For Whom the Bell Tolls
I have everything planned and then something screws it up. As usual.
About a thousand people are in the public square waiting for me and this idiot to duel to the death. The stolen bell is on the platform along with a shrewish sharp-featured guy and another guy in a white-and-red outfit who I assume is Klaxon. And me: I’m functionally invisible, skulking along because I have a plan, right?
I hear Klaxon say loudly behind me, “She’s here. It’s her.”
I do not get to equalize the odds before his sonic blast hits the bell and makes it vibrate in sympathy—
“Kill her!” he shouts.
The crowd turns into a thousand bloodthirsty mind-controlled hooligans with an appetite for moi.
The life of a supervillain wannabe is not without its problems.
#
After defeating Merlin Furioso and getting the amulet, you would think my rep would be assured and I would be swimming Scrooge McDuck-like in a vault of money and felonious contracts.
You would be wrong.
Oh, I got some nice press out of it, but that was offset by the facts that (a) I still had no way other than Craigslist (blech) to find jobs and (b) my performance in that job got criticized and minimized at every turn.
So far as (a) went, I actually considered getting jailed at one point just so that I could hob-nob with supervillains. Then my St. Bernard puppy Slobberkin would ask to go out and I realized that I couldn’t go to prison.
And (b)? I mean, hello? There was no one else in the museum but me and him, and it was all on security cams. (Okay, I had to leak the security footage but the footage was unaltered.)
But no: I had to contend with people claiming that some man did the real work, whether it was a partner or that I just waltzed in and took the amulet from Merlin. Some nights, fuelled by too many Long Island Iced Teas, I got on the Internet under an alias and argued with my detractors. (I ignored the ones who claimed I was a vigilante out to stop Merlin Furioso; that level of self-deception you cannot argue with.)
It was on one of those occasions that I encountered him. He had posted a list of “proof” that the security cam footage was a fake, and I was just drunk enough to respond. I demolished most of his points. He was online and patronizing, and I challenged him to do better.
His smug response? “Watch the news over the next couple of days. See how a man handles it.”
In the morning, I was hungover and in the process of deleting my browser history (I do it every morning, just before Slobberkin’s first walk) when I found the postings.
So I kept an eye out.
Damned if the Confederate Bell didn’t disappear from the same museum that night.
The Confederate Bell, according to the news sites, was a rarity: an actual Southern bell donated to be melted down to make cannons in 1862. Most of the bells were made by northern manufacturers, but this one had been from the south, and was spared only by the fact that it was sent to New Orleans to be melted; the city was captured in April of that year and only the clapper had been removed.
It wasn’t a subtle job: the bell was a good 700 pounds and on a stand. He disabled the security cameras and every guard was found unconscious. I presumed he had a buyer for it, because it wasn’t worth that much. Spanish bells of the same vintage go for more.
The annoying thing was that the reward offered for his capture was higher than the one offered for mine.
I posted a brief congratulations (because, hey, always networking) and figured that would be the end of it.
Okay, maybe I said something about how Mynah had done better because she had to deal with a supervillain and still got the job done.
Man, I suck at networking.
#
The shrew-like guy on the platform grabs for me. I dive through the bell stand but my heels graze the bell with a gonk. That ruins my dive and instead of rolling off the platform and under it to a safe place to turn visible, I am still on it.
I swear and I go visible anyway.
My “invisibility” is sonic: I make a sound that people don’t want to look at. It lasts as long as my breath does. I have good lungs but a minute, maybe two is tops.
The crowd is somewhere beyond hooligans. They are chanting “Kill Mynah!” in a disorganized way and the platform is shaking as they charge it.
The platform is not safe. Not for me, what with the guy trying to blast me, and not for the people around the platform. The second-last thing I want is for a seven hundred pound bell to fall and crush a bunch of people. (The last thing I want is to be killed by a mob…well, anything.) I get to a crouch and then sprint down the length of the platform off it. I make a beautiful leap over the railing and it’s kind of like crowd-surfing except where the crowd has their arms raised in fists to crush you. By ignoring who I poke and prod and pummel, I manage to get to the edge of the local knot of the crowd and hit the ground.
I don’t have any plan at this point: I’m just running with them following behind me like a pack of imprinted ducklings.
Murderous spittle-flecked rage-filled killer ducklings.
#
The online abuse was torrential, especially considering how I had never mentioned the exceedingly small and flaccid dicks these guys must have had. I shut down the account and went on with my life, which was mostly about the next score. I wasn’t terribly worried: when you decide to pursue the whole supervillain thing, you start bouncing messages through a couple of anonymizing servers and maintaining as clean a separation between identities as possible.
But I am not a hacker.
Then I got this email, sent to Mynah but addressed to the ID that I had closed. I’m not going to quote it because it called me obscene names. But it called for a showdown the next day to “prove” that I wasn’t as good as Klaxon.
Yeah. That’s what he called himself. Given the other obscenities in the note, I was surprised it wasn’t KKKlaxon. (That at least you could trademark.)
I made a T chart of the pros and cons of actually showing up. On the pro side, he knew how to contact Mynah. At least that part was working.
Lots of cons if I lost: I’d be unconscious and possibly arrested. The work trying to build my brand would be wasted. Win or lose, I’d probably get doxxed because the guy had connected one identity with Mynah.
My fingers trembled as I wrote the reply.
No win in a public contest. Mynah doesn’t see any reason to show up.
I saved it as a draft because experience has taught me that I will not see the embarrassing typo right away, and ten minutes wouldn’t hurt.
I switched computers and started researching the place where he wanted to duel. It was mentioned a lot today.
Because Klaxon had shared his challenge with media and they picked it up. The place was going to be a circus: the sketchy one-ring-no-sideshow kind.
Why did he want a lot of people around? There was a PR benefit, sure, and maybe that’s all it was. But maybe not. What would he gain from the audience?
Too many possibilities: he could have any power.
I took Slobberkin for a walk and tied him up outside the police station while I went in and stole the police report. (I can turn sort-of invisible and I take advantage: sue me.)
Then I checked to see if Shelley, the drag queen across the hall, was free at the right time.
Someone had to claim the reward for me (or bail me out of jail), because I was going to be busy as Mynah.
#
I’m busy, all right: There’s a knot of people ahead of me, so I dodge to the right. That gets me another dozen yards so I dodge right again.
Dodging right turns out to be a bad idea so I have to go left….which is away from the bell.
The bell is important. I have to get back to the bell.
Klaxon screams at me again. Unlike me, he can focus his screams and he doesn’t care if people get hurt. A guy is pulling at my carrier bag (please don’t call it a purse) and Klaxon’s scream hits him and my bag. Through the earplugs I hear something in the bag rupture and I know I have to get rid of it.
My bag has six aerosol cans of foam insulation. I was going to fill the bell with insulation so it couldn’t ring but I have no time to find and discard the leaky can—which means that the other five cans are going to be embedded in foam. I duck my head and let the bag slide off my shoulder. There’s a sssss-Whump and insulation starts leaking out the bag.
I dodge left because there’s no point in getting back to the bell if I can’t silence it.
#
My working hypothesis was that Klaxon had my powers but turned up to eleven. I hadn’t seen any evidence that he was bullet proof or could teleport or fly. In fact, the way that he stole the bell indicated that he couldn’t do any of those things.
Control minds? Sure. Evidence suggested that the guards knocked each other out. Blast things? There were a couple of broken things that suggested it. (Okay, I couldn’t blast things, but the principle is the same.)
But I figured that he just had more raw power than I had. He was different in quantity rather than quality.
Plus he used the name “Klaxon.” Kinda hinted at sound powers.
By this thinking, the bell wasn’t a symbol for his abilities, but rather a necessity. Like Merlin Furioso’s habit of talking, the bell was a necessity disguised as a quirk.
So I figured that the bell and sound were involved. I went to the hardware store and got myself some spray cans of foam insulation.
All I had to do was show up early, go sort-of invisible, and fill the bell with spray insulation so it couldn’t make sounds.
I also brought a set of filtering earphones that rendered me immune to his mind control.
Such a good plan.
#
First things first. The bell is still ringing. People are still crazy-mad.
There’s a clear patch so I’m moving in a big circle, but that gives Klaxon the opportunity: his next shot hits me and I feel like my guts are water. My knees buckle and I fall but manage to roll twice before getting up. Dammit. I need a minute. Five seconds, even.
And the filters in the earplugs are not quite good enough. That damned bell is giving me a headache.
Someone has lost a shoe. I grab it (it’s not mine) and pitch it at the bell.
And hit. The sound is muffled and fuzzy, but it’s not that damned mind control sound. One or two of the crowd that I can see come up for self-awareness before Klaxon zonks the bell again.
Conceive replacement plan: achievement unlocked.
Some of the killer duckings have sticks; I’m looking for something metal with a hole in it so I can fasten a rope to it. I don’t have a rope, but baby steps.
Ah: heavy-set guy with muttonchops and a T-shirt with a Confederate flag. His gut is too big for me to be sure that a punch to the solar plexus will do it so I deliver a foot to his crotch and catch the pipe as he drops it. Then the ducklings are nearly on me, so I start sprinting again.
My lungs are burning. If I survive, I’m adding running to my workout.
Rope, rope, rope… Nothing but an obvious answer comes to me. Sometimes you need to clip things on, so my costume has a belt with no other function. I can sacrifice the smart belt.
So I’m running, dodging, and threading my belt through this T-junction at the end of the pipe.
This is not easy.
The buckle keeps the pipe on the belt, so I swing the belt like a mace so I can get back to the platform.
Of course, even if I can silence the bell, I still have to deal with Klaxon.
#
I planned for the bell—did you think I wouldn’t plan for Klaxon?
No, the plan was not to have Shelley hit him with a tranquilizer dart. If I were just trying to get past him, that would be fine. No, I had to defeat him and do it publicly without a man’s help. Despite Shelley’s many virtues, he still identifies as male.
No, my plan had been inspired by Slobberkin: I had two dog anti-bark collars that gave a little shock every time they felt the vibration of the vocal cords. Each was taped to a big adhesive pad so I just had to get them onto his neck and then presumably I could fasten them. (I’d replaced the actual nylon collars with the pads and some zip-ties so I could close them and tighten them without a lot of extra fuss.)
Those collars were not in my bag but in the pockets I have under the epaulet-thingies on my shoulders.
You don’t think I’d design a costume without pockets, do you? The belt didn’t have pouches because that was too obvious, but I had to have a place for lockpicks, zip ties, emergency cash, and electric shock dog collars.
Do not underestimate me. I’m a working thief, not one of your runway femme fatales.
That was the message I was trying to get across to Klaxon, but he didn’t seem to be picking up what I was laying down.
#
Even killer duckings avoid being bashed in the head by a whirling pipe so momentum gets me onto the platform. The weaselly guy is gone but Klaxon is right there. This is a problem.
I need a second to look up inside the bell and figure out if I can attach my makeshift clapper. Then I need five or ten seconds to actually do it.
The clapper is usually held on by a bolt through a hole. I can thread the belt through the hole and run a zip tie through piercings in the belt. If Klaxon isn’t shooting at me.
I can’t fix the bell until I deal with Klaxon and I can’t deal with Klaxon until I fix the bell.
Well, crap. He inhales to zap me a good one—
So I grab him and run him head-first into the bell.
The sound is deafening, even with my filter ear-plugs. It’s gotta be worse for him.
Except he’s still moving. I only used one arm because I’m still holding my makeshift clapper.
He twists and grabs at me but only gets some Spandex where my belt would be. I try to clock him with the pipe but I just end up gently baffing him with the belt and the pipe hits me on the shoulder.
He opens his mouth and screams at me.
I drop the belt, I drop him. One more of those is going to take me out. Because I'm going to fall down I put my hand on the bell to steady myself and it rocks.
So I give it a hard shove.
He’s starting to get up again when seven hundred pounds of swinging bell comes up and whacks him in the head. He drops back to the platform.
I slap my first dog collar on his neck and tighten the zip tie. I don’t want to choke him but I make it snug. I'm in a hurry because there are people trying to get to us.
I scream invisibility so they won't look at us. I hope.
The bell reverberates with it so that even I don’t want to look.
The bell keeps ringing as I talk to him as urgently and memorably as I can.
“I don't want you to even think about who I really am or you will be in a world of shame and anguish. I know you worked for Faceless Corporation, Klaxon.”
Except I said their real name. And his.
Because I was just at the edge of the “accident” the company caused.
He was the one in the accident—at least the one who lived.
Who knew he had such loathsome attitudes?
(Besides every woman who worked in his department, I mean.)
#
Me beating his ass was on camera. Shelley turned him in but we haven't seen dime one of the reward money.
I felt sort of bad returning the bell—it could be useful, but it was too unwieldy.
Still, I got two jobs out of it.
I think I’m starting to get the hang of this supervillain thing.
ICONS
| Mynah (Kendra Wahl) | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Prowess | Average (3) | Intellect | Fair (4) |
| Coordination | Great (6) | Awareness | Good (5) |
| Strength | Fair (4) | Willpower | Great (6) |
| Stamina | 10 | Determination | 2 |
| Specialties |
|
||
| Powers | She has Poor (2) Sonic Control with a basic power of Images. She can also discomfit someone (an Affliction) or distract them so that she can give them suggestions, like Mind Control or hypnosis, but she thinks of it as Invisibility; maybe she’ll eventually learn otherwise. | ||
| Qualities |
| ||
| Klaxon (Jackson Beauregard) | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Prowess | Average (3) | Intellect | Average (3) |
| Coordination | Fair (4) | Awareness | Fair (4) |
| Strength | Average (3) | Willpower | Good (5) |
| Stamina | 8 | ||
| Specialties |
|
||
| Powers | He has Great (6) Sonic Control with a default power of Blast. He can create a standing wave (Force Field) around his body. Like Kendra, he can distract people with Mind Control. Like Kendra, it has the limitation that he must create the sound (Levels) but the bell overcomes that limitation. The Bell also provides the Burst and Broadcast benefits to his powers. | ||
| Qualities |
| ||
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