Chapter Two - Kevin
Kevin revved the engine on his bike, leaned forwards, then zipped around the car ahead of him while it was still slowing down. The traffic on these highways was way too high for such a nowhere city like Eauclaire.
But maybe he'd have to get used to it.
As he rode past congested traffic, riding on the line between the bus lane and the innermost lane of traffic, Kevin got a decent view out over the city itself.
Eauclaire wasn't all that big. A few bridges, a few distinct sections, the school and downtown. It was more suburb than city, really. It didn't even have a proper crop of skyscrapers in its middle. Kind of pathetic, for a city.
Still, this place was going to be his soon enough.
He rode down an off-ramp, then navigated his way through the city, aware the entire time of the hustle and bustle around him. He might have never come here before, but with a power like his, it was easy to drive around and avoid the worst of the traffic. Hell, he could do it with his eyes closed.
Kevin wasn't some nobody. He'd been in the business for two years now. But all that time, he'd been held back, forced into some pitiful role in the back.
He kind of even understood it, now that he had a year or so under his belt.
The first gang that he joined didn't want him on the front lines, and it had chafed. He was strong, he could prove it. Now he knew that it was a bit of arrogance on his part. Sure, he was strong, but he didn't know how to use it yet.
After a while though... no, if anything, Kevin deserved to be the head honcho, the big villain that made everyone else quake in their boots and who kept the heroes up at night.
He'd been held back, time and again. But that was over now.
The last group of idiots he'd been part of, Skeever's Crew, had tried to hold him back. He'd turned their base into a pile of rubble the day he left. Even beat the crap out of Skeever himself.
Kevin was done being held back.
It had hit him a few weeks ago. Power day came, and with it a whole new crop of heroes and villains, all ready to play the game again. They were all... So weak. Sure, he'd been one of them, once, but now, with two years under his belt, he could snap the best of them over his knee with hardly any effort.
So then, why was he still listed as some C-tier villain? Why was he not even the second in command of his own gang?
What had he been doing those last two years?
He was a little young for a mid-life crisis, but then, villains didn't live all that long to begin with, so maybe he was overdue.
Kevin decided to turn a new leaf, to set out and take what he wanted. But he couldn't do that in the city he'd been living in. Those had proper heroes, established gangs of villains--quiet and loud--and while Kevin was confident in himself, he had a good idea of what his limits were.
No, if he wanted to start fresh, he'd need to do it somewhere like here. A place that barely deserved the moniker of city, but which also had no competition. The heroes were weak and fat, the sorts pushed to the edge and towards safe little havens where their weakness wouldn't cause any issues.
The city wasn't rich, but it wasn't poor. Plenty of college kids, plenty of money flowing in and out. Yeah, he could work with it.
Kevin found an empty alleyway to park in and kicked the stand out of the side of his bike. Her name was Charlotte, and she was a classic Espa motorised scooter, all done up in black and chrome.
Kevin stepped off Charlotte and stretched his back out. Then he got to work, pulling Charlotte's bench up to reveal the compartment within where his costume was hidden.
He had gone through a few villainous identities. Shaker when he was new, then for a long time he was known as Tremble.
But Shaker was a nobody that no one remembered, and Tremble was a c-lister whose Villainpedia page had little information on it. Even his pictures there were distant and blurry.
Because no one trusted him enough to stand in the limelight.
He shrugged on a coat. An expensive leather piece, with reinforced panels on the inside made by some gadgeteer he'd run into. It was supposed to be bulletproof to a ridiculous degree. It was light, too, though the rest of the coat made up for that.
Stolen novel; please report.
Then he put on his new mask. It was bone white, a lower jaw meant to look like it had been torn off the face of some poor skeleton. It was fixed to his head from the back, with a cushioned plate there that would be disguised by the collar of his coat.
It wouldn't protect his upper head, but that was fine. Sometimes sacrifices had to be made in the name of looking the part.
Kevin pulled out a mirror and fixed his eye shadow on, then adjusted the fit of his mask. Now he was stuck in a perpetual grin.
The last piece of his kit was an aluminium baseball bat with all of the markings shaved off. Nothing fancy, nothing complicated. He tapped the bat against his palm, feeling the vibration running through it and into his arm. It would do.
He closed Charlotte up, tucked her keys away, and set off walking with a twirl of his bat and a whistle on his lips.
He hadn't quite decided on a new name yet, but he thought he should settle on something appropriate. Maybe Rattles? It fit his new theme.
"Rattles," he said. "Rattles. Rattles. Yeah. I'm Rattles and I'm gonna shake y'er bones... no, no, that's... no," he muttered, that's way too much.
He noticed a few people on the sidewalk giving him looks, but no one was running away screaming yet. Back in some of the cities he'd lived in, the presence of anyone who might be a mask would have everyone running for cover.
Eauclaire was going to be so easy to take.
He let his bat drag along the ground behind him, the end of it clanging against the sidewalk. Then it was a simple matter of picking up on that and making it more.
The noise grew and grew, and soon people were picking up on the fact that something was deeply wrong.
Windows started to vibrate in their panes in time with the rattle of his bat, and Kevin--Rattles--grinned under his mask.
Ahead of him, at the end of the street, was the Hero Response Force headquarters for Eauclaire.
He picked his bat up, twirled it once for show, then rammed the head of it into the ground.
A wave, invisible to most, travelled out and away from him with a loud clang.
Windows exploded, people screamed, a car driving by turned sharply as its driver was sprayed with broken glass and it rammed into another parked car. Their alarms joined the cacophony.
Rattles continued to walk along, laughing under his breath. Yes, this was what he was capable of! This was what he could have been if he hadn't been held back for so long!
He spun his bat around and rammed the side of it into an HRF van parked on the side of the road. The hit did little, but the vibrations running through the van grew stronger and stronger until the entire vehicle was shaking itself apart. Metal crumples, bolts sheared themselves apart, and tanks ruptured.
He laughed harder and started to hit every car he passed, turning them into no more than scrap metal on the roadside.
The HRF was finally starting to respond, agents in armour rushing out of the front. Rattles laughed harder. Did they think a few nobody cops could stop him? He stomped a foot down and a wave of power travelled along the road. It was a terrible conductor for his power, asphalt cracked and snapped, but it still reached the officers and robbed them of their footing while he ran closer.
He was going to show Eauclaire who their new boss was, and he was going to do it in as spectacular a way as possible!
The HRF were useless. Their guns vibrated apart in their hands and their armour broke apart easily under the lightest of his blows. Then he turned his attention towards their headquarters. It was a big old building, all brick and mortar. Tricky, for its size, but he figured he could work with it.
Rattles ran past the fallen HRF troopers and kicked the building itself. Then it was time for him to make himself scarce. He was tough, but he didn't want to be there when the entire building came tumbling down.
So he'd leave it there as a monument and as a warning that there was a new boss in town.
***