The Girls

King Max stood atop the building, leaning down a knee against the edge and he watched the band of criminals work their way into an armored truck. After all this time, he didn’t know why or how they always got their hands on such vehicles, but criminals never did learn their lesson.

“A shame, dudes, but right on.”

He hopped down from his vantage point and felt the wind whistling in his ears and his dreadlocks flailing about his face as he got closer and closer to the criminals. Max balled his knees up to his chest and smashed right into the armored truck, tearing right through the roof and the bottom, and cracking a bit of the street as well. There were already two robbers in the truck and the impact had thrown one out, while the other had flown against the wall and knocked himself out against the edge of the walkway between the driver’s seat and the back.

He stood up and whipped his hair from his face and folded his arms as the remaining three criminals stared at him in horror.

“Come on, man, why you always gotta rob banks? You’re just askin’ to get your butts handed to you on a surf, man.”

“Ah, sheep, shoot him shoot him shoot him!” One of then pointed and the three began opening fire with their assault rifles.

Max placed his hands on his hips and waited as bullet after bullet bounced off his bulletproof skin, landing on the ground, flattened. The criminals only stopped firing when they ran out of bullets.

“This too. I mean, come on, you’ve seen me on the news, right?” King Max climbed out from his hole and walked out the backdoors of the truck, now standing before the three men. “Surrender? Or what, man? What do you think you can do?”

They began reloading and Max shook his head with amusement. They never did learn. He dashed at the closest man, the one calling the shots, and his muscular body knocking into the man was enough to send him rocketing back into a lamppost, bending it at its center. The man bounced off and planted his face into the sidewalk.

The last two dropped their weapons and attempted to run, but they couldn’t outrun Max. He caught up to them in a single bound and raised his arms to his sides. The men ran into his toned muscles and knocked themselves out.

“You don’t mess with the king.” He bent a knee and flexed his arms. “To the super max with you lot, dudes!”

Civilians around them began to cheer and flashes from cameras began to materialize in the air around him.

“No need to thank me. All in the day and life of a superhero, dudes!” Max smiled and waved.

“We love you, King Max!” a girl squealed.

“And King Max loves you, harmless citizen!” He pointed and winked.

He was about to head back to Vogel Tower when an explosion occurred just five blocks down in a tall apartment building. The people around him screamed and some began running away.

“Anything for me, man?” Max radioed in to the analysts. He first needed to make sure Vogel would approve him running in there.

Max sighed. It was rather counterintuitive, but he had long since let it be. There was nothing he could do to change any of it, so he just decided to go with the flow.

“King Max?” Paprika finally said in his ear. “Director Still Well wants you at that explosion site to find out what’s happening.”

“Right on, dude.” He smiled.

Max lowered himself, and with as much strength as he could muster, he propelled himself up and forward, soaring through the sky for a few seconds and covering a great distance. The road had cracked where he had jumped from, but he figured the roadworks people would just fix it up later.

He was at the building in no time, leaping up and running along the wall, grabbing on to the side of the ledge and pulling himself through the new hole in the building.

“King Max, help!” a woman called. Her legs were caught under a piece of the fallen ceiling.

Standing at the doorway to the room was a man covered in a hood and scarf, with his yellow eyes being the only facial features Max could see. He had his hands up, facing the superhero.

“You, did you do this?” Max pointed at him. He looked shifty and out of place.

The man whispered something and King Max recognized it as Saddle Arabian before two streams of fire erupted from the palm of both his hands and swatted Max back. He lifted his arms to defend himself, but the flames hit him hard and he was thrown back out the hole in the wall.

He anticipated a free fall, but suddenly, he felt himself bump into something hard and yet a little squishy and he was pushed back into the damaged room from behind.

“Mighty fine trouble we have here, huh, Max?” Protectorate Sod floated into the room and landed beside him, tipping her hat to their attacker. “Howdy, hoss. Ready to come quietly?”

The man muttered something again and he placed his hands together and blasted a wave of fire at them.

Max readied himself to defend again, but Protectorate Sod stepped in front of him and stood there with her hands on her hips. The man stopped his attack and gasped as the blonde haired superheroine stepped forward, completely unscathed; even her suit was unburnt.

“A supervillain, huh?” She whistled. “That’s a first.”

Protectorate Sod’s eyes glowed red and she lasered their attacker from one hand to the other. First, his fingers were sliced off and then his upper body fell off at the diaphragm. His legs crumbled soon after and joined the rest of his body in a smoldering mess on the floor.

“Well, justice is served.” She folded her arms.

King Max went to rescue the trapped woman, but to his dismay, she was already dead, burnt to a crisp from one of the man’s earlier fire attacks.

“An enemy supe?” Max asked Protectorate Sod as he stood up. “That’s gnarly, dude. I didn’t think they existed.”

The blue heroine walked to the hole in the wall and looked outside, spotting the fire engine rolling down the streets on its way here. “Neither did Ah, my friend. Ah wonder just where they came from.”

“He was Saddle Arabian,” Max said, remembering the words he had spoken. “You don’t think they’re more of them?”

Protectorate Sod scoffed. “If there’s one, there’s bound to be more. Well, a surprise to be sure, but a welcomed one. They pose more of a challenge, don’tcha think, Max?”

Max watched her. She didn’t seem all that surprised, even though she said she was. But he learnt years ago to not question their glorious leader of The Septet. It could only end badly. It was funny how they used to be a thing. Max couldn’t picture any of it anymore, but still remembered time with Protectorate Sod.

“Funny, huh? How times change.” Protectorate Sod slapped him on the shoulder. “Just when we thought a-stoppin’ crime was gettin’ a little too easy, now we get supervillains. Ain’t that somethin’.”

“Uh, sure is, man.”

“Maybe now the government will approve supes in the army. We’ll take the fight right to ‘em.”

King Max eyed the back of her head and wondered just what went on inside that skull of hers. Then again, perhaps it was something better off never finding out.

“I trust you had time to think over your role here, Senator Bray Road?” Still Well held out a glass of wine to the man. “About placing superheroes into the military?”

“I have.” He accepted the glass. “And my answer is still no. Superheroes may be powerful, but the outcome could be devastating as well. Think of all the collateral damage we could receive? Supes are still like us. They can make mistakes.”

“But our soldiers make mistakes too. It isn’t too different.”

Bray Road shook his head. “A superhero mistake could prove very devastating.”

“Yes, well… Surely I can get you to reconsider your stance.”

“Nope. There is nothing you could do to convince me of the dangers.”

Still Well picked up his remote and flicked on the television. “Not even… this?”

Bray Road immediately recognized himself on the TV screen, tied down on the bed and blindfolded as a rather large man sat on top of him, grinding his hips up and down. This wasn’t what happened that night. She hadn’t been a man.

“This is… this is messed up to think you would make something as fake as this! I never did this!” He tossed the glass of wine aside and stood up. “I’m not that kind of man!”

“Are you sure?” Still Well looked unimpressed. His eyes shone an acid green and his skin began to shimmer and flicker.

To Bray Road’s horror, where Still Well was sitting was now a large balding man with a crazy look on his face; it was the exact same man in the video.

“That night was amazing, dearie.” He licked his lips and chuckled. “I’ve never been done by a senator before. You know, you come a lot. Even my butthole couldn’t keep it all in.”

“What the farm?!” Bray Road walked back and fell over the couch. “No. There’s no way!”

A door closed behind him and Bray Road turned to see Still Well again, walking into the room. He looked back and the fat man was still there.

“You see, senator.” Still Well leaned against the wall. “All we need is your vote for supes in the military. Do that for me, and this video will never see the light of day. Easy enough, wouldn’t you say so? Imagine what your wife would say if she saw this. It wasn’t even with another woman...”

He got up and pulled at his collar, suddenly feeling very warm. “I’ll… I’ll…”

“Yes?” Still Well slid over to his desk and started his coffee machine. It began to rumble lightly. “You’ll do what?”

The senator sighed. “I’ll do what you want.”

“Excellent.” Still Well grabbed his coffee mug and sat down. “Just what I wanted to hear. Well, you have a good evening now. Changeling will show you out.”

Where the fat man had been was now an attractive young woman with charcoal skin and teal hair. She gestured for him to follow as she headed for the door and opened it for him.

“Thank you, senator.” She licked her lips. “You know, you have a pretty nice cock. Perhaps I’ll see you again some time…”

Bray Road quickly ran out. He knew better than to stick around.

The sky was already dark by the time Protectorate Sod decided to grace Vogel Tower with her presence. She had been out for interviews all day long, with the reporters being very intrigued about the idea of what they were now calling, ‘Superterrorists’. Protectorate Sod was intrigued herself, but she didn’t like that word. It sounded disgusting. Supervillain was the way to go, but apparently the media thought it was too cheesy.

She also hadn’t thought it would turn out so well. She had only smuggled in a handful of Hold X cases to Saddle Arabia and hoped that the military would have such a hard time with them, they would allow supes to combat the supervillains, but for one of them to actually make his way to Canterlot, now that was an amazing turn of events.

She walked by Still Well’s office and she decided to stop. Protectorate Sod narrowed her eyes and her vision soon began to darken and the wall began to fade from sight. Seeing right into the director’s office, Protectorate Sod could see him now, seated at his desk as his coffee machine rumbled on, releasing the occasional puff of steam from the top. Coffee was squeezed out of its nozzle and into Still Well’s mug, ever so slowly.

“My, oh my.” The heroine couldn’t help it but lick her lips as she imagined the rich coffee swirling in the cup.

“U-Umm… Protectorate Sod? Wh-what are you doing…?”

The quiet voice broke the coffee machine’s spell over her and she sniffed and turned her head. The Shallow was standing in the hallway, carrying a large black crate in her hands.

Protectorate Sod shrugged and pointed to her cover, a large painting of herself, standing on a hill and looking heroic. “Just admiring the artwork here. What’s in the box?”

“Umm…” The Shallow looked down and away. “It-It’s… It’s not something good… I was bringing this to Director Still Well.”

“Then ya wouldn’t mind if Ah joined in.” Protectorate Sod lowered her hat and walked to knock on the door. “Director Still Well, The Shallow’s here and she’s got a mighty fine lookin’ package for you to see.”

She held the door open for her teammate, who meekly walked past her and towards the director’s desk. Still Well stood from his chair and watched as The Shallow placed the crate down on the carpeted floor.

“What’s this?” the man asked. “You were supposed to be looking for Refraction.”

“Well… This is Refraction.” Shallow popped open the lid.

Protectorate Sod could see bits and pieces, like an arm and a leg, all covered in blood, which made it visible to their eyes. The inside of the crate was lined in zinc. Whoever did this knew that she wouldn’t be able to see through it with her x-ray vision.

“Clever…” She nodded her approval. This was no mere crime. It was planned.

But what struck them the most was what was inked onto the inside of the crate’s cover. Written in what was likely Refraction’s own blood were three words. Words that made Still Well take a step back, but words that did nothing to faze Protectorate Sod. In fact, they only made her feel more challenged, like with the supervillain from earlier in the day. This was more like it.

The crate read, ‘Coming for you’.