Chapter Five

Hero's Call: Chapter Five

Czar Destructo had broken out of prison numerous times. Almost too many times to count, but he guessed the number was somewhere in the high teens. This last break out was probably his most favorite of all, simply because the cell they had him in was state of the art. No Villain on earth was supposed to be able to break free of that arctic hellhole. Maybe The Dreadnaught if he were still around, but no one else. Czar Destructo guessed they forgot how smart he actually was. He’d just add that to the legend that was Czar Destructo.

There’s always one big problem, though, when Czar Destructo broke out of prison and that problem was rebuilding his empire. Most of the time he was in prison for a year tops, and by the time he was out, the authorities hadn’t had time to track down all the last vestiges of his then current reign of power. He always had a small robot army or half finished death ray stashed away somewhere for a rainy day, which was probably acid rain that he had created himself.

Destructo had hundreds of bank accounts in different names in different banks all over the country. Building a Death Cruiser or Doomship costs money. Most people thought that he could just conjure up the necessary means to terrorize the world with the flick of his wrist, but he could do no such thing, nor could anyone else he knew of. Being an evil genius was easy if you’re genius enough, but it can also be rather expensive if you’re genius enough. The money he had poured into building his airship was enough to feed the starving children of the world until they were well into old age and then feed their children as well.

Yes, building an evil empire was just like building any other kind of empire. You just need capital. Villains like Czar Destructo could got money in any number of ways. Some held cities or dignitaries for ransom. Others pilfered the world’s supply of gold and sold it back at twice the cost. Destructo? He preferred bank robberies. Somewhat clichéd, he knew, but he felt it had a classic style. A joie de vie that most other Villains failed to possess or appreciate.

Czar Destructo had been gone for forty years this time. God knew what had happened while he was gone. Destructo was sure that b*****d Captain Amazing had rooted out every last one of his secret hideouts, and returned all the stolen money to its rightful owners.

Miserable good two-shoes, Destructo said to himself at the thought.

 

The Villain ditched the helicopter in a clear patch of woods somewhere in the Appalachian Mountains. If his calculations were correct, he should be right outside a small town in West Virginia. Surprisingly enough, he didn’t have to stop to steal gas once. He said a quick thank you again to whoever designed that dreadful prison of his. Some lucky hiker was going to have a good time if they could ever figure out how to fly it.

Destructo was still in his standard issue prison jumpsuit, so the first order of business was to find civilian clothes. He set off into the woods heading southwest toward the town that was only a few miles from his landing zone. After about a minute of hiking, he heard two voices past a nearby thicket of trees. He crept up as quietly as one possibly could in the woods to listen in on their conversation. It was a pair of kids, teenagers from the sound of it.

“I don’t know about this Bobby,” a girl’s voice said.

“What’s wrong, Susie,” a boy’s voice, Bobby’s voice, said, “We love each other right?”

Czar Destructo had stumbled right into a let’s-have-sex-for-the-first-time conversation, and it was as clichéd and obvious as it can get. He rolled his eyes to himself.

“Well, or course we do,” Susie replied, but there was an apprehension thick in her voice, “but I don’t know if I’m ready. Daddy says I’m supposed to wait for marriage.”

“Oh, your daddy don’t know what he’s talking about,” Bobby said, “Sex is for people in love whether they be married or not.”

“I don’t know, Bobby,” Susie said.

Destructo decided he couldn’t take listening any longer. It was like watching a Sex Ed tape from the 1950’s. He walked around the trees to butt in. There was a blue and white checkered blanket laid out on the ground. A picnic basket was sitting next to the blanket unopened. Apparently Bobby wanted to go straight for dessert. Susie was a petite girl of no more than fifteen with shoulder length blond hair and a mousy face. She was wearing a cheerleading outfit and a pair of white sneakers. Bobby was a hulking boy of most likely the same age with buckteeth and a pudding bowl haircut. He was wearing a letter jacket and a pair of jeans. Destructo took a moment to wonder whether he’d traveled back in time, but decided against it. The marks he’d carved into the ice to mark the days in prison had covered an entire wall.

“You know, Bobby,” Destructo said, announcing himself to the couple, “if a lady says she’s not ready, the gentlemanly thing to do is not rush her.”

“Who the hell are you?” Bobby said with a start. They both sprung up and Bobby stepped in front of Susie.

“My name is of little importance,” Destructo answered, “but if you feel the need to tell someone what’s about to happen here, you can call me...Mr. Belvedere.”

“And what’s about to happen here?” Susie said with the same apprehension she had in her voice moments before.

“Nothing too horrible,” Destructo replied with a smile and look at Bobby. “As you can see, my clothes aren’t typically what people wear for a day on the town. I simply require a change of clothes, and since you were trying to get yours off so hastily, Bobby, I think I’ll take yours.”

He took a step forward and Bobby did the same with his fists raised. Bobby took a swing, which Destructo dodged lazily. He gave Bobby a return blow with barely even half his full strength and he crumples like a paper bag. Susie took off running into the woods screaming as Destructo started taking the clothes off Bobby’s unconscious form. She didn’t even thank him for stopping Bobby from taking her virginity.

Typical, he thought.

Czar Destructo could tell Bobby was a big kid, but this his size was misleading. The letter jacket was at least one size too big, if not two. The sleeves were hanging down past his fingers, so pushed them up just so he didn’t look like a child wearing his father’s clothes. Destructo had to cinch the belt all the way to the last notch, and it still barely kept his pants on. Destructo was thankful there was no mirror around. He was sure he looked ridiculous. Not at all befitting for a Villain of renown. He left Bobby, half naked and unconscious, at his picnic site. Leaving the prison jumpsuit behind for the young man to wear back into town, Destructo headed off into the woods towards town once more.

After another hour or two of hiking, Destructo arrived at the limits of a small town at the foot of the hills. This particular town was home to his very last secret hideout. So secret, in fact, that he refused to even speak the name of the city aloud for fear the information might fall into the wrong hands. It was there as a backup and nothing more. A contingency plan if everything else had gone wrong.

He was heading for a small apartment building near the center of town. After his second arrest and break out, he stumbled upon the place almost by accident. He had robbed the city’s bank, and, two days later, showed up requesting a place be set aside for him indefinitely for use when he needed it most. No one says no to a duffle bag full of money. No one.

Destructo walked in through the front door, and knocked on the landlord’s door. He found himself a bit surprised when the door opened to reveal a shrunken old woman with a hunchback. She was older than time itself when he’d bought the place from her, and that was nearly sixty years ago. Destructo couldn’t believe she was still alive and still working at this festering hellhole.

“Can I help you?” the tiny woman asked in a croaking voice, and looked up at her tenant through coke-bottle glasses. She looked like an ancient insect in a housedress.

“Yes,” Destructo replied, trying to be as jovial as possible, “I’m the owner of 5G, and I seem to have misplaced my key. I was hoping you’d have a spare.”

“5G…” Her voice trailed off. After a minute or two of silence she came back to the conversation. “Well, Cal Baskins, and no mistake. Never thought I’d see you again. You look like you haven’t aged a day.”

“Time has been kind to me, Ms. Landell,” he said modestly. Cal Baskins was one of Czar Destructo’s many aliases. One he had forgotten he’d used until she said it.

“If only I could say the same for myself,” she said and turned back into the apartment, calling over her shoulder, “Come in. I have a key around here somewhere.”

Destructo took two or three steps into the apartment. The smell that wafted out when she opened the door was enough to make anyone turn tail and run, but he didn’t want to be rude. This was the only place he had left to one of his names. Inside was the closest thing to an inhabitable landfill he’d ever seen. Stacks of old newspapers were lining the walls at knee height. Four cats were circled around a saucer of milk drinking to their fill. The kitchen off the entry hall looked like it hadn’t been cleaned in a decade at least. The litter box was overflowing with urine clumped litter and cat feces. The trashcan was spilling over with coffee filters and banana peels. Destructo reached in and quietly closed the door to try and cut off the smell from his nostrils. It didn’t help much. He walked past the kitchen and into the living room area. Ms. Landell was shifting through a pile of old magazines next to an overly worn armchair. A steaming microwaveable dinner was sitting on an aluminum stand. She swore under her breath as she scoured the room for the spare key. Destructo was about to excuse himself from the stench of death when she clapped her hands joyfully.

“There it is,” she said, hobbling over to where her tenant was standing and handed him the key.

“Thank you, Ms. Landell,” he said courteously, and gave her a small bow. “I’ll be up in my apartment if you need me.”

Outside in the hall, the smell of fresh air was like new life coursing through his veins. Destructo walked a few steps down the hall and pressed the call button for the elevator. An old rickety elevator clanked down, and he pried open the rusted gate. He pressed the button for the fifth floor and closed the gate behind him. Time had not been kind to the little apartment building, and Czar Destructo thought it would be a damn shame if it won over when he was four stories off the ground. The elevator came to a screeching halt at the fifth floor and he exited with a sigh of relief.

Destructo forced the key into the lock, and swung the door open cautiously. He knew no one but he and Ms. Landell were aware of the existence of the apartment, but he never took for granted what a Hero could uncover when they need to. He hadn’t installed any kind of security measures, but there was no need. An inch thick layer of dust covered just about every surface in the tiny apartment. If anyone had been there, they had left a long, long time ago.

He pushed a couple of dusty circuit boards off the bed and flicked off the dirty comforter. The sheets reeked with age, but it was a thousand times more comfortable than the bed he had been laying on for the past forty years. After a minute of relaxing, he walked to the nearby closet and opened the door. Inside, there’s an old gray, pinstriped suit perfectly pressed. And it wasn’t the only bit of luck the closet had to offer. At the bottom there’s a medium sized leather duffle bag. Inside was one of his old uniforms from a day long past. He was planning on designing a new one, but it would work for now.

Destructo threw the bag onto the bed and laid the suit on top of it. Taking off Bobby’s oversized clothes, he put the suit on piece-by-piece and relished in the feel of clean fabric. There’s really nothing like a good suit. At the bottom of the bag, next to his boots, was a pair of Italian leather loafers, which he slid on happily. He looked in the mirror and smiled. He felt like he hadn’t missed a day.

He opened the door to the bathroom and found one thing he was looking for, and another he didn’t quite expect, but was not entirely surprised to see. Sitting on the toilet was one of the robots he had invented. To be more specific, it was the first robot he’d invented. Number 1, Destructo called him. He was never equipped for battle. Destructo had made him to assist him in difficult tasks that required him to be in more than one place at a time. All the other robots he’d produced were styled after him, but with heavy-duty combat modifications. To his knowledge, this is not where Destructo had left him.

He walked up to him, and knelt down to look him over. He was powered down, and probably had been for some time. He was a hulking mass of wires, servos, gyros, steel plating, and computer circuits. Destructo was surprised he hadn’t crushed the toilet and fallen through all five stories of the building by now. The place must have been made of stronger stuff than he’d guessed.

Destructo reached behind Number 1’s left aural receptacle that was styled like an ear and clicked a small, almost invisible, switch. A dull hum filled the room as his systems started to come back online. Click after clack signaled the life of the old robot coming back to life before Destructo’s eyes. The last things to turn on were the lights in the foggy glass lenses that acted as eyes. Number 1 took a minute to survey his surroundings, no doubt doing a diagnostics check, then turned his sights on his creator kneeling before him.

“Master,” he cried with joy. He had forgotten the sound of his voice after all those years spent in prison. It was light and carefree with a slight British accent. Destructo couldn’t remember if he’d programmed that in, or if he’d just picked it up along the way. Number 1 stood up from the toilet and wrapped his massive steel limbs around his creator.

“How are you, Number 1?” Destructo asked, pushing the robot away before he crushed him in his joy. Loathed as he was to admit it, Number 1 was the closest thing Czar Destructo had to a friend. He had a few acquaintances within the Villain community, but no true friends. They had probably died years earlier anyway.

“I’m doing well, Master,” the robot answered in a reassuring tone. “My systems are 100% operational. My battery life, however, is marginal. I waited a very long time for you to return, but in the end I had to power down in the hopes you would come and turn me back on. If my internal clock is correct, I’ve been offline for nineteen years, eight months, four days, and fourteen hours.”

“As precise as ever I see,” Destructo said with a chuckle and patted him on the back. “But I must admit, I didn’t expect to see you here. Why did you wait for me here of all places? I came here first merely as a precaution.”

Number 1 pointed to the wall behind him and said, “Well, Master, as you can see, there wasn’t any place else for me to go.”

In every hideout Czar Destructo had ever built he put a large computerized map of Earth on the wall. It was what he was looking for when he’d entered the bathroom in the first place. On each map was a small red dot where each one of his hideouts was located. If the light was solid, the hideout was functional, blinking meant it was under attack, no light meant it was offline, either destroyed or so close as it made no difference. The only light left on was marking the very room he was standing in.

“How could this be?” I asked in horror.

“Captain Amazing,” Number 1 said simply. “After you were put away, he spent the next several years tracking down all the remaining ties you had to the world of evil. He wanted to make sure you had nothing to come back to if you managed to get free again. I fled from Castle Destructo only minutes before he arrived. I activated all that was left of my siblings, but he crushed them all like tin cans. I had just enough time to download this location and delete the files, before I escaped. Then I came here to wait for you.”

Destructo was at a loss of words. He sat looking over the map, inspecting every last light that had gone out. Castle Destructo in the German mountains, his first evil fortress, had been razed to the ground. Destructo had raised the lost city of Atlantis and claimed it for his own, and Captain Amazing sent it back to the bottom of the ocean. Destructo even had a massive air fortress larger than Rhode Island, and the Hero had blown it up. If it weren’t for Number 1, he wouldn’t even be standing in the rinky-dink apartment.

He turned and looked at his robot friend. The robot wasn’t capable of facial expressions but if he were, Destructo was sure there would be one of sorrow and concern for his creator on his face right now.

“Worry not, Number 1,” Destructo said, putting both hands on Number 1’s shoulders and looking him dead in the eyes. “I’m free now, and if Captain Amazing is still alive he’ll be a withered old man. We will have our revenge, and when he’s out of the way, nothing will be able to stop us.”

Destructo walked out to the bed and the robot followed him.

“How can we rebuild our empire that has been shattered to its very core?” Number 1 asked, worry clear in his voice. Destructo could tell it had been eating away at the poor robot for years.

Destructo opened the bag and found his old helmet sitting on top. He’d stolen the design from Mesmero’s helmet, but with one little tweak of his own. Not only could it repel unfriendly psychic attacks, but it could also reflect them at will, making the attackee the attacker. He slid it on and turned to Number 1 with a triumphant smile.

“I have a few ideas, but first we’re going to need money…lots and lots of money.”