Chapter Forty-Eight – The Wrong Kind of Spark

William had been having a perfectly fine–if stressful–day when she had shown up.

It wasn’t enough that he had to deal with Pinprick, whose name and power matched her personality with the way she could nag and poke at him all day, he also had to deal with Matchstick, who more often than not was found zoning out and lost in her own little world.

It felt like he was carrying the entire team on his back, and honestly, he didn’t have the time for it.

He was a gadgeteer. He was supposed to spend his day making things. Not babysitting two grown adults.

And then there was the fourth member of their little band, the one who had pulled all of this haphazard plan together and then who dumped all of the work onto him.

He wasn’t fond of ‘Scarlett’ if that was even her real name, but the woman had a certain charm to her. She was drab and quiet and kind of resigned, but she often dropped good quips and she was good at listening.

Better yet, her plan had worked.

Sitting in a crate in the corner of the room, half-burried in shredded paper, was the Endgame’s objective, the Orbject. If they kept it for just a few more days, then they’d win, and as far as he could tell, the HRF had no idea where it was and the Endgame wasn’t providing them with easy hints either.

He frowned as his thoughts were interrupted by a dip in the electrical surge around him. His power gave him a supernatural feel for the way electricity was moving around. He could tell that the power was waning a little, and it was only moments before the lights keeping the room illuminated started to dim a very little bit.

Sighing, he stood and made his way across the room and out into the corridor just beyond.

The place was an old factory of some sort, converted into a warehouse, then back into a factory. It was probably about as old as the city itself, with old wooden logs for walls in a faw places and plenty of brickwork and tin and layers of insulation that he suspected wasn’t good for anyone’s health.

It wasn’t comfortable when they arrived, but they’d made the best of it over the last couple of days. When Matchstick could be roused from her staring into the void, she was pretty stealthy, and had a knack for interior decorating.

There was only so much that could be done from stealing from nearby buildings and stores, and she couldn’t exactly carry entire large pieces of furniture around, but at least they had rugs and some tapestries on the walls and a few things that made the place feel a little more comfortable to live in than the dusty, austere basement it had been when they first arrived.

He had been more concerned at the time about sound and being detected. The biggest concern there was the thing he was walking towards now.

Matchstick’s space was at the far back, half a floor down in a recessed area that they had covered the walls of with thick, woolen sheets stolen from a nearby theater.

He slipped through, then frowned.

Matchstick was laying on a small heap of cushions, holding a book up over her head. She was reading by candlelight, only the candle’s lights were slowly floating up and dancing around far above the candles themselves. Her little pyromantic power was good at that.

“Hey, Matchstick,” he said.

“Hmm?”

“How’s the generator?”

“Oh? Oh… yeah, my bad.” Matchstick took a moment, a long moment, to finish her page, then dog-eared the corner and stood up.

The generator was providing power to the entirety of their operation. That was lights, communications, and a few other necessities, like a small sump-pump and dehumidifier and a mini-fridge.

It was something he had cobbled together from three normal generators they’d stolen almost a week ago, and it was entirely powered by Matchstick’s abilities.

She opened a small door on the side of the machine, then flicked her fingers a few times. The hundreds of little candle-flames within grew brighter and moved lively before she reclosed the door.

Matchstick’s power was… not the strongest at first glance. Summoning flame was a rather unimaginative but strong ability, but her flames were rarely larger than what someone could produce with a lighter.

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But she could summon a lot of those. They could burn for hours without her interference, and more importantly, they didn’t consume anything to burn.

She claimed to feel a little peckish if they burned for too long, but he suspected that was her excuse to make more snack runs.

Her flames could burn in an enclosed, oxygen-less environment and still give off a fair bit of heat. Hitting them would disrupt them and they’d be extinguished. Water took them right out, and even a strong gust of wind would flick them off forever, but that didn’t mean that he couldn’t find a use for somewhat-infinite, resourceless heat.

“Thanks,” he said.

“Yeah, yeah,” she replied before slouching back down onto her pile of cushions.

He shook his head and left her to it. If she wanted to lay around then whatever. He’d once told her that it was probably dangerous to be laying on so many flammable things with fire floating around, but she had claimed that she was fire-proof and had proven it by sticking her hand in a fire.

The fact that her clothes and that the rest of them weren’t didn’t seem to concern her.

He wasn’t sure if he liked working with Villains sometimes, but needs must.

He slipped into one of the main rooms of their little base. It had a small kitchenette and their mini-fridge, as well as tools and gear strewn about. He was annoyed by how disorganized it all was, but not enough to fix it himself.

Pinprick was there, elbows on a counter and a year-old gossip rag before her. “All good?” she asked without looking up.

“Yeah,” he said. After their fifth member had left he’d done a quick check around, but it was all fine. The Orbject was still in place, he’d checked it himself. He… didn’t quite trust his own self around Scarlett, and so he’d made a few little devices that would alert him if things went too wrong. Or at least, he hoped.

“God, this is boring,” Pinprick said.

“It’s not so bad,” he replied. “A little while longer and we’ll be back home. And more powerful for it.”

He didn’t know what the Endgame would give as a reward, but whatever it was, it would probably be better than a gadgeteer power for combat. Or for sneaking around, maybe?

“Few more days, yeah,” Prinprick said. “Man, we’re not even making any money off of this, you know? It’s just power and clout an–” She stopped and he felt himself stiffen.

One of his alarms had gone off. It made a tiny little bell fixed up by the door ding. Not very loudly, but enough to carry through the basement.

“That’s the front door,” he said.

“And why did your alarm go off again?”

“I don’t know. Maybe she didn’t retrigger it right?” he tried. Matchstick never did, and he always had to follow her own and reset it.

“Or it got triggered by a rat again?” Prinprick asked

He sighed. Possible. Still, he figured it was better to have it than not, even if it was maybe a little too sensitive. The other alarms around the area were a bit better because they kept going off from every stray cat and wild bird in the city.

“Maybe. Want to go set it up again?” he asked. He knew what the answer would be before it was given.

“No,” Pinprick said. She refocused on her magazine.

“You’re not doing anything better.”

“Waiting here is what I’m doing, and it’s better than doing chores for you,” she said.

He couldn’t be out of this stupid Endgame soon enough. The others weren’t that bad when they had a job to do, but at other times they were insufferable.

Shaking his head, he started for the far end of the room, shifting some sound-dampening sheets out of the way as he made for the stairs.

As he climbed them, he swore that he heard someone talking… but that didn’t stop him from climbing.

What did stop him was the door simply opening up ahead of him.

Instead of Scarlett, it was a bear.

He wouldn’t have ever considered himself to be a particularly cowardly man, but some primal, base-human instinct in him immediately identified the huge creature above as a problem and he found himself scrambling back.

Then the bear roared, in plain, bearish English, “Revenge!”

This really wasn’t his day.

***

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