forced the migration of such a powerful coalition of villains would be something far worse than themselves.
The White Witch could not stop thinking about Nate. He had forced her to return back to her home, for the time being, as he was immediately convinced that the cube was no longer a safe place for her to stay. “The Gentleman found us,” he had said, “we have to move now.” And so they had. She pouted in the confines of her room, as she heard her father screaming at his attorney in the living room below. She hated her room; the walls were painted light pink to match her bedsheets, and her desk was made of sparkly plastic. She had hated the room since she could remember. It had been over a week since she’d last seen Nate, and she not only missed him, but she was itching to get back out on hero duty. She wanted to be out there, stopping crime, or, at least, working towards something greater. Maybe, she thought to herself, I can find him through the other world. She climbed onto her bed and sat in a crosslegged position. Alright, if I can just focus I can enter the- Her thoughts were abruptly cut off by her father shouting racial slurs at the divorce lawyer. She sighed. She hadn’t been able to enter the astral world all week on account of the superficial distractions of daily life. She was tired of not being able to use her powers. She had never felt so useless or so alone. And then the explosion happened.
The Photon was tired of the speedster running underneath his light bridge. The mission was rather simple, in essence. Retrieve the lost member of the coalition, return her to the base. The decision to make it a spectacle was not his own; it was to be a message to all heroes and villains alike that no one was safe. Except that it led to him getting tailed by a particularly annoying teenage runner. The kid, the Photon could tell, was losing steam. The Photon had slowly raised the elevation of the bridge so that, despite the Engine’s speed and leaping capabilities, he could not come close to landing on the bridge. The kid was beginning to slow down. The steam rising from his body was beginning to dissipate sooner and sooner, faster and faster. He was a sprinter, not a distance runner. It didn’t matter how fast the Photon moved, in any event, because the kid couldn’t catch him. The Photon threw Eloise on the floor of his bridge and began to raise the density of the light particles in his hand. “Here we go.” He muttered to himself as he shot the light particles towards the speedster. The Engine reacted a moment to late, and the dense light smacked him across the face, forcing him to the ground. The Photon picked Eloise up again, as she had remained crumpled on the ground in pain, and began walking towards his base. Eloise screamed as the bridge slowly melted into a staircase, leading down to an abandoned building in West New Monmouth City that was once called The Hero’s Ballroom.
Cosmos was a villain who enjoyed his privacy. More so than that, he enjoyed killing people who called themselves “super-heroes.” When he noticed a platoon of young super-heroes outside the front door of his perfect new hideout, the Spring Praestan, he came to the realization that he could kill two birds with one stone. Or, more accurately, three heroes with one explosion. He realized that, if he acted first, they would be mince-meat before they even knew what was happening. Thusly, he began to conjure in his hand, from nothing, the makings of a two inch, golden star that he then hurled into the center of the triad of heroes. “Three, two, one.” He counted down, as the miniature star expanded rapidly to a ten foot radius bursting the ground beneath it wide open and incinerating the left arm of the Forge as Earshot pulled both him and Lionheart out of the way. “God damn it!” Cosmos exclaimed as he cursed his luck. One of them must have some augmented senses, he thought as he constructed the next star. He hurled it towards the girl who looked like a rabbit, assuming she was the one. The star, before it was able to reach her, bounced back as though it were halted by an invisible wall, landed on the ground behind the triad of heroes, and exploded into another crevice. “What was that?” He asked himself. “Oh.” He continued, to himself. A small girl in a large white hooded sweatshirt floated above the triad of heroes. The winds seemed to bend around her as she slowly lowered herself to the ground. “More company.” Cosmos grunted to himself. “Just wonderful.” He started constructing another star.
The Gentleman wished that his villain compatriots could have waited until the night to begin their jailbreak — as then they might have had assistance from the Count — but he understood their feeling of urgency. He walked into the entrance hallway of the New Monmouth City jail, where he could plainly see that things had fallen into chaos. There were no guards in the entrance hallway, only a few desks and workstations that were obviously left hastily. I could only imagine why guards would leave their desks so quickly at a prison, the Gentleman mused as he strolled in, perhaps there was a breakout. He laughed at his own little joke. He walked, cane assisted, through the heavy iron doors that lead to the prisoner’s cells and was greeted with an interesting sight. A hero, the Mutation, if I’m not mistaken, was standing between the iron doors and three super-powered individuals across from him. Guards littered the floor, some of whom had had their bodies ripped in half (no doubt by Magnet Man’s powers), and some seemed to have been pierced by some rather sharp fingernails (a trademark of the Bloodhound). Others were lying on the ground, covered in what appeared to be fecal matter. That is certainly a new one, the Gentleman thought. The Mutation looked rather worse for wear. His forehead was dripping blood and his hair was drenched in a mixture of blood and sweat. One of his arms appeared to be made of tough steel and the other looked as though it had been transformed into the same iron that composed the doors to the cells. The arm of steal had been broken and shattered to the point where it formed a jagged sword-like appendage. He was breathing incredibly heavily. A claw mark was scraped across his chest in blood, and, from how he barely kept himself standing, it was apparent that he could not longer walk. The Gentleman walked up behind the young man, and placed his hand on the Mutation’s shoulder. “Do you mind if I borrow you for just a moment?” He asked as he took control of the Mutation’s body. He then turned his face to the other villains. “Well, that was an easy breakout, don’t you think? You can thank me later.”