Sliced Bread 2: The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread

This afternoon Bob called the office for Greyghost. While I tried to transfer him over, he said, "Oh, by the way, Evil Danny's out."

"What do you mean, out?"

"Out. On the street. You know."

"What the hell!"

"Hey, it happens. Superheroes are in a weird legal gray area. If a villain has a good lawyer, you never know."

"That's crap. You know what I found when I got home yesterday? A big scorch mark across the back of my jacket. He must have fired something off at me when I tackled him. And there's an acid splash on the shoulder, from one of his cyber-spray-weapons or whatever the hell. I risked my life there!"

"Yeah," Bob said. "I know. You did good, too."

"I risked my life and they're letting him go?"

"It's not like they want to let him go. They know damn well he's guilty. It's just the law, that's all. Don't worry about it."

I slammed the phone down. Stupid people. I'm not even a superhero, and I'm risking my life to bring down this dangerous guy, to protect them, and they let him out? What a bunch of jerks. I slurped down a quarter on the way to the elevator.

Outside, and into the air. First I tried flying up as far as I could. I got pretty high, but as the air got thinner the flying got slower. So I switched to power dives. Then I heard this buzzing sound.

It was Icecap, on his rebuilt Icycle. Not today, I thought, I don't want to deal with this guy. He swung up to me.

"What do you think you're doing?" he said.

"Building a treehouse," I answered.

"You're building some trouble, is what you're doing. I heard you got superpowers. But you're too good to be a superhero, huh?"

"I'm too good to be one like you."

"Well, now. If you're not a superhero, but you're flying around in a mask, and disrupting air traffic and being a public nuisance, what are you?"

Aw, man.

"I know!" he said. "A supervillain!" And revved the Icycle's engine. Little punk.

"Well, if I am," I said, "I guess that means I have to do this." And flew right under the Icycle, up the other side, and clotheslined Icecap off his seat and into empty air.

He fell and fell, and after a while created a whirlwind of snow to keep him in midair until he could remotely call the Icycle down to where he was. He put the Icycle into a steep climb and rocketed toward me, firing cold-blasts.

Apparently with the new flight powers, I was faster than he was, though; I was able to dodge pretty easily. This turned out to be a much longer fight than the brief skirmish with Evil Danny Wilcox. It was the first time I had tried to actually hit someone in years. We zoomed around for quite a while, trying to clip each other with elbows or icebolts or whatever. Then I noticed I only had about three minutes of flight left on this quarter.

I figured, let's end this. I looped away from Icecap, and went into an arc that pointed me straight at his windshield. A nice little game of chicken.

I didn't give and neither did he. I plowed through his windshield at extra-high speed, fists first, and caught him right in the chest.

The Icycle spiraled down and crashed someplace, and I landed on a rooftop with a gasping and struggling Icecap. I grabbed him by the collar and smashed his head into the bricks until he stopped complaining.

Then I stood there and looked down at him. He was pretty bloody, and groaning, and not moving much. "I should probably feel bad about this," I told him, "but it hasn't been a great day, so I'm not going to worry about it too much. See you." I popped a nickel and flew off. Man, the world ticks me off sometimes.