As I chased Carl up the fire escape, I felt it important to remember what my suit can do, lest I forget. Lesse, increased terminal velocity and coefficient of friction. Those are good things? Well, I'm bullet proof, apparently, thank God for that. What can it do that's useful? Oh yeah!

Mack began to run at Carl. Tightening muscles he didn't know he had, he turned his shoes into cleats for better traction and his arms into swords for better stabbing. Seems to be a limit to what I can make, though, hope that doesn't become an issue. Must not be a whole lot of fine detail control, I wouldn't be wearing this crap. Carl parried the arms with his rifle.

"Knew you was--were scum, Carl, never pegg--though you were a super villain," I knew Carl pretty well, professionally. Now wasn't a time to lose my head.

"Yes, well, I though you were dead. Seems were all full of surprises, aren't we?" said Carl. His voice was different--higher. I wouldn't've know it was him, if I didn't shake him down every week. Probably shook him too hard.

I turned one hand into a hammer. Worked pretty well, all things considered. Carl fell to the floor. I put my becleated foot on his neck. "I ai--m not here to stop you, small fry. It's just a bonus."

"Seem pretty cocksure, Silver."

"YEARRRGH," I screamed. I looked down at my leg, it was half melted for a moment, before resuming its original shape. Long enough for Carl to roll away and get back to his feet.

"I got a great deal on that nitric acid," he said, "all the villains in town had a fire sale of the stuff after you died. Looks like I found my next big money maker."

"Take a good look at your handiwork, Carl. You'd better learn to love this look."

Carl jumped onto one of those little shacks on the top of buildings that contain the stair well. "I'm The Bookie, bud!"

Oh, an alias. Are there not two sane people in Queen City?.

"For years I balanced the books books, dealing with PIs and crooks. It all unbalanced my mind. All too soon, the more I risked, more I wished I had that trist; a career wasn't far behind."

A song... I'll settle for one sane person, seriously. Doesn't even have a decent style. I begin to climb the convenient ladder on the side of the awning. The one he apparently forgot about.

"To my life of crime, goodbye. Supervillainy says "Hi". Now I gladly sing with glee. I'll sell my brethern the arms, all my services and charms, while making a mint for me."

Forget Queen City. Make it the entire state of Queenland. Really? 7 syllables a line, AACBBC? How quaint.

The Bookie opened his mouth to sing again. "What coming trends? Well that all depends..." Halfway through the poorly scripted third verse, when he found that he was in need of a dentist. Before I removed my fist from his song hole, I slammed his sternum for good measure. He crumpled on the awning, at my feet. I picked up his rifle and broke it over a leg, before I realized just how handy it could have been. I searched through his pockets, and found some rope with high tensile strength. It wasn't labeled or anything, I just learned this later after testing it with The Bookie's body.

Didn't have time to make a good knot. Suidae Bank was certainly under siege. Should be interesting to see how long my grandma bow tie holds him.

"No, that'll never hold. Here, let me do it," said a feminine voice behind me.

"Modest Woman. You look well," I said, hoping to keep conversation to a minimum.

"So do you, for a dead guy. Now come on, we've got work to do."

Good Lord, he even dresses his henchman up to match his gimmick. Two guys were crouched behind a van loading their rifles. One was dressed up as an injun, and the other had a toga and a winged helmet.

“These guys again,” I said, trying to sound like I recognized them.

“Yes. Nickel and Dime. Coin Collector’s most trusted henchman.” She said it like she knew she was being helpful.

I grabbed onto a lightning rod and let my arm unravel into a chain. I hit the ground all quiet and smacked their heads together before they even saw me. Always wanted to do that. Saw a cop do it one time, and was jealous ever since, like the kid whose parents make him stay home and hand out candy on his 13th Halloween.

Modest Woman was behind me before my arm was an arm again. She didn’t look happy.

“Does Microwave know?” she asked.

“That I’m still alive?”

“That you’re a fake.”

Nice thing about having a face made out of moldable silver is that you can tell it to hold still. I bet Argent cleaned up in superhero poker. “What? A guy made entirely of silver can’t just leave a dent in the ground and walk away?”

“No. He can’t. But that’s not what tipped me off.”

“Nothin’ to tip you off about.”

“When we were in the cave, I caught you checking me out. Thing is, I never caught the real you staring at me—not to say he didn’t, but he liked the other side better.”

“Look, sorry to lead you on, but there’s another Dame needs my full attention.”

She slapped me. Can’t imagine why. “How dare you steal his image? You have no right to steal his suit and defile his memory!”

“Lady, you don’t understand what’s going on. Coin Collector may have murdered Ar….me, but that ain’t what this is about. He and the Dame got bigger plans, and they’re gonna keep growing unless someone give ‘em a swift kick in the jaw. And on my salary, I can’t afford a decent pair of boots, so I’m borrowing these ones until I get paid. Now either shut up and help, or just shut up.”

What am I doing getting defensive about this? I don’t even want the suit, but the blasted thing is jammed. She or that Microwave kid should probably be in it, by all rights. And it’s not like I’m even getting paid for this job anymore. Maybe it’s me that should shut up and go home.

That was a lot of thinking, and she didn’t even interrupt it. She must’ve been thinking, too. “Fine,” she said. “You get one mission in the suit, and then I figure out who you are. Once I do, you better hope you have a closet full of not-that-suit, because if I catch you wearing it, even on laundry day, I swear I will silver-plate you myself.”

“You mean you’ll bathe me in an electrolytic solution and----“

“I WILL POUR MOLTEN SILVER DOWN YOUR THOAT!”

I thought about it for a second. Sounded painful. But then again, I can’t just go around caving into whoever’s yelling at me. I’m the guy who yells, and everyone else is the guy who caves. That’s what being a Private I. is all about.

“Save it for the coin collector, honey. He deserves that treatment a lot more than I do.”

Right on cue, the sirens started.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, put your hands where I can see them, and there shall be no trouble!" said the Coin Collector over his bullhorn. "There's just a small matter of a safety deposit box, and a sackful of all your precious metals."

He glanced over to Modest Woman in her warbonnet and me in one of them hats from the Great War which, while resplendent, was less so in comparison to me.

"Nickle, you're right on time! Help me loot the safety deposit boxes, would you?"

"How?" said Modest Woman, as she ran up and socked him in the gut. He saw this coming, but wasn't really sure what to do when he realized it. I mean, it's a dame in a warbonnet, for thinking out loud! He probably couldn't process it.

"Modest Woman! How dare you intrude on my heist! No matter, I'll soon dispose of you."

Modest Woman blocked me out from his view. She loved theatrics as much as I hated them, and I can say quite honestly, that I was becoming annoyed at a rapid rate. "I'm not alone. I've brought a friend."

I wasn't ready, but boy was I pissed. I stamped forward, and grabbed Coin Collector by the spandex. Really? No resistance? Are these superhumans so lost in themselves, they'll just stand around waiting for the other side to make a move? Let's see how I do. "Alright bub, you hurt me last time, a lot, so here's what I'm going to do. First, I'm going to pin you on the ground and turn my hand into a melonballer to scoop your eyes out with. Then I'm going to turn it to a saw to cut open a hole in your skull, and do the same with your brains. And when you think it's all over," I turn my free hand into a pair of scissors and brandash them in front of Coin Collector's face.

"I... uh... see your point," his scared expression turned into an evil grin. This provided me with enough warning to twist him around, and have him hit by the nitric acid. Weaknesses, what a load.

"I'll handle these clowns," said Modest Woman, indicating the hired guns I just now managed to focus on, "you handle him."

I would have, too, if the Coin Collector hadn't grabbed my arm with his nitric acid covered hands.

I was so shocked by the sight of my own arm falling off that it felt like two weeks went by. The acid kept coming as Coin Collector slapped me around like a hockey puck. Now I get how Argent took that tumble. Hard to hold onto a ledge when your fingers are melting off, doesn't matter how strong you are or how many shapes you can be.

Shapes. Of course.

I couldn't fight him like this, and he wanted it over. So I took a dive. I made my face look like a bar of soap that got left out in the rain, and turned my leg into a puddle. "Can't....stand..." I groaned as I took a knee. Hope it wasn't too over the top.

Coin Collector bought it. "You're careless, Silver. You never could accept your weakness. I must admit that I thought you really were dead when I pushed you off that roof. I should have known that you were just laying low to spy on me. But fortunately, my partner had the foresight to hire a Private Investigator to track you down, and I knew you'd be alive to waste my time today. But as you can tell, I came prepared for you. You used to be a shining beacon of false hope to the ignorant wretches of this city. Now, look at you. You’re nothing but a puddle, Lester.”

That raised the question: how long ago did this chump find out that Argent was Sterling Silver. The Dame obviously knew, but I didn’t get the feeling that she was as much of a partner as Coin Collector seemed to think. Safest bet was probably to pretend to be shocked.

“How…did you….know?” I asked. I coughed out some of myself just for the effect. Meanwhile, Coin Collector didn’t seem to notice that my pseudopod was inching its way around the room, picking up all the pieces of me he knocked off.

“Oh, I didn’t even need to hire a detective to learn your secret, Les.” A mook crashing through a table made enough noise to break the monologue. Modest Woman only had two more to take down. Knew I could count on her.

“Sorry," he says. "I’d love to watch you wither away, but I’m afraid that gloating over your corpse wasn’t my primary mission today. Pity.”

He started spraying his acid on the security doors. He still needed the box.

I guess it was his tough luck that opening the door involved having his back turned toward me. I dropped the puddle ruse and clocked him on the back of the head. Turns out, being struck in the cerebellum by 50 pounds of silver has an interesting effect on a guy. Tends to make him drop to the ground and take a nap.

I head Modest Woman’s voice behind me. “Clock starts now,” she said.

I asked myself, was this doll worth the trouble? Coin Collector was only the hired help. The Dame was the real problem, and she’ll have more goons than this one. Hate to say it, but I don’t think I can handle her myself.

“Wait,” I says. “This ain’t over. I….” Thinking it was one thing. Saying it was another. “I still need your help.”

It's important to understand, our twisted play had one more actor. Teddy, a man I knew primarily as Microwave, had not shown up to the scene just yet. Within the past weeks, Teddy had searched the world for meaning. His best friend and mentor had been lost to him. After his sulking, he set out to create a new identity, separate from that of Microwave. This, though he didn't know this was why he was doing it, he did primarily to shelter himself from a concept far too difficult to deal with.

The Dame had set out the day's agenda for him. Breakfast at 8 at Geoffery's, shopping at 9:30 at Virginia's, a visit to Jergenson & Son at 10:30, and at noon, Suidae Bank. Teddy's job had been uneventful, aside from his run-in with me. No one with any amount of money wanted to kill an heiress like the Dame; after all, how would they get that money out of her if she were dead?

The Dame had been on edge all day. It unnerved Teddy. She'd not lost her cool when I smashed up her office. What could have possibly got her so tensed up, he wondered. I knew why, of course, or most of why. All of the important bits, anyway.

She'd spent well more time than she needed at Jergenson & Son. In fact, she made sure that the two did their figures twice. Gladly, they did; they charged by the hour.

As noon approached, the car idled in the parking lot of Suidae Bank. When Clagan Tower's clock chimed noon, the Dame left the car and Teddy, and entered the bank. Teddy found this all very suspicious, naturally, but didn't voice his concerns verbally to no one. He noticed a van idling in front of the bank, with no driver at the wheel. He might have investigated this, but no, that was the old Teddy. The Teddy who...

Teddy never finished that thought. The sirens went off. He hadn't trained all his life to ignore a siren. Removing the safety harness in his vehicle proved to be difficult. He turned off the ignition, removed the key, and shut his door, nearly in an instant, before running to the entrance of Suidae Bank.

A couple of guards barred his entrance. He didn't fight back at first; he had a healthy respect for law enforcement. Then, after a minute or two, he rationalized that if they were real policemen, they wouldn't work for a bank; he put them into a sleeper hold and ran inside.

Nickle and Dime were knocked out and handcuffed, probably by the guards. Superheroes didn't have access to handcuffs. Ropes were the more preferred method of subduction.

He nearly passed out as his eyes saw something he thought he'd never see and his ears heard something he'd sworn he'd never hear.

"Your going to need more than that, Argent," said the Dame.

The thing you gotta realize about the Dame is that her neck wasn’t just for show. I don’t know how she did it, but she was actually pushing my fingers apart with it. Made it hard to strangle her.

“I see that you’re an extraordinarily hard man to kill, Mr. Argent.” Argent. Sure. Let her think that. “I thought as much, actually. It’s why I hired that detective to track you down. Have you had the pleasure of his acquaintance, by the way?” She was grinning. Maybe I don’t much say in what she thinks, after all.

She flexed her neck, and she was free. Took me a second to put my fingers back together, and that gave her just long enough to punch me in the face. I even felt it.

She bent down to pick up a tommy gun from one of her mooks.

Modesty Woman, hell of a gal that she is, interrupted with a flying kick to the Dame’s face. Bounced right off. Pushed the gun away in the process, though.

“You may have noticed that I’m not actually southern gentry," the Dame said.

She swung at me again, but I helped her out and made a hole ahead of time. Her fist went right in, and I trapped it somewhere near my spleen.

“The thought had crossed my mind. What’d you say your name was, again?”

“Lordy, where are my manners,” she said as she braced one foot against my chest. “Allow me to h’introduce myself. Stelya Rubles, at your service.” She broke free.

“And what exactly made you think Project Pluto was a good idea?”

“The Germans are understandably annoyed with how the last war ended. They hired me to make sure America was too weak to be in any way involved with the next one.”

“Next one?” I dodged a punch.

“You’ll see,” she said. “Project Pluto is designed to devalue gold and collapse the economy of any country still on the gold standard.”

I caught her fist again. This time, I wrapped myself around her whole arm and started coating her with myself. “One problem. How do you get paid? Sounds to me like you’re doing this for free and still haven’t figured it out.”

“You’ll have to do better than that, Argent,” she said. “I’ll profit from the deal, or I wouldn’t have taken it.”

Around that time, I started hearing some swearing from the doorway. Some kid in a business suit was walking toward me. Seemed like the room was getting a little warmer. The Dame slipped out of my hold while I was distracted.

“Argent? You’re alive? You faked your own death and didn’t even tell me?”

The Dame gave me a big smile. “Oh dear, how could you mistreat your sidekick like that? You heartless fiend.” She sat down on a desk and let one of her shoes dangle off her toe, grinning like a kid at a baseball game.

“How could you do that? Do you have any idea what I’ve been going through?”

I stopped paying attention. It went on like that for a while.

I don’t think that was the right decision, because the lights started to flicker.

“Teddy, you don’t understand,” Modest Woman said. She put a hand on his shoulder. I heard a crack, and she pulled away. This guy seems like the sort of detail she should have told me about.

“And YOU!” he said to the Dame. “You told me you were FBI. You told me you were STOPPING a crazy plan to make gold useless.”

She wasn’t phased. “I may misspoke on a detail or two.”

Sparks started bouncing off my skin. Like a fork in a….

Microwave. This kid was Argent’s side-kick. The same kid who shorted out a whole town before Argent took him in and tutored him on how to control his powers. Which, I might add, he wasn’t doing now.

The sparks got worse.

“You were lying to me to keep me out of the way. Keeping me from avenging my best friend WHO WASN’T EVEN DEAD AND DIDN’T TELL ME!”

“Teddy!” Modest Woman shouted. She could see it to, and she was getting desparate.

“Shut up! You’re as bad as them! You were always jealous of me, because I had the power to be a real hero, not some second-stringer who wasn’t ever really part of the team.”

A light bulb shattered over my head. Even the Dame was getting worried. She got up and made a run for it, but Microwave let loose a blast that took her to the ground. He started charging up for another, and the Dame wasn’t moving.

The clock on the wall had stopped.

Microwave put both arms in the air and screamed, and I was lighting up like a stick of magnesium. But on the inside I was fine. Faraday cage. The Dame and Modest Woman wouldn’t be so lucky. Couldn’t save ‘em both. Not that I wanted to.

I dove for Modest Woman, and turn myself into a bubble around her. Just like a godam superhero. Lost track of what happened after that, but by the time I caught up with things, the whole room was on fire, Microwave was unconscious, and the Dame….well, the Dame was still wearing her red dress. Her bones were, at least.

* * *

After things calmed down, it only took me half an hour with a soldering iron to fix the suit and get my skin back. About time. Of course, I had to do it in Argent’s cave because I don’t make enough cash for that sort of equipment. Shame the cave will go to rot. Argent had a lot of good stuff down here.

I left the suit in its display case where I found it. I’m done with this crap. Time to get back to my “coffee” shop.

“I’m sorry I threatened to kill you.”

I turned around and found Modest Woman watching me. “Hell,” I said, “I would have done the same. How’s the kid doing?”

“He’ll recover, but I think he may have burnt out in more ways than one.”

“Good. Sounds like he couldn’t handle those powers to begin with.”

She put her hand on the case. “Argent was a good mentor, and helped a lot of us deal with out powers. I guess I was just shocked to found out that his were artificial. It didn’t’ seem right that someone else could just take what I thought was unique to him.”

“Yeah, well, tell the news that you did all the work with that Pluto job. Unless there’s a reward, in which case I’ll personally tell them that you weren’t even there.”

She didn’t say anything for a minute, and I made my way to the exit. Then I heard her say, “You know, it’s funny.”

“What’s that?”

“I thought that when I saw you take the suit off, got a good look at your face, that I’d know who you were. But you didn’t even need the mask. You’re just some regular mack. What’s your name, anyway?”

I doffed my hat at her, buttoned my coat, and pulled a flask from my pocket. “Mack’ll do just fine.”

The End