CHAPTER SIX: FOILS

Mia sat on a haybale and kicked her feet, dagger hilt flashing every now and then as it caught the sun, high overhead. Rebecca leaned against another one, arms folded and right leg crossed over her left. They listened and gave input as I paced in front of them and spoke.

“So we’ll do what other newly formed hero groups do,” I confirmed. “First we get a police scanner, and learn codes, so we can respond to emergencies if it sounds like they’re at our level.” I grinned. “Which is low, but that’s alright. We also look at the open bounties on the internet. They’re usually really high profile, but every now and then something will come up that will be low and we’ll nab it.”

“What we really want right now is to find villains with minions,” Mia pointed out. “If you farm points by killing, that’s the easiest way to get a bodycount without getting in the way of your morals.” She smirked. So did Rebecca. I’d vaguely explained to them how my power worked so that they would understand my motivations better, but without revealing my limitations too much too soon.

“Right,” I agreed. “After a while, we’ll build a name for ourselves. Or for you guys; I’ll stay in the shadows. When we have a reputation we’ll start getting jobs from the mayor that aren’t even posted on the bounty boards, like other groups get.” I rubbed my palms together and paused my pacing for a moment. “I have been thinking -- H-Bomb, this hero group I know, gets jobs they can do due to their skills. It could be smart to start more than one group when we get enough of a membership. Sort them by their skills, each has a leader. He’ll give each group the jobs that line up with their skills and we can do a bunch at once.”

“That seems far down the line,” Rebecca pointed out.

“Agreed,” I said.

“For now we need to talk about lodging,” she said. “Because you seem a lot nicer and … cleaner … than a lot of villains I worked for, but I still don’t want to share a bed with you two every night.”

My cheeks reddened again. “I have a plan for that, I was going to talk about it next, when--”

The sound of a powerful motorbike engine roared suddenly in the near distance and I heard the distinctive, somehow, sound of part of the farm fence shattering inwards and the engine roar rapidly accelerating.

“Here!” I heard the excited scream.

“You can smell it?” a much lower voice growled, as if the bike engine itself was talking. “Is it right here?”

“Summoned within thirty minutes, it’ll be somewhere. You look that way and I’ll check in there.”

I didn’t have to see where the guy was pointing to know he meant the barn. I folded my arms and frowned, and Mia hopped from her perch as Rebecca straightened up.

“What is this?” I asked aloud, but quiet enough only they could hear.

“I should have warned you. Shit. They’re still active?” Mia shook her head and pulled her dagger from her sheath. “Get ready, Becks.”

Rebecca wrinkled her nose. “Would you call me Diamond? Especially in a combat situation. It’s just more what I’m used to.” She lifted her hands and curled them slowly into fists. Judging by the uncertainty on her face, maybe I should have gone for something like a wrench. I couldn’t wait until I had more points and I could give my people anything they wanted to work with.

“Who’s still active?” I asked, backing off and gritting my teeth. There was really no point in me being here and visible. I hoped they’d understand and wouldn’t just think of me as a coward.

“They’re a pair of fucking jackass vigilantes,” Mia muttered, glancing at the barn and getting ready. “Good news is, Sinker has minions. So fuck off and hide, Zander.”

“I’ve never heard of a Sinker,” Rebecca noted, getting into a ready fighting stance too. I watched them beside each other as I hid -- as powerfully and respectably as anyone could duck behind some old moist hay -- and thought maybe she’d been a good choice. From the way they talked to each other, they seemed like they had both been mercenaries for pay. They knew how to fight with others, then, and their loyalty was naturally high.

“They’re bullshit,” Mia told her. “Hookline can locate and bind existing minions to people but doesn’t have the interface to upgrade. Sinker can upgrade anything if it’s in his roster but can’t create or summon. They think they’re so slick teaming up with each other, but combined they only barely make one passable super.”

Foils, I noted internally. They probably would have acquired their powers around the same time and they had been lucky to find each other. Otherwise it sounded like alone they were both completely useless.

But if Mia was right, it did stand to reason they’d have minions. Minions that the girls could work together to kill, guilt-free.

If she was right, it was also logical to assume they were here because…

“Here! Here!” one of them called. A smaller dude in a sky blue super suit plus swim cap was practically bouncing up and down at the entrance to the barn. “This one, the one on the right. She was just…”

He paused, tilted his head, staring at Rebecca. “She’s a human. Full human. No powers. But just summoned thirty-three minutes ago.” The guy tapped on his puffy lower lip, and I couldn’t see his expression because a blue plastic mask covered most of his upper face. “Sinker. You’ve got to come see this.”

“Hookline,” Mia greeted. “Still doing the same old thing, huh? You look like you’ve aged twenty years.”

Hookline in his too-tight blue suit blinked at Mia and then crossed his arms defensively. “What do you mean by that? Who are you, a merc? Who are you working for?”

Mia looked at Rebecca and then back at him. “We’re freelance now. We work for ourselves.”

Hookline looked puzzled, and then frowned. “But the smell. You were just summoned here.” He nodded at Rebecca. “Or am I picking up something else, like … your clothes were summoned?” He screwed up his eyes and shook his head. Was it really that unusual to pull humans from plane to plane? Sure I hadn’t heard of it before but there were plenty of things I hadn’t heard of that were sure to exist.

Her clothes actually were summoned, so maybe that was throwing off Hookline’s sensors. I didn’t know exactly how his powers worked, maybe an aura, or a scent, like he’d said.

“I’m a summoner of inanimate objects,” Mia lied sweetly, spinning her dagger in her hand. She was echoing what I’d said. “Weapons, clothing. You’re dumb, and you picked up on the wrong thing. Sorry to say but you and your even dumber friend came all the way out here for a stylish pair of mahogany culottes.” Mia gestured to Rebecca’s brown pants. I was secretly pleased she thought they were stylish. I didn’t know what I was doing when it came to clothes, and I wanted them to be happy.

Hookline squinted and looked from girl to girl as they stood there, patiently waiting for him to back off Rebecca.

“We’ll see about that,” he muttered when Sinker rounded the corner. He was a huge guy, looked like a bodybuilder. As a fellow Summoner, I envied him. He’d be able to join in with the fighting instead of … ducking behind old feed to preserve his identity while they did all the work.

I’d have to see about getting an HQ soon. And a way to see what they were all doing and communicate with them. This was lame.

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“Whoa, we get girls this time?” Sinker asked, his voice deep and rumbling. I wondered if he was putting it on. He had a huge red outfit with a cape and all, and a mask that made me think of wrestlers. A big flashy ‘S’ was emblazoned on his front, and I didn’t think much of the whole look.

“I’m gonna try to bind her to you, you ready?” Hookline asked.

Stop him, I urged silently, wishing I could do anything more than throw hay at them. If I was willing to compromise my identity to enemies right now, I could throw a decent punch but I wasn’t a trained fighter, and if these supers had been on the scene for a long time they’d probably know how to knock me out in one good hit.

I knew I should at least start to carry a mask everywhere I went.

Good thing they knew what to do on their own. Rebecca might not be convinced she wanted to be with me, but I was willing to bet she would rather be aligned with Mia and I than stuck for good with these two losers.

She launched forward just as Sinker was probably about to make some assholeish comment about how awesome it would be to bind women to him, and she sank her fist deep into Hookline’s slight but puffy core.

“Jeez!” Sinker yelled instead. Hookline coughed hard, retched, and then wheezed, falling to his knees. Nice, one point for the brass knuckles.

Mia jogged up to the distracted muscular super and sent an almighty punch right to his jaw … but just came away waving her hand through the air and grimacing while Sinker rubbed his chin and glowered.

“Minions!” he roared.

I pressed my lips together and peered through the gap in the hay bales. Three little things appeared. The first one, to my pleasant surprise, was a bone minion. They must have worked together to grab a fresh one from the Lich when he came up to the surface. I wanted to instruct Mia to take it out as soon as possible because she had had such an easy time of it before.

The second was a huge … crab? It definitely looked like it had been a crab. But the thing was pretty disgusting to look at. It had been artificially grown but the exoskeleton hadn’t followed suit as fast as the, er, meat, so the result was a large pink fleshy mound on eight sharp legs, covered in cracked islands of shell. It had big serrated claws that snapped and lunged, and I wondered which girl would have an easier time fighting it…

But neither of those minions were anything when compared to the third. I recognized this one from the press. These two guys must have had to travel all the way to the mountains to steal this.

A hunched, bulging white-furred yeti loped its way into the barn, looked around, and snorted.

The three of them all together against the two girls? And if the supers got involved that would get pretty dicey.

It turned out I barely needed to worry, though. Rebecca leapt forward and spun on her toes, crashing her strengthened fist through the skull of the bone minion. Mia didn’t even have to worry about it -- it was down for the count. She gripped her dagger tight and launched forward much faster than Rebecca had, slicing towards Sinker so that he backed off, and then spinning backwards to collide with the crab thing.

She was unlucky enough to collide steel with a portion of shell, and the small knife ricocheted back, almost stunning Mia. The crab creature turned on her, all eight legs skittering madly so that the enormous swell of its main body could only barely move.

Rebecca noted what was happening and decided to focus on the yeti. I had heard about these -- there was a summoner somewhere in the mountains who could pull one a year from an alternate universe and keep them under his control to protect his settlement. The dude must have been pissed when these two jokers turned up and took one.

“These all you have?” Mia asked breathlessly, landing a slice at the fleshy portion of crab meat. “Kind of a shitty haul, isn’t it? You’ve been on the scene forever.”

“No,” Hookline yelled. “We have plenty more at home.”

“You guys share a house?” Rebecca piped up. Mia let out a cackle and slashed again. The crab let out a horrible hissing noise at the attack and reared up before lashing out with its pincers. I winced, but Mia bounced easily out of the way.

Rebecca swung and hit the yeti once with her fist and it roared but didn’t look hurt at all. Just annoyed. It lunged forward and swung with its own fist, but it was slow. Rebecca managed to dodge.

“D-Diamond,” Mia sputtered. “Swap.”

I appreciated the use of their code names, but Rebecca didn’t know Mia’s. Instead she just nodded and they darted past each other. Rebecca didn’t waste any time socking the crab creature right in the pincer, shattering the already cracked pincer shell and causing bits of it to splinter and fall to the ground. Mia at the same time drove her dagger deep into the yeti’s chest while it was busily lumbering after Rebecca -- a one-track mind.

They swapped back once and Mia took advantage of the shattered shell to drive her dagger deep into the crab’s core, while Rebecca beat the weakened yeti.

All in all, it was … gorey. But it worked.

I’d summoned two women who worked well together, just as I’d hoped. I would still need to optimize them so that Rebecca, Diamond, was more of a tank and Mia was more of a quick fighter who could do a lot of damage over time, but for now they were doing great.

Panting, they turned back to the summoning pair.

“We can still get the girl, we only have a few minutes of a window left,” Hookline said, turning to his partner.

“You should reconsider,” Mia said, flipping the knife in her hand. “She isn’t a normal summoned creature. She still has all of her free will. And I’m still here. Not to mention the rest of our crew. You bind her, the only thing that happens is that we kill you.”

Hookline took a half step back. “We’re not supposed to be killing each other, it’s the only reason the mayor lets us do this shit.”

Mia stared him down. “Stealing a human woman? That’s not funny or cute. You flirt with slavery like that and yeah, maybe we’ll flirt with murder.”

The two supers looked at each other, frowning.

“You’re crazy,” Sinker growled. “And you destroyed my favorite.” He gestured at the yeti. “This isn’t over.”

“Yes,” Mia said. “It is.”

They shook their heads and exited the barn together, with far less than they’d arrived with.

Mia and Rebecca lowered their weapons, looked at each other, and blew out a collective breath.

I hopped over the haystack and shook my head in disbelief. “You guys were incredible.”

Mia shrugged. “We worked with what we were given. Which, by the way, is hardly anything.” I agreed, to be honest.

“I’ll get you guys the things you want,” I promised them. When the sound of whatever bike they’d arrived in roared off into the distance, we left the barn and I glanced around to see that Frankie’s car had reappeared at some point. Hopefully she hadn’t heard anything from the other end of her land. Presumably not, or she’d have come straight over to check it out.

I had to go and propose something to her.

I’d decided that the best place to keep the girls was here with me, where I could give them the things they wanted at short notice, and they could stick with each other and bond.

I’d realized, watching Mia and Rebecca talk and defend each other -- one of the best ways to get their loyalty and to ensure they didn’t leave as easily would be to make sure they made friends with each other, as well as with me.

They couldn’t both sleep in my bed tonight … could they? ... so I was going to have to get started on this idea I had with lodging.

I grabbed Frankie in the kitchen of the farmhouse and ignored the knowing twinkle in her eyes while she tried hard to avoid asking me questions about Mia…

She had been intending to repurpose the barn and the nearby unfinished stables into two little houses she could throw online and get guests for a mediocre rent. But she never had.

I suggested to her that I would take care of that and be the landlord, and she wouldn’t have to worry about any of it.

“And how are you going to pay for all the renovation?” she asked.

“I can do the basics for free. We can get furniture for free or cheap by shopping around,” I said, which wasn’t a lie. “Then I’ll start charging guests hardly any money. Keep pouring all profits back into the guesthouses. Soon they’ll be worth a bundle. A nice place like this, a short drive to the city center and a short drive to the beach? Fuck, Frankie, we’ll be rich.” I grinned and she shrugged.

It was only barely a lie. I would absolutely renovate them for her. I would keep earning money from freelance heroism and pouring that money into the sleeping quarters. It’s just that I wouldn’t be charging my Valkyries to live there. The money would come from elsewhere.

And Frankie wouldn’t be suspicious about people hanging out around here all the time.

The plan to me seemed flawless.

When it came to the time that the guesthouses were fully finished, I should be making more money anyway since I had a full roster of heroes and mercenaries at my disposal. I could just throw some earnings Frankie’s way and call it her cut.

When I was done talking, animatedly and really getting into the depths of this mostly-lie, she looked on at me, amused, and then nodded.

“Alright, Zander, I don’t see a downside. But have this be a project in your spare time, OK? I don’t want to see your online studying fall by the wayside and your work suffer because of this scheme.”

Hmm. If only she knew.