That’s the
press’ stupid name for him. Most Villains, and all Heroes, give themselves
their own names, larger-than-life monikers meant so inspire awe, fear or both.
Sometimes those names don’t stick, especially if the bearer gets on the bad
side of Panopolis’ reporters. I know they changed Mr. Fabulous’ name to Mr.
Flatulent after he flipped a bunch of them off going into a restaurant, and
Doctor Pain was redubbed Doctor Pain-In-The-Ass once he sent one of their vans
rolling into a building during a particularly intense dogfight with Bone
Breaker.
The
Bombardier is different. He’s…well, subtle isn’t exactly the right word, not
for a Super Villain, because none of them do subtle very well. More like, he’s
out for himself, not for anyone else. Certainly not for any of them, and that
makes him interesting enough to not dismiss out of hand. Plus, he is a bomber, and he’s definitely more
than a little crazy. You’d have to be to play around with the stuff he handles.
The Mad Bombardier
and I met when he came to rob the bank a year ago. I remember the sudden
fizzing spray of sparks at each of the doors, fusing them cherry red down the
midline. I remember the way the overhead lights flickered, and how I could hear
the teller next to me frantically pushing his panic button. I should have been
doing the same, and ducking down behind the counter with the rest of my
coworkers like I’d been taught, but I was too stiff with fear to move. Customers
cowered, our security guards reached for their guns only to find them stuck in
their holsters.
The lights
went out completely for a moment, throwing everything into shadow, and when
they came back on he was there,
standing in the middle of the lobby. He wore all black, from the buckles on his
boots to the trench coat that hung heavy around him. The only spot of color on
him was in a red digital readout on his forehead, a long string of numbers I
couldn’t make out from where I was behind the booth.
He saw me
first. “You.” His voice sounded like an echo of itself somehow, hollow and deep.
“Fill this.” He threw a small canvas bag at me. “You have two minutes.”
He turned to
the manager’s desk, where our boss, who knew the routine way better than I did,
calmly stood up and said, “The vault is this way.”
So far, so
good. No shots fired, no one had been hurt. Just a few flashy pyrotechnics and a
demand for cash, all good. My hands trembled as I opened my drawer and reached for
the cash. There wasn’t all that much in there, no more than a thousand dollars,
but I placed it all into the bag.
“Psst!” one
of my coworkers hissed at me from his place on the floor. “The dye packs!”
I stared at
him blankly. “What?”
“Add the dye
packs! Look under your drawer!”
Oh, right,
the dye packs. Little containers of indelible dye that you could set to go off
and drop into a bag, perfect for a situation like this. Our bank really did
have getting robbed down to an art. I pulled the drawer and fumbled for some of
the dye, the small sachets slipping through my clumsy, clutching fingers. I
finally grabbed one and set it in the bag, way down at the bottom where he’d be
less likely to see it, and punched the button that would set it off in about
five minutes. Doing so made me feel strange, almost guilty, but the feelings
were quickly buried under the resurgence of fear as he appeared again, alone
this time.
“The bag,” he
demanded, thrusting his hand forward. His other hand held a small circular
device, his thumb poised above it, just waiting to jab down and…and what? I
couldn’t tear my eyes away from the sight of it, precarious, an unknown fate
hovering in this man’s hand. I didn’t even hear him speak, I was so lost in my
own terror. Blood rushed so hard through my veins that my hearing turned fuzzy,
and my lungs fluttered in my chest like a landed fish, flapping and striving
and useless. My vision blurred around the edges of my eyes, slowly closing in
on my like a collapsing tunnel.
The firm but
not cruel grip that suddenly tightened around my upper arm pulled me out of my
panic, and as my sight cleared I saw him, closer now, his black goggles
reflecting my own startled gaze back at me. “It’s fine,” he said, still deep
and resonant but not as loud as before. “I won’t hurt you. Just give me the
bag.”
Slowly, so
slowly, I handed the bag over to him. He let go of me to take it, equally slow
and controlled. I thought that was it before the front doors suddenly broke off
their hinges, carried straight through the gaping entrance and into the lobby
by huge, hulking man. He stopped but the doors kept going, crashing onto their
side and sliding right into the teller’s booths and knocking the robber off his
feet. He lost his grip on the device, which flew across the counter at me. I
caught it reflexively, then almost forgot I was holding it as the newcomer
straightened up.
It was
Freight Train. I could hear a few exclamations, a sob of relief here and there.
Freight Train was one of Panopolis’ greatest Heroes, an institution in the city
for the past five years. He was a former cop, which maybe explained why he
tended to respond whenever the city police got involved. He’d been accidentally
exposed to an experimental chemical meant to create temporary force fields
around living organisms, as an emergency quarantine measure. On him, it had
turned into a permanent force field, and they’d barely been able to figure out
a way to penetrate it before he died of dehydration. Nothing outside that wasn’t
a gas could get in without some very proprietary technology to help. That meant
he was immune to bullets, knives, acid…just about everything that could kill
him. With enough momentum he could power his way through walls, so the doors…definitely
not a problem for him.
“I hear
there’s a new bad boy in town.” Freight Train’s voice rang loud and clear
through the ruin of our foyer. “Step on out, scum! Let’s see if you’ve got what
it takes to go up against a real Hero!”
I couldn’t
see the robber any more, but I heard a pained moan from somewhere in front of
me, faint and echoing. The edges of the device I held in my hand bit into my
palm, my grip on it was so tight. What happened next happened without thinking
too much about it, an impulse I couldn’t quite control.
My booth was
the last one on the row, and I slid down out of my chair onto the ground and
crawled over to the door that led to the main lobby. I opened it, then peeked
around the corner at the wreckage, the people and the Hero himself. Freight
Train was still glaring this way and that, his hands on his hips. He hadn’t
seen me yet, and it seemed like he hadn’t seen the robber either, who was
trying to press up onto one elbow, his black coated here and there in gray
plaster dust. His head lifted, and even though I couldn’t see his eyes, I could
still tell when he focused on me.
My hand was
trembling so badly I thought I was going to just drop the device, but instead I
managed to slide it across the floor in his general direction, praying my poor
treatment of it didn’t set anything off. The robber grabbed it, but the noise
attracted Freight Train’s attention.
“All black,”
he sneered, coming forward. His feet made no noise as he stepped; the force
field muffled the sounds. “Not very creative.” The robber sat up and leaned
away from Freight Train as he got closer, twisting the device in his hands. “And
what’s that on your head?” He leaned in with a grin. “A countdown to your
capture? Because if that’s the case it should already read zer—”
That was when
the secondary explosives set on the undersides of the doors were set off. I
hadn’t even seen them, no one had, but it catapulted the sides of the fused
piece of metal up at the edges, squeezing Freight Train like the filling in a
taco. He toppled to the ground, wrapped up tight in a metallic embrace. The
robber got to his feet, brushed his coat off, then grabbed the bag of money I’d
frozen at giving him. He glanced my way once before sauntering out the gaping
entrance, leaving a lot of astonished civilians and an utterly irate Freight
Train behind.
I thought
that was the end of it, nothing more than my first interaction with the darker,
more exciting and certainly more explosive side of Panopolis. Imagine my
surprise when a week later, once the bank was open for business again, I was
sent a bouquet of flowers at work. It was a simple bouquet, one long spray of
pink delphiniums surrounded by a few attendant anemone blossoms. Attached was a
little envelope. The card inside was matte black, and the writing on it was
red.
You’re either extraordinarily kind or
inordinately brave. I’d like to meet with you and discover which one for myself.
If you’re interested, come to the coffee shop on Pinnacle and 24th at
six tonight.
If you’re not interested and I never
see you again, let me say very sincerely, Thank You.
