Chapter Fifty-Six – Mirror Man

He wasn’t fond of the name, but it did make costume and imaging easy, so it wasn’t all bad. Besides, he would admit–at least to himself–that it was amusing to be the centre of attention.

Unfortunately, while he was one one of the stronger East-coast heroes that the HRF had access to, his powers were particularly ill-suited to most types of combat.

Anything that happened in a crowded city would be a disaster, and because of the range of his power and its indiscriminate nature, he couldn’t fight with a team. It made him… singularly weak, despite everything.

In a one-on-one fight, he could take on some of the continent’s strongest heroes. Hell, he had taken them on. His power was particularly good at training.

But he didn’t want to be a trainer, he wanted to be the kind of hero that kids looked up to. He wanted to be the kind of hero that was like those he had looked up to when he was only a kid.

So here he was, volunteering to take on an entire team of villains.

If this worked out, then he might well secure his reputation, at least for a while. There weren’t any onlookers. The HRF troopers they had come here with him had been sent off. If they were caught in the range of his power, then they’d all have a lot of trouble. So, it was him against…

He counted the force laid out before him. Two taller girls, one dressed like a lumberjack, the other in a rumpled up suit. Another girl in plain clothes, and next to her a girl in shorts who had little bear ears. Those were barely costumes.

Then two girls, maybe twins? They were in little bandit outfits. Cute. The last was at the back, cowering a little and wearing an oversized lab-coat.

They all wore what he suspected were ponchos of some sort? The space covered by the clothes was entirely see-through, and other than a slight distortion in the air, he could see the space past them. Camouflage tech of some sort? So, they might have a gadgeteer on their crew.

This was… not what he had envisioned when he was told that he might be deployed against an entire team of villains. He had expected… well, maybe he was biased, but he expected an older, more rugged demographic. Men in spikey suits who looked fearsome, not a gaggle of school-aged girls.

An illusion power of some sort? To make them look innocent? He couldn’t discount the possibility.

“Ah, so there you are,” He said before he gestured to the side. He wanted the troopers to be further away. Just in case. They complied, the ‘okay’ coming over the microphone in his ear. “My name is Mirror Man. This won’t be a fair fight.”

The girls looked around, they seemed nervous, afraid, maybe.

Then one of them spoke up. “If… if you let us go, mister, uh, Mirror, we’ll just go.”

He blinked. How strange that a villain would offer to negotiate first. With the amount of them here, he expected them to think that they were in a position of power, and that might mean that they would expect themselves to be a little more aggressive, maybe a little more full of themselves?

“I’m sorry, but you won’t be getting away so easily,” he said.

His power had multiple neat features, but the first of these was one that was surprisingly effective at scaring some people.

He raised his cane, then slapped the end on the ground before pointing it at them. “Reflections, reveal,” he called out.

The movements were all theatrics. The girls were caught in the range of his mirrors already, so they were within the range of his abilities. Besides, this one only peeled away one small layer, though it was very useful when it came to breaking through illusions.

Above the girls came a series of floating names and titles. The ones that any hero or villain or rogue could display whenever they wanted. He couldn’t show someone’s real name, not unless they had no cape name to hide behind.

He blinked as all of the girls had a similar through-line in their titles.

The Boss

Villain

He swallowed. Not Rogue, not Trickster, not any of the ranks that the HRF lumped into the ‘Villain’ role, but a straight up, capital-V Villain.

Then he scanned over the others.

Ursa Minor

Villain

Owlwatch

Villain

Bandit

Villain

Bandit

Villain

-Unnamed-

Villain

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-Unnamed-

Villain

He swallowed again and shifted his stance just a little. Okay, so seven fully-fledged Villains. Maybe he should be the one posturing? “If you choose to surrender now, the HRF will merely arrest you. It’s a better outcome than what will happen if you chose to fi–“

“Shut up, old man,” Ursa Minor shouted at him. “You think you can scare us? You’re just one hero. I bet you’re not even a cool one.”

“He isn’t,” Owlwatch next to her confirmed with a disturbing amount of certainty. “He’s just a little man, a miserable pile of lies. He smells like farts and thinks he’s cooler than he is. Look at him, he’s dressed like he tripped into a rack of plastic mirror in an Oller Lus store. Hey, ugly, did you ever stay up late at night, staring at the ceiling and wondering why no one remembers who you are? It’s because you’re lame!”

“Lame!” The two Bandits repeated in chorus. They even put their fingers up in an L over their foreheads.

“Okay, that’s enough of that,” he said.

And then he released his full power on the group.

There was a reason he was held back so much.

He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them, and with that, unleashed his power. All at once, the space before each of the girls warped and wavered, then, with a motion like glass shattering, seven more figures appeared on the street, only a few paces away from the girls.

They were clones… almost. The new girls were dressed strangely. Colour-inversed versions of their clothes and gear. The ponchos the mirrored versions had were pitch-black and seemed to suck in the light around them.

Gadgeteered items were often a little strange when he used his power. He set that aside for the moment as he grinned. That had taken a lot out of him, but he pushed past the wave of tiredness.

This was his power manifest. The ability to create the perfect enemy to one’s-self. These clones weren’t exact mirrors, they were inversed mirrors. Left-handed where the original might be right-handed, and their morality… well, they were always ready to fight.

“Whoa,” Ursa Minor said.

The fake Ursa Minor stared back. “So like… ten bucks and I mess that guy up?”

“Ew,” the original Ursa Minor replied. “Hey, Boss, this one’s a Capitalist.”

“Yeah, so what?”

He grinned. The fighting would start soon. Usually it only took seconds. That was how it usually went. Most people froze the first time they saw themselves peeled apart and reflected back wrong. It was a deeply human thing, he’d found, to hate the sight of yourself when someone else wore your face.

“You going to handle this?” the fake Boss asked the real one. She was standing tall, proud, with an aura of authority and control around her that made it hard for him not to focus on her. “Tch… fine then. Girls! No, my girls. Attention, dammit. Bandit, stop wobbling so much, Owlwatch, stop making eyes at yourself. Snap out of it!”

She spun on her heel and leveled a look at him. That was his mirrored creation, the thing his power had made to fight the villains… why was she glaring at him?

“Owlwatch. Mess him up for a moment. Bandit, split. Left and right flanks. Find the HRF troopers. Destroy them. You…”

“Yeah, what do you want?” the girl in the labcoat asked.

“Go make a bomb.”

“Pft… fine.”

“Wait, you’re supposed to–” he started. His power had never done this before. Who was this inverse-Boss to take over like that, it was supposed to–

He grunted as he felt himself lock into place, then his eyes snapped to the fake Owlwatch. She was shivering, as if cowering, only her teary eyes were locked onto his and he could feel her crawling into his mind.

Oh no.

He dismissed his power.

Nothing happened.

“Boss,” the fake Boss snapped. “Get going. We’ll show these idiots, and you, what you could do if you weren’t such a snivelling coward.”

“Um,” the real Boss said. “Okay? Uh, thank you?”

“Dammit… stand taller. Straighten your spine. You’re a super villain! Act like it!”

“Oh, uh, yeah, sorry!”

“Just go already! Ursa! Bear-mode. Aura, yeah, you head out too. Find the nearest hero and mess them up.”

“Haha! I’mma rob them blind!”

He could already hear sirens, and then someone overrode the mute on his earplugs, only the sounds coming through was panicked screaming. How? The fake Bandits had only left seconds ago?!

***

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