Ancient Warrior opened the interview with the classic:
"Tell me about your criminal experience."
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He stifled a smile, seeing the candidate opposite him shuffle in an obvious sign of unease. Then again, the young man might have been too hot indoors in his fur-trimmed jacket. According to his CV, his villain name was Red Wolf, and the fur was red. Chasing the look was the plight of young villains these days.
"I’m The Menace of Midtown!” the man offered with a confident grin. It looked very practiced on his long face. He wasn't impressing anyone.
Frankly, Ancient Warrior didn't have to hold this interview personally–he had a department for that. But for the old times' sake, he couldn't resist. In this era, he donned a business suit like he had donned a suit of armor. Words were his sword.
“Menace, huh? That's the least moniker newspapers call a villain," the old supervillain chuckled. "According to your resume, you have 3 years of experience. What has held you back?”
“Um, no, The Menace of Midtown is an award,” Red Wolf corrected. “It’s given out annually by the Midtown Society of Evil.”
“Which Midtown? East or West?”
“West."
Ancient Warrior made a note and underscored it twice. The pen cost again as much as the mahogany desk–and it wanted everyone to know that. Red Wolf followed the pen tip like it signed his verdict. If he could read Arabic, he would read: “Anniversary! Call ex”. The final letter ended up blotted.
The old villain scowled at the note. Red Wolf stiffened.
“So, what made you apply for our Future Fresh Perspectives program?” Ancient Warrior had resumed the interview.
“The fact there was an opening, of course!” Red Wolf tried to kid, but Ancient Warrior wasn't playing ball. The joke was as old as the sands. Stonewalled into submission, the young criminal finally added: “ . . . sir.”
As they do. So far, Ancient Warrior was having too much fun. Wrinkles lined his face differently today than his usual grim demeanor. It was true what they said: you didn’t need to be a supervillain to work in HR, but it helped.
“How would you describe your superpowers?” he had recommenced the grilling.
“I'm the perfect negotiator."
Ancient Warrior did a double take on that one.
"Oh, are you? I expected you to turn into a wolf or some such."
"Not a wolf shifter," Red Wolf explained. "The name's metaphorical. I earned it as a fighter pilot."
Commendable if true, Ancient Warrior thought to himself with a very big if. He wrote down another note. A relevant one this time.
"Let's get this clear: is your superpower hypnotism? A supernatural intuition?"
"Sure, I'm that good," Red Wolf replied, not making it clear at all. And, frankly, Ancient Warrior felt very little of the power of persuasion junior was boasting.
"How does that work out for your career?"
"I'm the terrorist they do make deals with," he shrugged. "When I take hostages, I get results."
The old supervillain replaced the pen into its holder and closed the notebook. It was decided.
"Well then, I have a perfect test assignment for you. You'll even get to pilot."
***
"Nice trick, Clint, you finally negotiated yourself into a corner," Red Wolf had thought when he had been presented with the mission goal: close a deal with Harbinger to join other major villains on SFBF. There had been no taking it back at the time, but he knew he had to wiggle out of it. Even for the model villain he was projecting at the interview (and who doesn't?), this was way beyond his city-level. Which could only mean one thing: he was being used.
Two can play at this game.
"Harbinger, huh," Red Wolf muttered, overlooking the colossal mobile fortress from an airfield concealed a few clicks out from it. The Harbinger's mechanized lair, nicknamed Harvester by the press, had been strip mining land to the west of the West End for a year now. As a result, the anticipated expansion of Long City to the other coast had mostly stopped. It was everybody's problem that nobody knew what to do with.
"You must know a lot, being AI and all," Red Wolf turned to his partner for this mission, Robomech. "Assuming I only read newspapers and Wikipedia, what else do I need to know about Harbinger?"
"I'm not your Google bot," Robomech replied in a melodic auto-tuned voice.
"I'm sure you're much better!" Red Wolf encouraged.
"It's a harmful stereotype. Sigh . . . " Robomech articulated the last part. The little LED screen on the machineperson's chest, to the right where con badges usually went, stopped displaying "Ze/Zir" for a moment and showed an animation of a frowny face. "Stick to the mission," Robomech demanded as the animation wound down.
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"Right," Red Wolf echoed. "Reconnoiter, infiltrate, negotiate. On it."
The invisible airfield came with invisible jets and invisible drones, all sporting portable cloak generators. Much went into this state-of-the-art secret base of operations. It trumped all passive means of detection known to mad science, and automatically deployed proportional countermeasures for active detection, up to and including quantum-level AI–the one that was banned worldwide for an arguably failed attempt at world domination. SFBF hoped that this could even overcome Harbinger's tech.
Red Wolf primed three drones and set them up for launch in a neat, even-spaced row. As he went about it, Robomech silently watched him. Ze was supposedly here to make sure Red Wolf wouldn't break a tech equivalent of a third world country's annual budget. Or to measure the crater with my body in it, Red Wolf thought. Either way, there was no chance of getting out yet.
"The drones are all ready," he reported, cradling the control pad.
"Good. Now we--"
Suddenly, Robomech's faceplate whipped around to track something moving in the direction of the fortress. Red Wolf followed zir gaze.
A cloudy streak was drawing near the fortress. At this distance, Red Wolf couldn't possibly make out the details, but he knew the trail of a flying brick when he saw one.
"--Pacifist!" Robomech sounded urgent. "Change of plans. Get us there fast."
"Sure thing," Red Wolf said, taking his time as he got into the cockpit of the nearest jet. She was matte black, with a smoking cartoon cricket spray-painted on her side. Expecting the caustic tobacco tang inside, Red Wolf was pleasantly surprised. The previous pilot took care of the bird after all.
Robomech climbed into the second seat beside him. The jet dipped considerably under zir slender but densely packed frame. Just as Red Wolf suspected, there was no way the heavy machineperson could get to Harvester on foot fast enough. Even world-level superbeings had their weaknesses.
Red Wolf opened the launch procedure:
“Priming the field generator on Cricket One: T minus three-hundred . . . two-ninety-nine . . . two-ninety-eight . . . ” he counted down, hoping the machineperson didn't know the ropes around the generator's specs. Hopefully, the Googlebot stereotype was wrong.
“Forget the cloaking, launch now!” Robomech interrupted.
“No cloak? I haven’t signed up to become a target practice,” Red Wolf paused as if to think. “ . . . Say, how about extra pay for the extra risk? T minus two-ninety-four . . .”
“You get no pay. It’s a test assignment."
“Sweeten the pot, then.”
“Bring it up post-mission. Launch, now!”
No game, Red Wolf thought. He'd have to think of something on the fly–literally.
“Okey-doke,” he intoned, only now donning the flight helmet. That done, his hands danced over the console. “Cricket One, launching. Three, two, one, we’re up!”
After a brief moment of vibration and hum, the sleek fighter jet roared its engines and started accelerating to the top speed tolerated by trained pilots and non-human beings. Even now, Red Wolf felt the weight of his mission partner interfering with the jet’s momentum. He was confident he could deal this that . . . and maybe use that.
They shot out of the cloak field, going supersonic with a boom. There was no way Harvester's detection hadn’t noticed them if it was looking at all. The cloud trail of Pacifist’s arrival had reached the top dome and stopped at it, the superhero surely already inside, whatever by a hatch or by force.
“There,” Robomech demanded, pointing at that spot, “do a close flyby.”
“About that extra--” Red Wolf said in a calm tone, the opposite of his partner.
“Post-mission!"
“I think I’d prefer something right now . . . Incoming!” Red Wolf announced, as angry red dots of enemy missiles appeared on the radar. Some cashable intel would go a long way towards laying low after this. So he pushed further as he entered the curve: “How about a simple thing? I want to know more about Harbinger. Let’s say it’s a need to know. You must agree that the mission briefing was lacking.”
The first wave of missiles was easy. They felt almost no G-force.
"You don't need to know anything," Robomech said in a moment of respite.
"Why not? There's a better chance to--Incoming!" he announced more missiles, "--to outmaneuver that if I know what it is," he gestured with his chin at the aircraft that launched from the fortress. It looked like a triangular metal bird that flew in a jerky trajectory unlike any jet or chopper.
"It's called flapper. Just force it near the ground," Robomech instructed.
"That's a start," Red Wolf said as he pushed the control to lose height. "What's its preferred formation?"
"Swarm."
"Sure it is," Red Wolf confirmed as he saw a launch of more flappers from the fortress.
A heavy plasma ray missed the jet by a meter. He glanced at the pursuing flapper that was cooling off his nose gun. Additional firespots were heating up on its wingbends.
Red Wolf cursed in the language of his people.
"This was also worth mentioning!" he complained, holding onto the control with renewed focus.
"It's new," Robomech said.
"Ka-ching!" he went mentally.
But he still needed to get out alive.
The jet was almost skimming the desert floor now. Flappers kept away above it, darting all over. Obviously their tech wasn't designed for regular formations. But it was designed for precise plasma fire from an unstable position. It took Red Wolf all his focus to present as tricky a target as he could.
The desert had ended, and a pit had opened under them: they entered the Harvester's trail of devastation. The fortress itself was less than a click away.
"Drop me at the spot," Robomech ordered.
"Uh, about that . . . " Red Wolf said, eyeing the swarm of flappers blooming with hotspots. "This is as close as we're getting." With that, he smashed the catapult activator, and his seat launched into the air.
Robomech's seat failed to launch under zir weight.
Flappers fired the plasma rays.
Two explosions echoed through the pit: a huge one and a little one. Making a flyby to confirm the elimination of both targets, flappers turned to head home. They detected no energy signatures and no human lifesigns.
Some time after they did, the jet’s debris shifted and slid off the smooth metal chassis. Robomech stood tall, undamaged, not even dust on zir surface.
The only thing between ze and the fortress was a few hundred feet down the slope. Even for the heavy machineperson, this was a walk of about two minutes.
A russet coyote watched ze reach the fortress. Then it turned away and, limping, started on the long way back through the desert.
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