Helena Burnley vs Professor Endtimes - Part One: Rise of The Stunner

                Red and blue lights flashed angrily against the outer walls of the town hall building, its sills and gargoyles dripping with rainwater and its windows broken. Two dozen officers stood anxiously outside and watched the doorway, the windows, the roof; anywhere that they might spot the fleeing perpetrator. If he emerged from anywhere above the ground then they’d see him and they’d catch him. But despite the strength of their numbers and the robustness of their standard-issue field-slacks, none of them dared to go inside.
                 A pair of lovingly crafted jack boots, with steel plates and spikes adorning the surface, jingled as they crunched through broken glass and furniture in the grand atrium of the town hall. They crept forwards slowly, making gradual progress towards one of the interior doors, but always keeping one eye, two ears and half a nostril out for the intruder. These boots were not acting alone, but as a part of the evil super-criminal Gatekeeper, who was famed for his liberal use of iron gates and fences in pursuit of illicit gains. He wore a leather jacket with miniature iron gates attached all over it at peculiar angles to help his victims better recognise him.
Gatekeeper and his cronies had made fast work of the town hall interior following the break-in, hanging foreboding iron gates and fences across various hallways, staircases, walls and ceilings, until the grand building had been transformed into something more like MC Escher's estate boundary. It was a declaration that this was his territory now, and anyone else inside would have to answer to him.
                "I'll ring fence this whole city if I have to!" He shouted into the darkness. "I only want to be revered and respected, but everyone seems to gate me!" He cackled. His unseen stalker kept her composure, having heard him recite that pun several times before. "I know I'm a little unhinged but you needn't latch onto me like this. I'm not scared of you! I'm no chicken-wire!" This was supervillainy 101 - infuriate your opponent with a never-ending stream of increasingly tenuous puns and then, when they can take no more, they will show themselves. A display of power or disregard for property rights was often a good move in these situations too, so Gatekeeper kicked a spray of debris into the air.
                “Come out, hero. I know you’re there somewhere!” he shouted into the dust cloud he’d created. The chandelier was still swinging, as it had been ever since he and his cronies had stormed the building hours before.. Shadows silently swept back and forth over the ground, making every darkened corner seem alive with malicious intent. Gatekeeper knew the perils of a gate on a loose hinge, swinging interminably in the wind when the latch was ignored and forgotten; he supposed that it must be the same with light fittings, but only Filament Frank would know that for sure. He’d been taken down months ago by the do-gooders, but Gatekeeper wouldn’t be bowing out so easily.
                A shuffle sounded from the top of the wide staircase in centre of the atrium, and Gatekeeper span to face it. A dull yellow illumination flickered over the landing at the top of the first rise with every swing of the chandelier, granting Gatekeeper snapshots of the empty staircase. After the landing, the stairs separated into two smaller flights which rose  in sweeping curves to a mezzanine above. Red and blue light from the police cars flashed across the upper mezzanine, glinting from further broken glass and a group of peculiarly placed display cases. Gatekeeper would have to remind his men not to scatter reflective surfaces around so much of the crime scene in future; the avoidance of future dazzling was vitally important. A dark shape suddenly moved across the glittering fragments.
                "I saw you moving up there! Don't you know it's rude to walk up someone's path and not close the gate?!" It barely made sense to say that, but Gatekeeper was running out of gate-related statements to make. He was hoping desperately that the do-gooder intruder would make a reference to putting him behind bars, so that he could in turn mention a five-bar gate. Banter was 90% of the battle here, and he wanted to be ready for it, but the other 10% was still important.
                Slowly, one step at a time, Gatekeeper ascended the broad staircase, looking furtively upwards to either side lest his assailant try to ambush him. In one hand he held his gate-spear, a single bar from an ornate gate that he'd lived behind in his childhood. Eight feet long with a sharpened spike at the end, it could inflict poking wounds at a modest range; a worthy weapon but nothing more spectacular than a normal spear. In his other hand he held a harpoon gun which fired the spikes Gatekeeper harvested from atop iron gates at stately homes, ready to impale any law enforcer who should dare to come in range.
                "Here boy! Come get me!" He cried as he turned up the second staircase and approached the mezzanine. A shadow moved in the corner and Gatekeeper fired without hesitation, the harpoon impaling a taxidermied badger in a very compromising location.
                "You can't hide forever!" He shouted, employing yet another exclamation mark. The shadow flitted past the far side of the mezzanine and more gate spikes thunked into the handrails, one sailing between the spindles and crashing through a painting of another badger. It seemed that Gatekeeper had something in particular against badger bottoms.
                “Got a runner eh? Let's see how you like my gate bombs!” Gatekeeper cackled into the darkness, pulling a fist-sized black sphere from his pocket. With a series of needlessly complicated twists and clicks, the maniacal criminal primed the bomb, a faint hissing sound implying that some kind of internal fuse was taking care of its own business. Keeping his eye on the spot where the shadow had disappeared, Gatekeeper hurled the black sphere across the atrium, landing it with deft accuracy on the opposite side of the mezzanine with a loud clank.
                The bomb exploded in a burst of smoke which smothered the upper floor and blotted out the lights from chandelier and police car alike. When the air cleared, a cuboid cage comprised entirely of garden gates was blocking the walkway. Inside, a woman grasped at the bars and frantically tried to pull and rattle herself free.
                “Well well well, who do we have in here?” Gatekeeper said theatrically, striding towards the cage with an over-confident swagger. “Ooh! It’s a little piggy come here to hunt for truffles.”
                "You're under arrest, Gatekeeper. Come quietly and no-one has to get hurt." Helena shouted from her gate prison. A few more badger taxidermies looked on in static horror, and one looked on in static joy. His expression wasn’t zoologically convincing.
                "You're not in a position to be arresting anyone, piggy. I need to teach you all a lesson for trying to mess with the criminal masterminds of this town." Gatekeeper paced towards Helena menacingly, using his spear like a cane and waving his harpoon gun wildly. "Break-ins are a gateway crime. They can lead to all sorts of horrible things" He spoke with a cruel smirk. To make his point, he stabbed blindly at one of the badgers and once again showed his propensity for rear-end aiming.
                “Will you please stop sodomising the artwork?!” Helena pleaded, horrified at Gatekeeper’s unique brand of intimidation.
                "You will make no more demands of me little pig!" He screamed, swinging the now badger-tipped spear round towards Helena. “You’ll be knocking at Heaven’s gates soon enough.” He cursed inwardly for saying Heaven instead of Hell; his line seemed far less terrifying now.
                "Right, that counts as aggressive intent." Helena said calmly, before producing her service revolver and shooting Gatekeeper cleanly in the kneecap.
                “Ow! Christ! You’re not meant to do that!” Gatekeeper complained, rolling on the ground and clutching his knee.
                “I’ll do it again if you don’t shut up. You’re under arrest. Toss the weapons away and get me out of this cage.”
                “Unngh, never!” He started raising the harpoon gun up but Helena shot him in the hand before he got very far.
                “Argh!” was Gatekeeper’s assessment of that situation.
                “This is Agent Burnley. The Gatekeeper is secured; proceed with the breach.” She commanded into her radio as the iron-clad nuisance rolled around on the floor outside. “Located on the Atrium mezzanine – I am holding a strategic position within a cage made of gates or similar iron structures.” She added. Gatekeeper was more pained by the insinuation that he’d used something other than gates for his bombs than he was by the pair of gunshot wounds.
 
                The mayor and his husband were found shackled to iron gates and suspended from the ceiling of the mayor’s office by thick chains. Gatekeeper had tried to arrange their bodies into a G shape, but found either his artistic talents or his prisoners’ flexibility to be wanting, so they both looked far more like failed contortionists.
                “Get us down from here!” the mayor shouted angrily at the crime-scene photographer, who was busy documenting the situation.
                “I’m not qualified to do that sir. The rescue team is on the way.”
                “You don’t need a qualification to unshackle a chain!”
                “But you do need some bolt cutters and a ladder. I might be a photographer, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I can fly or snap chains with my hands.” The photographer informed the Mayor, still taking further pictures to evidence the devastating effects that incarceration was having on the Mayor’s mood.
                Commissioner Giles Harmon arrived with the rescue team a few minutes later and cut the mayoral couple down, amid a sea of sniggers.
                “Thank you.” The mayor said coarsely, sounding anything but grateful. “What’s the status here Commissioner?”
                “A dozen of Gatekeeper’s henchmen were found unconscious, bound, chained to suspended gates or otherwise incapacitated when we stormed the building, sir. It seems that Agent Burnley made swift and easy work of Gatekeeper’s hired muscle during her infiltration, and only tripped up during the final showdown. Even whilst trapped, she was still able to bring Gatekeeper down. The only civilian casualties have come in the form of stuffed badgers or similar.”
                “My badgers!” cried the mayor’s husband. The mayor held him close in comfort.
                “It is a tragedy, but could have been much worse. Where is Agent Burnley?”
                “Here she comes now.” Commissioner Harmon noticed, as the still-caged Agent Burnley was wheeled in on a trolley.
                “Commissioner. Mayor.” She said, nodding to each of them as best she could in her cramped condition.
                “That was top grade work, Helena. It’s a shame about the badgers, but you did what you could.” Commissioner Harmon stood bolt upright, his posture finer than even the décor in the mayor’s office, with a cigar in his mouth. The cigar wasn’t lit of course, he was a non-smoker, but he felt that it lent him more credibility as a high-ranking police official to have a cigar. “Gatekeeper will be behind bars in no time.” The commissioner chuckled to himself at the pun, which was curiously disarmed of the combat power it would have wielded shortly before.
                “I was just doing my job.” Helena said modestly but accurately. She was haunted by the pained expressions of those sodomised badgers, both in paint and in the formaldehyde soaked flesh. If only she’d remained unseen, maybe they would have been spared that humiliation.
                “You were doing it well.” Commissioner Harmon persisted, determined to pay Helena a compliment.
                “Agreed. My husband and I are in your debt. You’re a fine agent.” The mayor told her.
                 “Bringing down Gatekeeper is a triumph for the ministry and a much-needed PR boost. I don’t need to tell you that we’ve been under a lot of pressure to make more super-villain arrests.”
                “Yet you’ve said it anyway.” Helena observed keenly.
                “Yes. Redundancy is critical in these trying times.”
                “Right. Fine. Where are we on the interrogation?” Helena asked, changing the subject.
                “It’s been difficult to get anything useful out of him here, what with the screaming about his bullet wounds.”
                “Sounds about right. He’ll talk in the morning once we’ve patched him up.”
                “Here’s hoping. Get out of that cage, go home, and get some sleep Helena; we’ll have a busy day tomorrow.”
                “The boys in the lab need to examine it before I’m cut-free, sir. We might learn something that gives us the upper hand against other villains.” Helena told him.
                “Such dedication! You’re a rare breed, Agent Burnley.” The mayor said sincerely. Helena nodded in thanks. It certainly took rarity of breeding to face the super-criminal underworld.
 
                When super-villains suddenly began to emerge and terrorise the globe, everyone in the world had naturally assumed that super heroes would be sure to follow. That’s how it always worked out in the comic books, and they constituted a verifiable historical source in most people’s opinions. Unfortunately, they were wrong. Radiation continued to have only detrimental effects on the human body in every clinical trial, no-one fell from space to save humanity from themselves, and kind-hearted engineers continued to be too destitute to build a super-suit and fight crime. Far from being delivered from their plight by paragons of justice, the normal people of the world were subjected to the whims and menaces of powerful and unchecked super-villains. It was anarchy.
                In lieu of any private citizens taking the law into their own hands, the government took action. The Ministry of Extraordinary Crimes was formed from a group of police officers and politicians, and tasked with resolving the super-villain situation. Any criminal designated as a super-villain, and any crimes determined to be of either a scale or a level of whimsy outstripping that of the common law-breaker, would fall under their jurisdiction.
                Helena Burnley was the Ministry’s finest agent, and having successfully brought the Gatekeeper into custody she sat alone in her flat, attempting to open a tin of kidney beans using a spoon. Her tin-opener had gone missing a few weeks before, but purchasing another one would guarantee that she’d find the old one immediately afterwards. She wanted one tin-opener, not none and not two, so either way she was stuck.
                Having finally punctured her way in with a stout blow from the handle, Helena poured the contents into a pot bubbling on the stove, and then collapsed onto the sofa. Flicking through her phone, she found the photos she’d taken of Gatekeeper after his subjugation. His face was contorted with an agonised shriek as he clutched a bullet-wounded hand to his bullet-wounded knee. Another fine arrest for the album.
                Helena printed the picture out, scribbled the date and location on the back, and added it to the collage of super-criminals she kept on her wall next to the bins. One day her flat might be broken into by a vengeful criminal trying to hunt her down, so she wanted to make it clear that she stored super-villains next to the rest of the trash. It was a devastating, fight-winning pun in the making, and it might just save her life one day.
                She tacked Gatekeeper’s photo next to The Brimmer; a self-made super-villain who systematically overfilled every fluid container in Oxford until they were right to the brim. Spillages were rife, carpets were ruined, and pots splashed wildly onto stoves across the city. Helena glanced over at her own pot on the hob and looked for the one-inch safety gap she’d always left since.
                The Brimmer case would have been gruelling enough on its own, but he’d been secretly colluding with big-time criminal act Green Flannel. Flannel had been executing a plan to wear through all towels and flannels in the country until they were no more than threads and false promises, using his satellite-mounted fabric abrasion ray. The ray had been on the launch pad and ready to be fired to into space, rockets primed, when Helena caught up with Green Flannel and stopped him. Had The Brimmer and Green Flannel nursed their plans to fruition together, the consequences would have been simply unthinkable.
                Super-villains teaming up with one another was unheard of before that point. They were all so maniacally devoted to dishing out their ludicrously niche forms of chaos that any collusion with another brand of evil was out of the question. During the interrogations of The Brimmer and Green Flannel they were both pushed on the circumstances of their alliance but chose to remain silent, apparently terrified of the ramifications if they should talk. All the interrogator had managed to extract from them was half a name: Professor.
                Tracing a finger along the edge of Gatekeeper’s photo, Helena pondered over his attack on the town hall. Sneaking in and taking hostages, covering the majority of the building with gates, hiring a dozen henchmen, being able to buy that many gates in the first place; well-equipped was an understatement. He was a small-time criminal with big-time resources. She looked back at The Brimmer’s picture and wondered…
                Rattling and bubbling noises erupted from the kitchen. The chilli required attention. Her stock of questions for the Gatekeeper would all be answered in the morning.
 
                Gatekeeper’s interrogation started early, in one of the small-windowed questioning rooms of the police station. White and grey painted block walls enclosed the sparsely furnished room, making everything feel sterile and unwelcoming. Gatekeeper was handcuffed to a thick steel ring in the central table, and there were enough chairs for him, Helena, and Commissioner Harmon only. Helena knew that the mayor and several other key players would be listening through the two-way glass window, but didn’t let that distract her; nothing would break her focus in securing justice for the poor badgers.
                Still clearly in discomfort as a result of Helena’s gun-slinging arrest, Gatekeeper scowled across the table at Agent Burnley and the commissioner.
                “Where did you get the equipment, keeper?” Helena asked him directly.
                “I’m not saying a thing to you, piggy.”
                “You’ll be locked up for an awfully long time if you don’t.” Helena threatened.
                “Pah! Prison bars don’t scare me! They’re just huge, powerful gates, you fools! I’d be out within the hour.” Gatekeeper spat back arrogantly.
                “Oh, you wouldn’t be behind iron bars, Gatekeeper.” Helena told him, sneering. She leaned closer. “You’ll be spending years in a chicken-wire enclosure. Think about it, nothing but posts and wire, a fence without end. No gate in sight. We’ll drop you in from the top and seal it every time. No hinges, no latches, and no escape.”
                Gatekeeper gulped but kept a stony expression.
                “You’re bluffing.” He said hopefully.
                “She’s not.” Commissioner Harmon weighed in. “It’s under construction as we speak. But if you co-operate we can make a deal.”
                “I’ll never make a deal with you.”
                “I thought you might say that.” Helena told him, pushing a hand into her pocket and drawing something long and metallic out. “You know what kind of latch this is?”
                “What do you take me for? It’s a deadbolt.”
                “Exactly. A DEADbolt, and that’s what it’ll be if you don’t co-operate.” Agent Burney threatened, looking directly into his eyes. Interrogative puns were no safer than combat puns, but she was a pro.
                “You don’t scare me, I have dominion over all gates and gate accessories.”
                Helena stood up suddenly, her legs pushing the light plastic chair over, and held the bolt in front of Gatekeeper’s face, practically folded in two over the desk to reach. She held Gatekeeper’s gaze, unblinking.
                “Do you?” she asked. Holding the bolt’s housing in one hand and its lever in the other, she pushed the lever downwards hard. The end of the bolt shot from the housing on the latch, like a snapping turtle’s head pouncing out of its shell, accompanied by a metallic screech as the poorly lubricated mechanism ground against itself. The bolt stopped with a hard clack as it hit the other end of the housing.
                “Ugh!” Gatekeeper yelped “You’ll break it like that! You need to treat it with respect!” Gatekeeper lectured Agent Burnley.
                “There’s more where that came from.”
                “I told you, I’m not saying anyth-”the bolt squeaked and scraped against its housing again. “Argh!”
                “We don’t want to do this, Gatekeeper.” Commissioner Harmon told him. “But you broke into the town hall with far more resources than you should have been able to secure. We know you’re not working alone here. The deadbolt will go away for repairs if you talk.”
                “Never!”
                The bolt ground and scratched again and again, each whining squeak eliciting a muffled curse from the super-villain. When a fine metallic powder started to form a pile under the bolt, Gatekeeper finally caved.
                “OK! OK! I’ll talk! Just stop! The bolt needs oiling and maintenance, you’ll wear it down!”
                “I want details of everything. Agent Burnley, I’ll leave him in your capable hands.” Commissioner Harmon said, standing up. He left the room and Helena smiled at Gatekeeper, handling the deadbolt in one hand.
                “I’d suggest you start talking.”
 
                Gatekeeper’s interrogation proved to be fruitful, if drawn-out. Between bouts of resistance and threats of the deadbolt, Gatekeeper talked for a full day, offering explanations of how he’d broken in, how he’d manufactured the various gate-based weaponry he’d employed, and his favourite type of hinge. But as to where he’d secured funding and resources he was either vague or quiet. ‘An unknown benefactor’ was the best Helena could get. She thought she saw a brief flash of recognition and fear in his eyes when she mentioned ‘Professor’ from the Brimmer case, but nothing more.
                Back in the office, Helena sat at her desk and pulled together her paperwork from the Gatekeeper case. Illuminated by the blue glow from her computer screen she must have looked tired, because one of the uniformed officers, Gary Dunner, approached her.
                “You’re still here, Agent?” he asked with quiet concern.
                “Yeah, I need to get this written up.” Helena told him.
                “Interrogating Gatekeeper all day can’t have been easy. I’m sure this can wait until tomorrow.” Officer Dunner suggested from behind a caring expression.
                Helen stopped typing and looked at him with a weary smile.
                “Thanks, but it’s fine. It won’t take me more than a couple of hours.”
                “Let me at least order you something in to eat.”
                Helena chuckled.
                “Thanks, but I have food at home. My tin-opener’s missing so I had to break into my tins with a spoon. After putting in all that effort, I’m not going to waste it or get a takeaway instead.” She told him with weary amusement.
                “With a spoon? You’ll have to show me that. I’m locked out of all my tins as well.” Officer Dunner replied.
                “Your tin opener is missing too?” Helena asked urgently, snapping her attention fully onto him.
                “Yeah, has been for a few days.”
                Helena slammed her palm down onto the table and then stood up.
                “Has anyone else’s tin-opener gone missing?” she shouted to the office. A small ripple of yeses and raised hands confirmed that many tins would go unopened in the near future.
                “Damn it. Dunner, take statements from everyone. I want to know when their tin-openers went missing and I want to know where from. Get it marked up on a map of the city; I think we’ve got a lead.”
                “Yes, Agent Burnley.” Officer Dunner said, before scurrying away with a notebook in hand.
 
                The following day, Helena stood around the case-board with missing tin-opener locations marked on it. She could see a smattering of cases all within a twelve-mile radius of each other.
                “I think we’re building up an affected area. This is no coincidence.” She assessed. “Do we have anything from the call for information, Dunner?”
                “Some reports starting to come in.” Officer Dunner replied. He’d sent out an urgent request via email, social media, and AM radio for anyone who had lost their tin-opener to get in touch with the police immediately. Whilst some felt that this was some kind of attempt at an elaborate sting operation relating to improper usage of tinned goods, many others were quick to offer their information.
                “Good. We need to build up a case and strike as soon as possible.”
                “Agent Burnley!” Commissioner Harmon shouted from his office.
                “Yes, sir?” she responded, still looking at her board.
                “You have an assignment! My office, now.”
                Helena stepped away from the board, still pondering what all the information was pointing to, and hurried into the Commissioner’s office. She closed the door behind herself and turned to face the commissioner.
                “What’s the situation, sir?”
                “Field case, Agent Burnley. Get your equipment together. We think we’ve found Shedder.”
                “Shedder? Rings a bell but I’ve not looked into his file yet.”
                “He trapped his fingers in a radioactive shed a few months ago and has since used his garden-tool storage powers for evil.”
                “Another accident victim?” Helena asked, rhetorically. It was common for these super-villains to have been involved in a workplace injury immediately before turning to a life of crime. Ministry researchers were desperately trying to determine what it was about people who suffered industrial accidents that drew them into a villainous tendencies, but no clear stimulus had been forthcoming.
                “I’m afraid so.” Commissioner Harmon confirmed, regardless.
                “Any known associates?”
                “None that we’re aware of. We’ve had sketchy reports that he’s rivalled by a man named The Great Garagio, who closed a radioactive garage door onto his foot and since used his power-tool and vehicle storage powers for evil.” The commissioner told her, chewing on the end of his unlit cigar.
                “Too similar for them to get along, I guess. How does one get a radioactive shed or garage anyway?” Helena asked, perplexed at the sudden distribution of radioactive material throughout the city.
                “Unknown at the present moment. He’s also reportedly at loggerheads with another villain named The Shedder, who moults with reckless abandon. We suspect an incident with radioactive hairclippers, but that’s pure speculation.”
                “Noted. So what’s the situation, why are we striking now?”
                “Shedder has struck at a garden centre in the outskirts of the city. We lost all communication from them half an hour ago; no response from the website, the customer enquiry line, or the orders line.” Commissioner Harmon held his hands behind his back and looked out of the window of his office, facing in the general direction of the garden centre with grave concern in his eyes.
                “Son of a…”
                “Yes, we suspect he is the son of something, but that’s unimportant.” The commissioner said as he turned to face Helena again. “We need you to infiltrate the garden centre and find out what’s going on. Take down Shedder if you can, but if you encounter danger then call for backup and get out of there. We don’t know what he’s planning, but after Gatekeeper’s arsenal we’re not taking any chances.”
                “Yes sir.” Helena said, nodding curtly before turning to the door.
 
                Helena was dropped off a few streets away from the garden centre by an undercover officer in an unmarked car. Clad in leaf-green trousers and a waistcoat, Helena planned to blend into the background of the garden centre and sneak through it unnoticed until she found something to report. She jogged through the streets towards her mark, running over the map of the garden centre in her head. She’d jump over the fence into the seasonal vegetables, keep a low profile and make her way to the spring flowering plants, skirt around the fences, borders and bark-chippings, and then perform recon on the sheds; that’s where everyone expected to find him.
                As Helena approached the garden centre, she saw that the gates had been chained shut, and the large sign over the top had been replaced. Rather than ‘Jimmy’s Garden Centre’, Helena was now looking at ‘Shedder’s Garden Centre of the Damned’.
                Shaking her head at the senseless vandalism, Helena jogged in a low crouch around the fence-line until she was outside the seasonal vegetables. Pushing a bin against the fence to use as a platform, she stepped up and jumped over, breaking her fall using a palette of pumpkins. Her boots dripping with orange gore, Helena lifted her feet from the carnage she’d wrought and stepped out of the palette, making a mental note to acknowledge their noble sacrifice for the cause of justice. Staying low and wiping pumpkin debris from her legs, she snuck through the racks of vegetable seeds and kept a quiet vigil all around herself. At every corner she stopped and listened, hoping to hear some sign of activity, but everything was dead still, and dead silent. This was a ghost garden centre.
                Following her planned path, Helena crept through shelves of plants and gardening paraphernalia until she was at the intersection of fences, sheds, and lawnmowers. The instincts of the ministry officers had been correct; Shedder had set up shop in the shed department, completely rearranging it into a maze of unreasonably priced tool storage solutions. An impressive archway of shed panels had been built to act as a grand entrance, and a pathway flanked by sheds led into the body of the maze.
                Crouching behind a ‘No More Mow-ning’ ride-on model, appreciating its 6-speed gearbox, four levels of blade height and Comfort-Tech padded seat, Helena radioed back with a status update.
                “Dove-home, this is Fledgling. The nest is eggy, but no sign of the magpie. Repeat, the nest is eggy but the magpie has not been located.” She replied in unnecessary code.
                “Copy that, Fledgling. Status of eggs?”
                “Eggs arranged into a… oh I don’t think we had a word for ‘maze’. They’re arranged into a maze of some sort.”
                “He’s made a shed maze, sir.” She heard the radio operator mutter to someone. “Copy that Fledgling. Take to the wing and explore the maze if safe. Dove-home over and out.”
                Helena clipped her radio back onto her belt and peered into the entrance of the maze. Spray-painted onto the top of the arch was a message:
                “SHEDDER’S GARDEN CENTRE OF THE DAMNED WELCOMES THE MINISTRY OF EXTRAORDINARY CRIMES.”
                The size of the lettering decreased gradually as the message went on; clearly, Shedder hadn’t thought through his font-choices before starting. It was an embarrassing oversight, and one which Helena hoped to be able to use against Shedder.
                This maze was clearly a trap. In the history of traps laid by villains against their nemeses, this was the most clearly labelled by a long way. It was so obvious that Helena even wondered if it was an elaborate double-bluff, but the poor planning exhibited by the lettering fiasco suggested otherwise. Drawing her revolver pre-emptively, Helena left the cover of the lawnmower and entered Shedder’s maze.
                She crept forward slowly, taking long, low strides and flicking her head left and right. The avenue was approximately one shed wide, as befitted Shedder’s obsession, meaning that she could move relatively freely whilst inside. Flanking her were sheds of many varieties and sizes, all with their doors facing inwards. Butted close together, their windows weren’t visible for Helena to look through, and so anything could have been hiding inside, waiting for an unsuspecting agent to walk by.
                Helena sidled up to the first one, standing clear of the door, and reached out tentatively to turn the handle. Once the latch was retracted it swung open freely. There was nothing inside.
                Helena repeated this process for the shed on the other side, again finding it to be empty. Carefully she moved forwards to the next pair of sheds and checked those two as well. There was some evidence of a mouse or similar rodent having made a home, but unless Shedder was planning to infect Helena with the leavings of common rodents, there was nothing suspicious.
                As she started to step forwards again, something caught Helena’s eye, glinting just above the ground. She crouched down and moved her head closer, identifying the source of the glint as a tripwire. Shedder had tried to lull her into a false sense of security with an entryway of safe sheds, but Helena wasn’t trusting enough to fall into that pit. Not again.
                She backtracked through the garden centre and then returned to the maze with a rake in hand. Taking cover in one of the empty sheds at the entrance, she leaned outwards with the rake just far enough to snag it on the trip wire. As soon as the wire was pulled the shed doors either side of it burst open, spring-loaded pitch forks launching outwards and embedding themselves in the walls opposite. With a shudder at the thought of what could have happened to her if she’d let her attention lapse, Helena continued through the maze, holding the rake ahead of her to sweep for further wires.
                Helena encountered another tripwire a few sheds later, this time attached to a spring-loaded hoe and a heavy book on non-native species of tree tied to a rope. After dodging those lethal traps, Helena rounded a corner and was faced with another long, straight row of sheds. At the end, sitting on a roof, was a ride-on lawnmower of clearly inferior craftsmanship to the ‘No More Mow-ning’ model she’d hidden behind earlier. More perplexingly, there was also a sandwich sitting innocently on a plate on the ground. The sheds still loomed menacingly to either side, but there was no sign of any trip wires or pressure plates. Helena inched along the avenue towards the sandwich, wondering what on earth it had to do with garden-tool storage.
                As she came close, she noticed a small card in front of the plate, which read: ‘EAT ME! - SHEDDER’S GARDEN CENTRE OF THE DAMNED CAFÉ’. It seemed like a tenuous link to make to sheds, but Helena supposed that Shedder had been running out of ideas by this stage.
                There was no way she’d be taking a bite out of the sandwich; that much was certain. Not only had it been improperly stored for goodness-only-knows how long, it had also been left for her by a super-villain among a series of trapped sheds. Add to that the fact that, on even a cursory inspection, it was clearly laced with slug pellets, and the result was a singularly unappealing lunch option. Granted, it was preferable to most other garden centre food, but that was only on the basis that it was free, rather than costing a single month’s mortgage payment.
                Electing that strange, poisoned sandwiches are better left alone, Helena attempted to step over it, but knocked the plate with the tip of her boot. Immediately, it became clear that the plate was connected to a wire which had been buried just below the surface of the ground. As the wire pulled taut, tearing itself from the earth in a bid for freedom, the shed at the end of the row collapsed, and the engine of the mower started with a hellish roar.
                Diesel fumes filled the air and the throbbing engine revved aggressively as the riderless mower ploughed its way towards Helena. Dirt and fragments of wire billowed out from under the blades as it churned the ground in its beeline directly towards the agent, promising her nothing other than an even cut right the way across her body.
                Calmly, Helena checked one of the nearby sheds, but found that the door was locked. Shedder had planned ahead for this one. With a nonchalant shrug, Helena instead walked back around the corner and waited for the mower to come harmlessly past her. Without a mechanism to change gear, the mower thrashed its engine in first gear, screaming with revs but going nowhere fast. Helena kept an eye on its progress as it continued its death march along the row, and enjoyed the hopefully once-in-a-lifetime experience of seeing a ride-on lawnmower crash through an empty shed at low speeds.
                As the mower made good its escape, ready for an adventure of its own having been granted freedom from the garden centre with a wake of splintered plywood behind it, Helena continued through Shedder’s maze. When she re-entered the mower’s avenue, however, she was shocked to see a man standing on the rooftops, hands on hips. He was wrapped in coils of deep green garden wire over torn shreds of a green and brown fleece. His feet were clad in welly clogs, tied onto his trousers with baling twine. Stakes were jammed into fabric loops all around his legs, making it very dangerous for him to sit or squat, but most notably he was wearing a wooden helmet in the shape of a very tasteful garden shed.
                “How do you like my maze, agent? Is it giving you a shedache?” he cackled maniacally.
                “I’m placing you under arrest, Shedder. Come quietly.”
                “This tool isn’t going back in the shed just yet.” He replied, insulting himself for the sake of staying on theme.
                “And I’m not going to eat slug pellets just because they’re breaded.” Helena told him. “You’re currently on breaking and entering, trespass, vandalism, and assault of an officer. Don’t make me add resisting arrest to the list of offences.”
                “I’m sure I can shed those charges and get away!” Shedder said with a laugh, before running away along the rooftops.
                “I’m not going to run after you.” Helena shouted after him, but he was gone.
                True to her word and ignoring Shedder’s latest attempt to bait her, Helena resumed her slow, measured journey through the maze, checking for triggers, tripwires and other traps as she went. She was beginning to think she should radio for backup, but right now Shedder had no reason to flee; he thought he had Helena in his grasp. If she called for reinforcements then they might spook him and lose the chance of arrest.
                Helena eventually came across a fork in the path, with two separate avenues to walk down. It seemed needless; if Shedder was trying to direct her somewhere then giving her a wrong choice to make was a confusing move. But super-villains did so often like to play games, and he possibly just wanted to justify his use of the term ‘maze’.
                Choosing arbitrarily, Helena headed down the left fork. She wondered just how large the garden centre really was, given that Shedder had been able to construct a maze of such a size on its premises. It also seemed to be drastically overstocked on display-sheds. It was highly unlikely that Shedder had constructed them all in the last couple of hours, or had them shipped in pre-built, but nothing would surprise her these days. Past shed after shed she snuck, disarming the occasional tripwire with her rake and being sure to ignore any cafeteria goods she saw along the way, leaving thoughts of the logistical problems for later.
                After walking for what felt like ten minutes and thirteen seconds, Helena rounded a final bend in the maze and saw Shedder once again standing on the rooftops.
                “Come and get her, agent!” he wailed “She’s primed and waiting for you!”
                “Primed?” Agent Burnley asked, uncertain as to the relevance of that phrase.
                “You know… like priming wood, treating it so that it doesn’t rot. You prime sheds to keep them in good condition.” Shedder explained.
                “Right. You’re still under arrest but now I pity you a bit, too. Who are you talking about anyway?”
                “Open your eyes agent! Or has my wooden maze tied you in knots?!” He cackled to himself, scampering away again before Agent Burnley could express exasperation at his pun.
                Looking ahead, Helena saw a wide enclosure surrounded on three sides by much larger sheds with wider doorways. Either side of the entryway was a tower four sheds high, acting like mighty gateposts. Sitting in the middle of the enclosure, gagged with a heavy duty gardening glove and bound with an impressive quantity of garden twine was a young woman in the uniform of Jimmy's garden centre.
                Dropping the rake and holstering her revolver, Helena rushed over to the hostage, who was trying to say something through the tough fabric of her gag. Carefully, Helena removed the glove from the woman’s mouth.
                “It’s a trap! They kept talking about it in front of me for some reason!” she said frantically.
                “What?”
                A loud crashing sounded from behind Helena; one of the shed towers had been collapsed across the entrance to the enclosure, sealing her in.
                ‘Damn it, Helena. You’re better than this. You should have expected it.’ She chastised herself, as her gaze darted around the enclosure, looking for the ambush. It was then that she realised the wide sheds weren’t sheds at all. Their walls were brick and concrete. Their doors were metallic and hinged upwards. They were garages.
                At once, the doors to the three garages began to rise of their own accord, slowly ascending with a rattling of chains. Helena tried desperately to untie the woman, whose nametag identified her as ‘Melanie’, whilst keeping an eye on the garages. The openings were narrow but growing, and showed nothing but darkness within.
                “You walked right into our trap!” Shedder screeched from the rooftops, hopping from one leg to the other in excitement. “We’ve got you!”
                Lights flickered on inside the middle garage. Rising ever upwards, the door unveiled a pair of thick legs. They were covered in cargo trousers with metal, garage-door shaped plates strapped to them. A heavily jacketed midriff came into view, and promptly the door jarred to a halt, its motor making a series of grinding noises before finally giving up.
                “Oh for…” a frustrated voice came from the darkness within, before a large hand appeared underneath the door and pushed it the rest of the way upwards.
                “The Great Garagio welcomes you!” The man in the garage declared once fully revealed, wearing a hungry grin on his face. He was huge, his bald head merging seamlessly into his shoulders and bypassing any semblance of a neck. He wore a thick tool belt full of a garage door remotes, paint sample tins and oil cans. Behind him was a large shape obscured by a tarpaulin.
                “I’ll arrest you too, that’s fine.” Helena said distractedly, checking the other garages for signs of movement and still working on the twine around Melanie’s hands.
                “You’d better park that attitude. We have the controls here.” He said menacingly, holding a grey remote in his hand and resting one finger over the single red button in the middle. With a casual ‘click’ he pushed the button, activating bright lights in the other two garages.
                With horror, Helena finally saw the tools of destruction sequestered away in the garages. Old pushbikes covered in axes and scythes, barrels of oil stored underneath live electrical wires, and garden chairs with dangerously worn seats were ominously directed right at her.
                “What’s wrong? Your book smarts not a match for my off-street smarts?” Garagio taunted.
                ’Off-street smarts? Like… no… surely not… off-street parking? This guy is clutching at straws already.’ Helena exasperatedly thought to herself. Garagio’s wordplay had caught her off-guard with its extreme contrivance, and her attention was torn away from the weaponry in the garages. Seizing the opportunity, Garagio pulled another remote from his pocket and clicked two buttons on its surface. Two pushbikes of doom, one from each side, were propelled from the garages on a squeaking vector of harm.
                “Bikes!” Melanie shouted, snapping Helena back to attention. Agent Burnley wrapped her arms around the semi-bound girl and dived out of the way, allowing the bicycles to clatter anti-climactically together and topple over.
                “I’m sorry, that was too close.” Helena said, angry at herself. “That’s attempted assault Garagio!” she shouted across the enclosure.
                “I’ve got more where that came from!” he replied, clicking another button. From behind him, two more pushbikes shot out, passing either side of his hulking body. Due to the distance between the garage and Helena, however, the un-manned bikes fell over harmlessly before posing a true threat to anyone.
                “Stop embarrassing yourself and come quietly, Garagio.” Helena instructed.
                “Damn it, Garagio! Shedder whined from the rooftops. “Unleash the main weapon and stop wasting time!”
                “Watch your tongue, Shedder!” Garagio replied venomously, as he stepped back into the garage. With a grand gesture, like a magician unveiling a dramatically unharmed assistant, he hauled the tarpaulin off the mysterious shape behind him.
                Helena could scarcely believe her eyes; between two motorbikes was a shed laden with oil barrels, matches, kerosene lamps and lighters.
                “Let this serve as a message to the ministry! If you oppose us, you will burn!” Garagio shouted with wide-eyed fanaticism. Taking a comically large remote from his belt he slammed the big grey button in the middle, and the engines of the bikes sputtered into life. Garagio lit a fuse dangling from the open shed door and slapped the button again. In a great cloud of carbon monoxide the motorbikes revved hard and launched forwards towards Helena and Melanie.
                “Holy sheds!” Helena shouted involuntarily. With strength which impressed even herself, she crouched down and lifted Melanie onto her shoulders, before standing up and running to one side. Close enough to make Helena wobble and her hair bluster, the bikes shot over where she’d stood moments before and slammed into the wreckage which had been blocking the path.
                In moments, an acridly smoky fire erupted from the sheds, flames licking high in to the air and burning Helena’s face. She heaved Melanie away from the worst of the heat and tried to finish untying her hands.
                “If you’re hot then maybe you should shed some layers!” Shedder shouted from the rooftops, seemingly unconcerned that the fire would soon reach him, and ignoring how seedy his statement sounded.
                Helena ignored the maniac on the rooftops and kept working on Melanie’s bindings. As the last knot relented to Helena’s frenzied fingers, however, a huge pair of hands wrapped themselves around her waist.
                “We’re not making it that easy for you!” Garagio guffawed, lifting Helena from the ground and holding her above his head. Effortlessly, he threw her into one of the nearby sheds and slammed the door closed as she slid into the back wall. The whole structure shook with the impact, but stayed standing. Plunged into darkness, Helena heard a latch scrape shut.
                “Don’t try to escape now, agent. We wouldn’t want to en-garage that kind of behaviour!” he shouted through the door. Helena cringed. The sound of Melanie screaming soon bled into her shed.
                There was no time to waste; the fire would spread to her own shed imminently and there was no telling what Shedder or Garagio would be up to out there with their hostage. Helena pulled her radio from her belt as she started kicking at the thin plywood door.
                “This is Fledgling! It’s an ambush! Shedder and Garagio were working together!” she exclaimed, punctuating every other syllable with a kick.
                “Backup on the way from dove-home. Hold tight, Fledgling.” A voice crackled back to her.
                With another stiff, angry kick, the shed door splintered away from the latch and swung open. Thick smoke was blowing in front of the doorway, blinding Helena to the rest of the enclosure.
                “Melanie!?” Helena shouted as she rushed forwards.
                “I’m here! Help!” came the terrified reply.
                Emerging from the smokescreen, Helena could finally see Melanie lying in the doorway of one of the garages.
                “No time to save her as well as chase us down, piggy. Make a choice! Do it Garagio.” Shedder commanded from the rooftops. Garagio pressed another of his seemingly endless supply of remotes and the door above Melanie juddered into life, descending towards the helpless girl.
                Melanie screamed, facing directly towards the heavy metal door. Helena looked from her, to Garagio fetching a ladder, to Shedder bouncing around on the rooftops, and back to Melanie. In a single, considered motion, Helena drew her revolver and shot Garagio through the back of the knee, then rushed over to help Melanie, serenaded by Garagio’s screams.
                “Ow!” he added between incoherent noises.
                “Shot through the knee?” Shedder said out loud, confused. “That’s the signature move of… Agent Burnley!” he screamed with realisation.
                “Help me, Shedder!” Garagio shouted up.
                “Not against her! She brought down Filament Frank, Gatekeeper and The Brimmer. I’ve gotta get away.”
                “Don’t you leave me here you coward!” Garagio shouted up at him.
                Helena dragged Melanie from the path of the door then span around to face Shedder. She opened fire rapidly, emptying her gun in a few seconds, but Shedder was running again and his knees were moving too quickly to target. A glancing blow scraped past his thigh, and he yelped in pain, but it wasn’t enough to stop him.
                “DAMN IT!” Helena shouted. There was no time to pursue, she had to get Melanie and Garagio to safety. She pulled out her radio.
                “This is Agent Burnley. Shedder is running, repeat Shedder is running. Headed towards the astroturf with the possible intention of hiding among the gravel. Move to intercept.”
                Working quickly, Helena untied Melanie’s legs and hauled her up to her feet.
                “Are you hurt? Can you walk?” Helena asked.
                “I’m fine.”
                “OK good.” Agent Burnley crouched by one of the bikes and tore away a wood-cutting axe. “Take this, and keep an eye on Garagio. I’m going to make an escape route.”
                Holding her breath against the smoke, Helena rushed back into the shed which had been her temporary prison. With several hard kicks Helena broke down the back wall, unveiling the outer fence of the garden centre.
                When she ran back into the enclosure she found Melanie standing over Garagio, axe in hand and trembling.
                “You nearly killed me you dick!” she shouted, before slamming the axe handle into the back of his head.
                “Enough!” Helena shouted. “He’s down, alright? We’ll make him face justice.”
                “You’ll never take me in, Burnley.” He said, wincing at the pain of being shot as well as the blow to the skull he’d just received.
                “Oh shut it. Shedder betrayed you. Co-operate with me and I can take him down. Resist and sure, you might stop me taking you in, but you’ll burn here and Shedder gets away with everything. That what you want?”
                Garagio slammed a fist into the ground, though whether it was from frustration or pain Helena couldn’t tell.
                “The woman who shot me or the man who left me to burn. Great choice. I’ll come with you.”
                Supporting Garagio between them, Helena and Melanie pushed through the hot smoke and back to the escape shed. Awkwardly, they had to duck Garagio through the door, practically laying him over to do so. A clear head higher than the shed, he was an ungainly burden to manoeuvre through the hot wooden tunnel, but with relatively few snaggings on the splintered exit, they dragged him clear. While he complained about the pain of his bullet wound and the bleeding therefrom, Helena radioed back to the squad. Within minutes a hole had been cut for them.
                “Did anyone intercept Shedder?” Helena asked as she handed Garagio over to the uniformed officers.
                “No ma’am, not yet. The team’s searching the area though.”
                “Blast. I think I clipped him but he kept running. Garagio should sing though; betrayal does wonders for removing inhibitions.”
 
                True to Helena’s prediction, Garagio turned out to be far more forthcoming than Gatekeeper. Far from resisting questioning and forcing dirty tactics like deadbolt abuse, the towering garage enthusiast freely offered information regarding Shedder’s movements and motivations to the interrogation panel.
                Whilst the insight into what a man obsessed with sheds might be trying to achieve were fascinating, and helped the efforts to protect the most vulnerable garden-based tool stores in the city, what Helena was really interested in was the garden centre incident. It hadn’t been taken over for profit or personal gain; it was purely a trap to take out agents of the Ministry of Extraordinary Crimes. It was obvious enough why super-villains would want to put a stop to the agencies trying to bring them to justice, but this was too organised, too well funded, too well targeted. The fact that Garagio and Shedder, two previous rivals, had been working together was also highly suspicious.
                The interrogation panel found this to be the sticking point. Whilst Garagio had been all too happy to offer information which incriminated Shedder, he was reticent to say anything about how the pair of them came to be working together. That’s when Helena was brought in.
                “So, Garagio, you’ve lost your tongue?” She asked with a mocking swagger as she took her seat.
                “I’ve told you plenty.” Garagio grumbled at her. He still hadn’t forgiven her for shooting him.
                “Your deal relies on you being open with us. We both know that the garden centre of the damned was too huge of an operation for just you and Shedder; someone was funding you and directing from the background. We both know it.”
                “My deal was that I’d help bring Shedder down. Not that I’d sign my own death warrant.” The villain seethed through gritted teeth.
                “We can’t bring Shedder down if his benefactor can still offer protection. You think someone like that would just allow both of his co-conspirators to be captured? He’ll make Shedder disappear one way or another.”
                “He deserves it.”
                “But if he goes down before the Ministry gets to him then you don’t get your deal.”
                Garagio stood angrily, the chains around his wrist pulling tight against the ring in the table and jerking the whole thing backwards.
                “DON’T TRY TO CHEAT ME, PIG.” He roared, anger tangibly flowing from him. Outside, the police garage doors were opening up and slamming shut in a sympathetic frenzy.
                “Sit down. Talk, and you’ll get everything we promised you.” Helena said calmly.
                Blowing out heavily through flared nostrils, Garagio slowly sat down again.
                “The professor put us together. Said that we’d get more done if we stopped our infighting. Said that if we laid a trap together we could take down the Ministry and work unhindered.”
                “The professor? Professor whom?” Helena pressed, leaning forwards.
                “Professor whom? You’ve never heard of him?” Garagio’s anger dissolved into a deep pool of incredulity.
                “Just answer the question.”
                “Oho, I can’t believe we were worried about you! You’re clueless!” his laughter immediately turned back into frustration. “That bastard got me caught for nothing! Trying to stop you was pointless if you weren’t even on the trail!”
                “We’ll bring him down for you if you keep talking.” Helena reiterated.
                “You don’t even know the name of the biggest player in the underworld! The guy who could fund a thousand garden centres of the damned and still have enough left for a home-furnishings store of lament!” Garagio exclaimed.
                “Playing this game is great and all, but I need a name.” Helena said, unimpressed at how much Garagio was beating around the bush. Bush-bothering was clearly closer to Shedder’s territory.
                “You can have his name, but it won’t do you any good. You can search all your records for fingerprints and aliases, previous offences and past convictions, but you’ll find nothing. You can audit every business, every leased property, every supermarket loyalty card subscription, but you’ll find nothing. No-one finds Professor Endtimes. He finds you.” Garagio said with suspiciously scripted grandeur.
                “Professor Endtimes, eh? Sounds apocalyptic. What’s he after?”
                “I don’t know. Don’t think anyone does. I never dealt with him face-to-face, just got messages, instructions and resources. He wanted a progress report? We made one and transmitted it to a temporary address. If something went wrong then he just knew. Don’t ask me how, he just knew.”
                “How did he get involved with you and Shedder in the first place?” Helena asked, trying to steer Garagio away from contextualising rhetoric and onto fact.
                “He heard our names and what we were about, and decided he had a job for us. I found a note next to my bed one morning, and I guess Shedder did too.”
                “Must have been hard though, working with a rival like Shedder.”
                “The professor isn’t the kind of guy you turn down, but he makes it worth your while anyway. Fair man, long as you give him what he wants. But he made some valid observations. The more time we spend fighting each other, the easier we’re making it for you lot to stop us. No point in taking ourselves down for you. Once we were in control we could fight as much we liked, but until then we should focus together on bringing the Ministry down, he said.” Garagio recounted the tale with a melancholic smirk. The memory of potential shenanigans was clearly potent.
                “And that was enough to put your conflict behind you?”
                “That and the threat of the prof getting personally involved if we didn’t play nice with each other. Shedder won’t fess up to leaving me behind; he’ll say you got me and there was nothing he could do.”
                “If the professor asks him, that is.”
                “He’s not one to make an investment and then ignore it.” Garagio said flatly, hoping that the professor hadn’t bought anyone in the police force, but not really believing it.
 
                “What’s your plan, then?” Commissioner Harmon asked in his dim office. The setting sun cast the room in an orange glow, ensuring that none would forget to take their vitamin C supplement. Harmon had his back to the sun, so that when Helena looked towards him she saw only the silhouette of a proud officer and an unlit cigar. It was doing nothing to help her read his facial expression.
                “We’ll check out everything Garagio has told us about Shedder and try to track him down. He might well be hiding in someone’s garden, biding his time, but we’ll have his usual haunts covered at least.” Helena replied, looking into her coffee to gauge its approval of the plan. It made no move to challenge her.
                “I meant about this Professor Endtimes character. If the villain speaks truly then he’s the mastermind behind a whole lot more than just the garden centre of the damned. Let’s not forget that The Brimmer and Green Flannel mentioned him, as did Gatekeeper. He’s got fingers in a great many pies and that’s neither sanitary nor good for the skin.” The commissioner said with gravitas. Helena wasn’t sure that he’d intended for his metaphor to take that particular route to completion, but decided not to question it for the time being.
                “Same thing, I guess. I know Garagio said we’d find nothing but we’re going to trawl the files anyway. It’s going to be a huge operation; we’ll have to look over nearly every major case we’ve had to see if we can draw links between them. We don’t even know how long the professor has been operating.” Helena swirled her coffee in its cup, but there was nothing to be divined from the thick, tepid fluid.
                “Hm. This could be the key to controlling the rise of super-crime, Agent Burnley. If we take Professor Endtimes down then the mayor will be able to rest more easily in his office. Garden centres will be safer. Museums won’t be invaded.”
                “Tin-openers will stay put.” Helena muttered in addition.
                “What was that?”
                “Nothing, sir. Just another case I’ve got the officers working on.”
                “Well, whatever they’re learning will have to feed into the Endtimes case. For all we know right now this man could be a phantom, or several people, or an elaborate cover story. If we commit to it then we need to commit hard and get results quickly. It could tie up the whole Ministry to bring this large of a case together.”
                “We’ll get him, sir.” Agent Burnley promised.
                “You’re damn right we will. I’m calling a meeting tomorrow; all the Ministry’s field agents. We’ll make a plan together and give the professor his end time.”
 
                In the conference room at the station, the full contingent of Ministry agents sat around an oval table and looked towards Commissioner Harmon. He’d deliberately booked the meeting shortly before lunch to give everyone a sense of urgency.
                “Everyone, I hope you’ve had a chance to read the agenda. We’re looking at the start of the biggest operation in the history of the Ministry.” He stood at the head of the table, hands folded behind his back and trademark unlit cigar in his mouth.
                “That history does only stretch back for about a year, sir.” Agent Carmichael pointed out, a short, stocky woman with gentle eyes but a hard left-hook.
                “Irrelevant. As you may all know, Agent Burnley apprehended The Great Garagio yesterday in Shedder’s Garden Centre of the Damned, previously known as Jimmy’s Garden Centre. An interrogation of Garagio may have given us the name of the mastermind behind the majority of our high profile cases; Professor Endtimes.”
                “Was he bitten by a radioactive thesis?” Agent Dracon asked enthusiastically.
                “Quite possibly.” Commissioner Harmon indulged. “Details are incredibly scarce; we know his name and that he has a lot of resources and respect, but not much else. We need to devise an operation to bring him down, and this could mean taking on the entire super-criminal underworld at the same time.”
                Anxious mutters rippled around the table as the agents exchanged theories and pasta recipes.
                “Settle down, all of you! I’ll have no idle talk of spaghetti at this table. As I was saying, the operation is going to be significant, and we’ll need to pool all of our information together to get a result. What we really want, though, is a way in. Everyone we’ve questioned has been incredibly reluctant to give us details about the professor, which means he either inspires an awful lot of loyalty or an impressive amount of fear.”
                “We could bug one of his supervillains. A tracker on the tie or a microphone in the hat, something like that.” Suggested Agent Porter.
                “Negative, the professor communicates by proxy and never face to face. We’ll learn nothing from tapping and tracking.”
                “Further arrests and interrogations?” proposed Agent Levins.
                “They’ll happen either way, but there’s still no reason to believe that anyone will open up or even know anything useful.”
                “We invite him to a masquerade ball and then knock him out with a drugged quiche.” Agent Carmichael proposed, punctuating the payoff of her plan with a sharp right jab to the air.
                “We don’t know if he likes quiche or not; too risky.”
                “We get someone on the inside then. Infiltrate his operation.” Agent Katter said. “Put one of our own in his inner sanctum and find everything out from the horse’s mouth.”
                “That would be an incredibly dangerous assignment, given what has been suggested about this man. Besides, even our arrested villains haven’t met him. We still don’t know how to get to him.” Commissioner Harmon responded thoughtfully.
                “The interrogations said he approached villains with promise who were focused on the wrong things. We turn someone to villainy and set them loose to make an impression.” Agent Katter elaborated.
                “Create a super-villain of our own?” The commissioner asked disbelievingly.
                “One of us masquerading as a villain, yes. It’ll have to be enough to get the attention of the professor, to the point that he wants to meet them himself.”
                “That’ll require quite the act of villainy.”
                “We can help spread some rumours to speed it up, get word to the Professor via the grapevine.” Agent Dracon added.
                “What you’re proposing… it’s not guaranteed to work and it will be highly delicate.” Commissioner Harmon thought out loud, one hand on his chin. “The slightest slip could tip the professor off and put our operative at extreme risk. This will be a deep undercover assignment, so its clear that we need to send our most decorated and celebrated agent – Helena Burnley.”
                There were further murmurs around the table. Such was the seriousness of the suggestion that only a single recipe for a linguini was exchanged. Helena wasn’t sure whether to be flattered or aggrieved that the commissioner had volunteered her for the assignment with absolutely no consultation and very little thinking time.
                “Surely she’ll be recognised.” Agent Porter piped up.
                “The only people who could recognise her are those she has already arrested, and they’re safely behind bars. Other villains in the organisation won’t see her anyway, remember? Endtimes operates by remote if Garagio is to be believed. And even so, she’ll be in disguise as an alias. I’m not saying it’s guaranteed to work but it’s the best shot we have. Are you willing to take this on Helena? It’s a grim burden, but the world is counting on you.”
                With all of her peers and colleagues watching and waiting, and the emotional blackmail the commissioner had attached to it, it was very difficult for Helena to justify saying no. So difficult, in fact, that she said yes instead.
                “I’ll do it. We’ll bring this Professor Endtimes down.” She said with more confidence than she felt.
                “What if, right, once Agent Burnley gets in, she just shoots Professor Endtimes in the back until he stops committing crimes?” Agent Carmichael suggested, lips pursed as if suspecting that although there may be a counter-argument to her point, she couldn’t for the life of her think of what it was.
                “This isn’t an assassination! We’re bringing him to justice and dismantling his operation.” Commissioner Harmon said with shocked frustration. That was it; her suggestion was murder. That was the counter-point.
                “Yeah, I’m not going to be shooting someone from behind in cold blood.” Helena supported.
                “That’s fine, it was only a suggestion.” Agent Carmichael said with her arms raised, surprisingly amicably for someone who had advocated executing an unarmed and unaware man a few seconds earlier.
                “Right. Agent Burnley, I need you to devise an alias and convincing history; something you can stick with for months or years, potentially. Agent Katter, gather up all our open cases and sort them for potential targets that Agent Burnley’s alias can pick a fight with. Agent Porter, we need a more advanced wire-tapping and tracking solution if we’re going to monitor Agent Burnley’s operation at all. Directly bugging her is likely to be impossible, but do what you can to keep tabs. And Agent Carmichael? Sign up to the next ethics training seminar. Everyone else, your assignments will reach you in due course. Dismissed.”
 
                Helena sat at her desk with a tupperware of sandwiches, looking over her old case files for inspiration. It seemed that these super-villains could be created with an attachment to nearly any arbitrary object or concept, almost setting the goalposts too wide for her to make a choice. The Juggler had been obsessed with hand-eye-co-ordination-based entertainment and used exploding juggling balls to break into off-licences. Carpal Tunneller was trying to cripple the whole country with repetitive strain injuries and similar conditions by removing any and all wrists supports he could find. He normally gained entry by burrowing, which was all the more impressive when he struck at only the top floor of an office building. The Mauve Cape mugged people at knife point whilst wearing a mauve cape. Strictly speaking he only qualified as a super-villain because capes are universally considered whimsical. He was doubly suspicious because he made no mention of industrial accidents or radioactive materials in describing what drove him to crime; it was just poverty or something, a tedious motivation normally handled by the uniformed officers.
                Chewing on bread, lettuce, and tomato, Helena saw Officer Dunner approaching her desk with a file in his hand.
                "Agent Burnley, an update on the missing tin-openers: we've plotted the disappearances by time and location, and there's a definite pattern.” He placed the file onto the table and pulled out a map of the city. “The thefts are all in this area of the city, and the earlier thefts are closest to the centre. I think our villain is operating from somewhere in this area and moving outwards to secure all the tin-openers.”
                “Interesting, this is good work.” Helena complimented “What do we have in the area?”
                “It’s mostly residential, although there are a few shops and pubs. Most interesting though is this abandoned warehouse.” Officer Dunner was pointing to a large grey building on the map.
                "What was it?"
                "I don't know yet ma'am. We're still looking into it."
                "That old place a few streets over from here?" Agent Katter said, rolling his chair over. "Yeah, that's the old cannery for Daubenton's bat-food. Went out of business years ago because there is literally zero demand for canned bat food."
                "Could be a good starting place. Find out who owns it now and what they're doing with it. We can't head in without a good reason, but if you get us cause for a warrant then we’ll take a look."
                "Got it." Officer Dunner replied, rushing away again.
                “Or maybe your villainous alias will take a look?” Katter said with a grin. Everything about the cut of his jet-black hair painted him as a competent and sensible officer. Everything about his smile painted him as a source of mischief.
                “Maybe so. Tin-opener theft is the kind of low-level crime that I could cut my teeth on for a rivalry.”
                “Had any thoughts as to who you are going to be?” Katter asked, idly flipping through the papers on Helena’s desk.
                “Nothing solid.”
                “Anything liquid?”
                “Only piss, but I think you’re taking that, aren’t you?” Helena shot back with a grin.
                Katter chuckled conspiratorially. “Never.”
                “Do you have any ideas for an identity I can adopt?” she asked him. Katter was sharp, and hopefully sharp enough to give some insight in the otherwise muddy world of super-villain creation.
                “I was thinking that you need to be something relatively down-to-earth. I can’t see you hopping around in a shed-hat for instance. It needs to be something which facilitates bringing other villains down and making them easier for us to arrest as well.”
                “So, some kind of combat or weaponry expert?” she said through a mouthful of sandwich.
                “Something like that could work, yeah. Maybe get yourself a signature weapon and concentrate on that.”
                “I already have a signature move, apparently; shooting assailants in the kneecap.”
                “It’s a great one. You could try building on it, but then again I think the rest of the criminal community might catch onto you. If you’re known as a great knee-shooter then a criminal suddenly bursting onto the scene doing the same thing is too obvious. You’ve got to make something new.” Agent Katter pointed out sensibly.
                “I’ll think on it. Thanks for your insights though.”
                “No problem. This case is going to be extreme, gotta make sure you have the best shot of pulling it off.” With a smile and a wink he rolled himself down the office, back to his own desk. He’d made a good point though; super-villains didn’t need to wait for evidence or a warrant to investigate a rival’s hideout. Helena returned to her case files, and day-dreamed of who she could become.
 
                In the moonless night, streetlights cast a patchy yellow glow along the silent road. The cars parked along the pavement took on new colours in the poor illumination and cast double-shadows in a long, faint ‘V’. It was as if someone had turned down the colour contrast of the daytime, stripped out the people, and then put it on pause; the only change was the human-sized hole which had been cut into the chain-link fence surrounding the old Daubenton’s bat-food cannery.
                A neglected door hung open on its hinges, allowing the meagre light from the street to spill inside the decaying warehouse. The floors were filthy, and that would realistically do a better job of keeping people out than the door did.
                Through broken windows a light breeze drifted in, stirring the dust and debris which had been accumulating for years. Old cans lay empty on the ground, dropped and forgotten in times past, among wrappers and dead leaves blown in from the street. With no-one left to perform the traditional ‘Friday tidy’, the scraps and rubbish had been able to forge a commune for themselves with a liberal stance on immigration and no terrorism to show for it.
                In the shadow of a derelict canning machine, a lone figure crouched low, listening for the sounds of life and motion. The depth of the silence conjured illusory sounds of its own, imagination filling the gaps that reality had left open and inventing threats to fear.
                Someone had been here recently. Fresh footprints and smears in the dust betrayed the machinations of a hidden tenant in the cavernous cannery, and no-one had left the building in hours. They were here somewhere, hidden in the darkness, and they’d probably been here for a while.
                Legs cramping and aching from squatting still for so long, the figure stood up, kicking a fallen fragment of machinery across the ground. In the silence, the skittering, clanging sounds of the scrap metal sang out like a church bell and announced that there was an intruder in the mausoleum of forgotten tins.
                Footsteps thundered heavily on a metal walkway above the machinery, the old frame shaking and rattling under its burden. The figure on the ground made to slink away into a new hiding place, but bright electric lights broke into a chorus of hums and burst into life, casting light over the whole cannery and robbing the darkness of any places to hide.
                “You dare to intrude into my can-thedral?!” A voice boomed from above.
                The figure on the ground span to face the man on the gantry. Looking upwards at his face, he was surrounded by a hundred glinting stars dangling from the ceiling. Reflecting the light of the electric bulbs, the stolen tin-openers of a whole city district sparkled like precious gemstones, suspended by lengths of string.
                “This is my turf now.” The figure shouted back. Her voice was deep and hard, but forced to be so, and her intonation didn’t match her words.
                “Your turf? Hahaha!” the man on the walkway laughed. “I urge to you reCANt that immediately. You have broken in here and skulked in the shadows for a heartbeat, and you dare to claim it as your own? I worked here once, employed by a man with a misguided dream and no-one to tell him ‘no’. When he went down he tried to take us all with him, but I clung on. I made this my own kingdom. Do you know what it was like here, stuck in the darkness with nothing but vats of bat-food and bad memories? Tins of your own failure looming over you and questioning why they weren’t good enough to be sold? Oh, it was my own private hell. I would stalk these hallowed gantries, watching the dormant canning machines sit silently, their majesty ignored by all.
                But one day on the course of my moping I stumbled on a radioactive can of bat-food, stubbing my toe upon it. From that day I noticed changes in my body. I felt an affinity with the noble tin that I'd never realised before. My skin became metallic, my hearing sharp like that of a tin of fruit cocktail, my heart robust like a can of spaghetti. I soon came to realise that I could break out of the gloom and punish the world which had crippled these noble machines. The old me was gone forever, and in his place stood the mighty Iron Can!
                Let the world try to stand in my way again. Tinned goods are the last recourse for nuclear winter, and I already have the power of both cans and radiation. I am therefore immortal!”
                “That's not even close to how that works.” The figure fired back without skipping a beat.
                “What would you know? You hide in the shadow cast by my limelight.”
                “I know that I’m going to punish you for operating in my neighbourhood.”
                “Ha! You can’t penetrate my can armour.” Iron Can beat a fist against his chest, an echoing clang filling the cannery. A dark trench coat hung open over a perfectly cylindrical torso of metal, and flapped loosely around can-plated legs. He looked as if a child had been asked to draw a disappointing robot and done a stellar job of it.
                “Yes I CAN.” The figure replied mockingly.
                “Did... did you just…” Iron Can stammered, dumbfounded.
                “I got tin-side your cannery, and it’ll soon be mine.” She threatened.
                “Of all the nerve…” This was too much. Breaking into someone’s hideout was bad, but standard fare for feuding criminals. Stealing stealing someone else’s pun material, however? That was below the belt. “Who are you?”
                "Who am I? I’m the girl who's going to put an end to your embarrassing display and take over this town. I’m going to strike like lightning and electrify the night. I’m The Stunner, and I'm in charge.” The girl shouted, adopting the stance of a superhero. Her vulcanised rubber cargo trousers reflected the light and hung unflatteringly around her legs.
                "You don’t scare me, Stunner. I’m going to open up a can of whoop-ass on you."
                "Try it and you'll be opening up a whole new can of worms."
                "STOP DOING THAT!" Iron Can shouted, his temper exploding. "See how you like my tin-bombs. I learned how to make them on tinternet." He flicked his trench coat backwards and revealed rows of cans strapped to his body. With practiced deftness he slipped one into each hand and bowled them at The Stunner.
                As the bombs sailed through the air, The Stunner vaulted out of the way over a mechanical arm from the canning machine, ducking down to brace for the detonation. The tins landed with a crunch and a hiss, but there was no boom. Peeking over, The Stunner saw the tins laying on the floor, crumpled and folded in on themselves at the centre, leaking a putrid brown substance onto the floor whilst a vile gas hissed out.
                Even from a distance, the pungency of the cans was overwhelming. The Stunner pushed her nose into the rubber of her mask and tried not to breathe in too deeply, lest her lungs find themselves corroded.
                Another volley of cans was on the way, and so The Stunner sprang into action, leaping up onto one of the canning machines and running along its length towards the gantry. She scaled its various levels and outcrops of modules, gaining height rapidly in a feat of impressive acrobatics. Executing an athletic single-footed jump from the top of the machine, she grabbed onto the bottom of the metal walkway from which Iron Can had challenged her.
                Seeing her dangling vulnerably Iron Can stamped his metal-shod feet on the ground, shaking the flimsy gantry violently up and down with a cackle.
                “Don’t lose your grip now, Stunner. How are you going to get out of this one without someone to ring-pull you up?”
                The Stunner’s fingers clung tightly to the struts and supports of the walkway, the motion straining her grip and threatening to shake her off. Gambling with her own safety, she let go with one hand and grabbed frantically at the barrier rising up the side of the gantry. Hand-over-hand she hauled herself up the rail, feeling it rock back into her as she trusted all of her weight to it. In a single smooth motion she swung her legs over the top of the handrail and stood facing Iron Can, panting slightly from the exertion of her climb.
                In the glittering canopy of tin-openers, the two agents of mayhem faced off against one another; one clad in steel and the other in insulating rubber. The master of this decaying chamber of horrors prepared to defend his base of operations from the new invader, for reasons which were not clear to anyone.
                “Ready for sparks to fly?” She asked before flicking one hand towards him, as if she was offering a very sudden and inappropriately timed handshake. Unlike most handshakes, however, this one featured a wired dart shooting from her sleeve and embedding itself into Iron Can’s armour.
                “Ha! You failed to penetrate my plating just as I predicted, and now I have you!” He bellowed, reaching for another tin bomb.
                “You think so? Then prepare for a shock.” The Stunner replied with a wry smile. With an almost imperceptible flex of her hand she pressed a button inside her glove, and electricity began to flow along the wire to her dart.
                Iron Can began to dance the dance of a man in a circuit, which is to say he filled the room with a passionate, untamed energy. Wailing and jerking he fell onto his back with a mighty metallic crunch, arms and legs tensing and releasing in a rather unattractive manner.
                “Had enough?” The Stunner asked, cutting off the supply of electricity.
                “I’ll kill you!” Iron Can said inadvisably, earning himself another jolt of power through the wires. “Yarggh!” He added.
                “I can do this all day, given a place to plug myself into.” The Stunner told him honestly. Recognising one’s own limitations is the key to progress, after all. “Now tell me, what was your big plan here, hmm? Where’s the loot?”
                “Look around you! It’s hanging from the ceiling. I have robbed this city of its weapons against me. Without the ability to open tins the world is helpless against me.” He told her, with surprising conviction for a man subdued entirely without the use of tin openers. The Stunner gave him another little burst of electricity to point out the irony of his words.
                “Tin openers were never your prize here and we both know it. Where’re the valuables? What were you pulling here?”
                “You’ll never make me talk.” Iron Can persisted stubbornly.
                “Oh I don’t know, since you’ve been so kind as to provide me with the tools I require, I’m pretty sure I can open you up.” The Stunner said darkly. Returning the flow of power through her dart, Stunner snatched the nearest tin opener from the ceiling and smiled sweetly at Iron Can.
                “In hindsight, I don’t know why I thought hanging all those up was a good idea.” He confessed with stark clarity and candour as The Stunner clipped the tin-opener onto his chest plate, puncturing the thin metal with a satisfying ‘pop’.
                “Everyone makes mistakes. I just exploit them.” The Stunner said with a shrug, before turning the handle and tearing him open.
 

                Lost in her work, the Stunner became faintly aware of sirens wailing outside the cannery, quietly at first but quickly getting louder.
                “What the… what are they doing here?” The Stunner muttered to herself.
                “Someone must have seen you coming.” Iron Can said weakly from within his ruined armour. Strips of shredded metal spiralled outwards from his body, loosely connected to one another and springy in their deformation. “Not as sneaky as you thought, are you?”
                Stunner stood up and retracted her dart. Iron Can had felt enough shocks for today, and with his shell ruined he’d put up no resistance. From a coil at her waist Stunner unwound a length of electrical wire and bound Iron Can's hands and feet, cable tying them together for added security.
                “Remember, Iron Can’t: The Stunner owns this town now.” She told him, before dashing away along the walkway and leaping cinematically through a broken window.
 
                Sitting on the edge of her mattress in the early hours of the morning, Helena kicked her boxed-up disguise underneath the bed with her heel and collapsed onto her back. Laying there in the darkness, she mentally assessed her night’s performance.
                The Stunner seemed to be accepted as a name, so she'd made a good choice there. It had to be if she was going to be taken seriously and adopt the persona for months or even years. For hours she had run through possibilities in her head, starting with puns and working backwards. She lingered on the possibility of ‘Vile-Ann’ for a long time, since it ticked the box of wordplay and exposition in one hit, but decided that it was too obvious. If someone walked around calling themselves a villain so generically then it basically screamed ‘undercover police officer’. Next she thought of ‘Vilifier’, but that was too grim and non-specific. Once she’d settled on defining herself around electrical stunning weapons the whole process became easier, but she still had to work through ‘Electrogirl’, ‘The Entertaser’ and ‘The Non-Lethal Bandit’ before settling on ‘The Stunner’. Hard work had paid off, she told herself.
                Her confrontation with Iron Can had been undoubtedly efficient too, despatching him with a simple taser. Looking back on it, Helena felt that perhaps it had been too efficient. Iron Can himself only threw a couple of stink bombs and then shook a gantry. He hadn’t been gunning to finish her off straight away, instead prolonging the battle and allowing for far more whimsy. Gatekeeper, too, had spent a long time sodomising badger art before attacking her, Shedder laid elaborate traps, and Garagio ignored every chance he’d had to break her neck. Her own work had been clever and smooth, rendering it stupid and sloppy by the standards of super-villains.
                ‘Efficiency isn't what villains are about.’ She thought to herself. ‘It’s showmanship. Tasers alone are scarcely whimsical. New plan needed.‘
                Helena lost track of how long she spent staring at the ceiling and playing the night over in head. It wasn't so different to her police work really, but it left a bitter taste in her mouth. She'd brutalised Iron Can's armour, stunned him more than was strictly necessary, and left him helpless for the uniformed officers to pick up. She supposed that it was probably better than shooting him in the knee, but something felt wrong, like she'd betrayed herself.
                Attacking other villains was the lesser of the evils she could commit as The Stunner, she told herself. It was a crime, but at least its victims were villains themselves.
                In a few short hours she would have to return to the station and pick up more leads to pursue. She'd act like nothing had happened around the uniformed officers, and she’d keep constructing cases against the criminal underworld; only now she felt like she was a step too close to it herself.
 
                Morning hit like a nervous driver into a stationery lamppost. There was no way that it could have arrived already; Helena had only just crawled under the covers. If it was trying to jump the queue and not give night its full due then she would be having stern words.
                She dragged herself into the office with few words to anyone, replying to cheerful hellos with a cursory but welcoming grunt.
                "You look like you've barely slept." Officer Dunner commented, hitting the nail on the head and unnecessarily driving it further into Helena's skull.
                "That's because I barely slept. Rough night." She told him blearily.
                "I'll get you a coffee." He said cheerily but sympathetically. He was one of the good ones, Helena thought, although if she couldn't find a more specific noun than 'one' to describe him then his goodness was ill-specified at best.
                "Thank you." She muttered with a tired smile, flopping down into her chair as he walked away. Helena stretched her arms up into a high V with clenched fists, the tired ache in her muscles protesting that there was really no need for that sort of thing. They’d worked to exhaustion all night, and now here they were being made to continue needlessly. Helena was grateful that they didn’t have a very good union.
                After her coffee arrived, Helena got into the swing of the day and spent much of her morning tending to overdue paperwork. Secretly she wished that a paperwork-obsessed villain would infiltrate the station and dispose of every trace of bureaucratic torment in the building, but no such luck thus far. She was deep in the bowels of an ‘Authorisation to seek Authorisation for Arrest Report Submission’ form when her phone began to sound its chirpily piercing tones. Its high-pitched notes were presumably intended to be synthesised bell-ringing, but it seemed that the creator of these sounds had in fact created the first audio bone-drill. The shrill ringtone certainly instilled a sense of urgency to answer, if only to prevent massive blood loss via the ear.
                “Hello?” Helena answered, snatching the receiver up in self-defence.
                “Agent Burnley, my office please.” It was Commissioner Harmon.
                “On the way, sir.” She clicked the receiver back down and pushed away from the desk, propelling her wheeled chair farther than intended and soaring into the wall behind her.
                After making apologetically embarrassed faces, Helena briskly walked into Commissioner Harmon’s office, closing the door behind her as much to conceal any further mocking gazes as to ensure confidentiality.
                “Sir.” She said by way of greeting, taking a seat on the near-side of the commissioner’s desk.
                “Agent Burnley. We had reports of a break-in at the old Daubenton’s cannery last night. Found a villain named Iron Can there, as well as all the stolen tin-openers.”
                “Good catch then.” Helena offered.
                “Quite. But we can’t claim all the credit since he’d already been beaten and bound. By the looks of it he’d been wrestling with an angle grinder whilst sticking a fork into the mains.”
                “Sounds painful.” Helena observed, playing it cool.
                “Are we to assume that your new assignment has taken off?” He asked, dropping the question bluntly into the room like a hammer onto a tiramisu.
                “It’s a reasonable assumption sir.” She said in hushed tones.
                “I admit that you’ve certainly been effective, but I am a little worried at the… enthusiasm you’ve shown here.”
                “I need to be convincing sir.”
                “And you’ve enjoyed some success there, but not enough. The uniformed officers weren’t sure of what to make, but Iron Can was telling wild stories of someone called The Stunner. He has described her as sadistic and subversive. He seems to think there is some code of conduct among villains which she breached; a new breed of unsympathetic villain.” His eyebrows were raised and he had tilted his head down, as if looking over the rims of some imaginary glasses at Helena. Imaginary glasses are often prescribed for hypochondriac eye problems. “Perhaps that's a good thing, I don’t know. You're making a name for yourself and standing out, so it should catch Endtimes' attention if nothing else, but you mustn't be too suspicious. We're all counting on you, and acting differently to the other villains is going to raise alarm bells.”
                “Noted sir. I’m sure The Stunner will blend in and adopt the correct etiquette for battle in the future.”
                “Quite so. Do you think that you will be recognised out of your alias? Secret strikes against other villains will work for a time but we are going to have to conduct a public spectacle eventually, and we need to be sure that the uniformed officers don’t recognise you. Nor can we have the villains you bring down identifying you around the station.” Commissioner Harmon asked, planning further and further ahead.
                “The Stunner wears a mask, sir. She won’t be recognised.” Helena told the commissioner, whilst secretly resolving to rework her mask into something more substantial.
                “I hope you’re correct. You’re the best, Burnley, but this isn’t easy work. Be damned sure that you’re bulletproof.”
                “Yes sir.” She said. Her fatigue must have been obvious in her tone of voice, because the commissioner’s expression softened.
                “You need to get some sleep. Running as The Stunner all night and trying to continue your work all day is too much to sustain forever.”
                “I can do this sir. I just need time to adjust.” Helena rebuffed dismissively.
                “I’ll have my eye on you. If you’re too tired to perform well in either alias then you’re no good to anyone.” He warned, with the best intentions.
                “I’ll be fine.” She said, a little more sharply than she’d intended. “I’m sorry sir. Once I get into a routine with this I’ll be able to work it. I can still take villains off the streets.” The idea of spending her life only committing crime rather than fighting it, even for a short while, was unappealing.
                “Good. And remember, the less we know about you the better. If it’s not known then it can’t be leaked. But… I should warn you; everything needs to appear authentic here, so we’re building up a case.”
                “Against The Stunner?” Helena asked in surprise.
                “A masked assailant took down a super villain responsible for one hundred percent of tin-opener crime in the city. We’d be remiss not to do it.” His expression reminded Helena that they both knew his words to be true.
                “I suppose so, yes.”
                “I’ll do what I can from the background, but be careful. I’ll only be able to intervene once, because when I do your cover is blown. It’ll be over.” Commissioner Harmon’s warning was stark and final, like a parent giving into a request whilst recounting the potential punishments which could accompany a breach of trust.
                “Yes sir.” Helena said robotically. The prospect of facing off against her own colleagues hung over her like an awning in a thunderstorm, and she feared what might happen when the canvas tore.
 
                That afternoon, Helena laid out all the open case files that Agent Katter had provided to her, and reviewed them for the best potential targets. She needed to establish The Stunner’s territory and objective, and then take down anyone standing in her way or treading on her toes.  But beyond taking a piece of the city for herself, what did The Stunner want? What was her modus operandi? What was she trying to achieve? The questions hung in Helena's mind, lingering at the back of every decision, like that pot of cream at the back of the fridge which is clearly out of date everyone is too scared to touch. Similarly to old cream, Helena worried that when she opened that part of her mind she’d find it to be too spoiled to go back from.
                Putting the objective off for now, Helena asked herself a different question: what was The Stunner’s background? She was shocked by a radioactive battery, most likely. Perhaps she manufactured them before turning to crime, in her civilian life. Or maybe she was a car mechanic who found a troubling battery in a car? No, that would have made her more automotive in theme.
                She span in her chair, looking at the people around her in the office. Where had The Stunner found a battery? Suddenly, like an open wardrobe door in the night time, it hit her. She found it in an old alleyway in the dingy part of the city. She wasn’t watching her feet and tripped on the radioactive car battery. No, even better, she grabbed it when her ex-boyfriend, whom she had just rejected, tried to grab her. She spotted the battery and grabbed it in self-defence. When she whacked him in the head with it, killing him outright, she spilled radioactive battery goop on herself. She had only meant to stun him, but wracked with guilt and fear she dissolved the body in battery acid and then fled the scene. This was getting dark quickly. It was perfect.
                Officer Dunner looked on at Helena as she smiled manically to herself, head flitting around in random directions as if she were watching a hundred flies that only she could see. He decided to prepare her another coffee and then send her home.
                Helena closed her eyes and imagined what would happen next in order to drive someone from assault & battery with a battery to becoming The Stunner. Clearly the incident must have had a profound effect on the mind, so she was a little unhinged. Unhinged enough to try to build her own super-stunner, with which she could incapacitate the whole city at will. No-one would try to creep up on her or stalk her, and she could be in control of everything. Yes, that’s what The Stunner would want. Helena would even be able to stun all the supervillains and take them into custody with such a weapon, so The Stunner’s plans coming to fruition wouldn’t be a total write-off after all.
                That was settled then; she was going to take over a chunk of the city and secure the appropriate resources to build a super-stunner. She’d need a plan to hire engineers & scientists, gain manufacturing capabilities, and get some money. Even if she didn’t go through with it all it needed to look convincing. As convincing as her devastation of Iron Can.
 
                Crouched on the rooftop of a row of high-street shops, each one adorned with an optimistically misleading promise of quality, affordability, or legality, The Stunner surveyed the high-street and waited for any sign of action. It had been over a week since her entanglement with Iron Can, and since then there’d been no opportunity for high-profile mayhem. She’d taken a stance of acting against anyone who tried to operate inside her territory, which was marked out on a large paper map of the city back in her flat. Red string showed the approximate boundary of her turf, and blue showed where she wished to expand to, covering a fair proportion of the city and ensuring that the least pleasant public lavatories fell outside of her area of control.
                The takeover of the Daubenton’s bat food cannery had been an unwitting stroke of genius, and the now twice-abandoned warehouse formed the centrepiece of her new empire. The industrial machinery within could be modified to convincingly look like she was trying to build her Super Stunner, so if Professor Endtimes started investigating her, he’d now find a cohesive narrative to accompany The Stunner’s actions. The plot of this narrative would appear to be the raving of a damaged mind, sure, but that was appropriate for super villainy and would therefore be sufficiently consistent.
                She heard a crackle of life on the police radio she'd wired into an earpiece.
                “Bank robbery nearby, suspect is a super-villain. Awaiting Ministry backup.”
                Perfect. There had been speculation around the station for weeks regarding a strike at the bank; repeated hacks into their computer systems, reports of suspicious activity nearby, and a hooded man asking ‘How easy would it be to rob this bank, please?’ indicated that it was being sized up.
                The Stunner leapt up and dashed across the flat rooftops towards the local branch of M. Bezler’s Bank, her feet scattering gravel away and onto the pavement below. Quite why there was gravel up on the roof she didn’t know, but that mystery could be addressed later. Right now there was a bank robbery to muscle-in on.
 
                Shards of broken glass were strewn across the branded carpet like pebbles on a beach, spilling onto either side of the disabled-access handrail and up the ramp. Across the now sparkling floor, which glinted in the morning sunlight, four sets of boots hurriedly crunched their way into the bank. Four thugs, clearly henchmen by their indeterminate and generically criminal appearance, fanned into a square in the room, weapons pointed at the clerks behind the counter and the mortgage advisor in her semi-partitioned consultation desk. Orders to stay silent and remain still were barked, and screams were received in response; the exact opposite of silence. Clearly, these clerks were terrible at following instructions.
                Into the calm chaos walked a man in a simple pinstriped brown suit. He wore sensible brown leather shoes, carried a brown bowler hat in his hands, held close to his stomach, and his face was a mask of the utmost heartfelt remorse. His small moustache accentuated the line of his mouth, adding a second uneasy frown to his already miserable countenance. To look at him was to assume that he’d just sold his own mother into slavery for a chocolate bar, and that he’d then thrown most of it away having decided he was no longer hungry.
                “I am so terribly sorry, everyone, for this mess.” He declared to the room, sincerity flooding from him. “Words cannot express how truly remorseful I am that these events have transpired, and are transpiring still.” With hands open and outstretched he gestured around the room at the destroyed front windows and staff held at gunpoint. “If I had my time again, if I had known that anyone would have been distressed by this, then believe me when I say that I would not have even considered this break-in.”
                The terror of the bank clerks dissolved away into sympathy at the look in the man’s eyes; to look into them was to stare into the abyss of their own regrets. They welled with past mistakes and words which were better left unsaid, stains left on the world which could never be erased no matter how hard one scrubbed. There was no way they could stay mad at him. His power over them was complete, and they were rendered helpless as he gripped them tightly by their altruism. The Apologiser was in command of the situation.
                “It pains me even to ask, so please accept my advance apologies, but please could you put all the money from the vault into the bags that these kind gentlemen are carrying?” He asked the staff behind their counters. Tears in their eyes, they simply nodded; anything to show that he was forgiven.
                Motion once again returned to the bank as the clerks opened up the vault and accepted the bags proffered by the armed henchmen. One aspect was not like the others, however. Impervious and indifferent to human emotion by definition of her trade, the mortgage advisor had resisted the Apologiser’s power and was trying to sneak towards her phone to raise the alarm.
                “I’m sorry!” The Apologiser shouted, pointing towards the woman. Three gunshots rang out, bullets thumping into the floor just in front of her feet and stopping her dead in her tracks.
                “Forgive me, but that’s not something we can allow. Please help her back into her seat by way of apology, lads.”
                Eyes on the mortgage advisor and mid-way through tying her to a chair, no-one noticed the woman in black rubber cargo trousers, rubber soled combat boots and a black jacket step into the bank through the shattered window. Poking up over her shoulder was the long, wooden handle of The Stunner’s new signature weapon, the grip wrapped in rubber bindings. Tiny slivers of glass pressed themselves into the treads of her soles as she crossed the lobby towards The Apologiser.
                “This really is shocking behaviour.” The Stunner announced to the room. “I don’t want to e-lecture-fy you but this is my bank, and that’s my money you’re loading up.”
                “I am so sorry.” The Apologiser said, staring into her eyes. “Who are you? I wish to make whatever amends I can.”
                “I’m the lightning storm that’ll shut you down, the static shock that sends you flying. I’m The Stunner.”
                “The Stunner? I must apologise for never having heard of you. I have been remiss in paying attention.” The Apologiser replied.
                “Haven’t we all been? I didn’t pay enough attention to my ex-boyfriend. I thought he was a good man, a loving man, but I ignored the signs, and when things didn’t work out he showed his true colours. I was hounded day and night, bombarded with phone calls and messages, chased through the streets, harassed by decorative garden ornaments littering my doorstep. When I left my house he was there, lurking in the streets. When I left work he was there, waiting in the lobby. It was too much. One night he had me cornered in an alleyway, so I lashed out with a nearby battery. It crushed his skull, killing him outright and spilling radioactive battery acid onto me. I was a killer, guilty and malformed in the street, and from that moment I knew that I could never return to my old life. I embraced the darkness and became ‘The Stunner’. I’ll electrify this whole city, and you’re not going to stand in my way.” Her story flowed easily, just as she’d rehearsed it, making sure that she could convey a whole tale without wasting too much time. Box ticked for narcissistic, self-indulgent monologues.
                “I’m sorry to hear your sad tale, Stunner. Sorry like I was when the energy company I worked for realised all of its customers had been overcharged, if you’ll excuse the pun.” Subtly weaponised puns; this guy knew his trade. “I was in charge of sending out notifications to everyone and letting them know of our horrible, terrible mistake, but I didn’t care at all. The plight of these people meant nothing to me, but I took the chance to gouge as much overtime pay from the company as possible. Working late one night, under the guise of trying to make amends for all the hurt we’d inflicted, I slipped. It was careless and foolish of me. I got sloppy because I didn’t care enough, and I got a papercut from a radioactive letter of apology. From that day my capacity for remorse sky-rocketed. I intend to amass a fortune so that I can pay back all debts to those cheated by the system which has failed them.”
                Helena was disarmed by The Apologiser’s innocent eyes and heart-breaking repentance. His intentions seemed so good, even if his methods were questionable, it gave her convictions pause for thought. Her guard dropped.
                From behind, one of The Apologiser’s henchman smashed the butt of his gun into the back of the head. As she fell to the ground, vision fading to black, she saw The Apologiser smirk; he’d tricked her. 'Sloppy work, Helena.’ She thought. ‘Sloppy work.'
 
                The mortgage advisor's demi-cubicle came fuzzily into view. Someone was tampering with the picture quality of Helena's eyes, making the colours and focus go funny, shifting the aspect ratio, and generally disrespecting the visual arts.
                "Nice work." The mortgage advisor muttered, seeing that the Stunner was waking up. "You sure showed him that this is your turf by walking in and getting clobbered."
                Helena tried to look at the woman. She had a blonde bob of hair, horn-rimmed glasses on a chain around her neck, and wore a navy blue skirt-suit combo. Everything from her unnaturally peach tights, to her sensible black high heels, to her polished gold-coloured 'Gillian' name tag, made Helena want to punch her. Or was that what The Stunner wanted to do? Probably The Stunner; she wanted to take everyone in here down.
                "I have him right where I want him." The Stunner groaned. She tried to feel the lump on her head but found her hands tied behind her back with the indestructible little chains used to secure bank pens. She knew this was the case because the pens had been left on there like clattering plastic bells.
                "I can't believe you fell for his puppy-dog eyes and crocodile tears." She left out his cattle legs and armadillo nose, but Helena presumed that Gillian didn't consider those features to be relevant. Stripped of any pretence of helping or representing a member of the public, the cold and calculating edge of Gillian's voice cut through The Stunner's mind like a razor made from usury. Helena was fairly sure that Gillian's advice had secured the mortgage on her own flat, but pushed those harrowing thoughts aside.
                "He caught me off guard. That will never happen again." The Stunner responded, as much to herself as to Gillian. “I’ll make The Apologiser regret he was born.”
                “He regrets everything anyway. That’s a pretty weak threat.”
                The Stunner wanted to give Gillian a damn good shocking for that outburst, but Helena exercised restraint. There was a time and a place for taking up arms against restrained civilians, but this was not it.
                Ahead of them, The Apologiser’s men were stacking bags of money in the lobby of the bank, whilst the man himself offered profuse apologies every time he saw one of the clerks. The sight of his simpering face filled The Stunner with fury, but the pen-chains held strong against her straining arms.
                “Gillian, get me out of these chains and I’ll free you before I annihilate this fool.” The Stunner said matter-of-factly to the mortgage advisor.
                “I thought you had him right where you want him? I don’t want to interfere in your grand plans, you absolute mess.” Gillian spat back.
                “You know, I think I lost count of the bags that those thugs have taken from the clerks. Pretty sure I wouldn’t notice if one of them went missing, and nor would anyone else.” The Stunner tried, looking straight into the mortgage advisor’s eyes. “Catch my drift?”
                Gillian thought about this for a moment. Her natural reaction was to be as unhelpful as possible, as befitting someone who works in an advisory capacity, but the promise of being able to steal from her employer was too much to pass up.
                “Come here then, back-to-back so I can get a hold of the chains.”
                Helena sidled up to Gillian and placed her chains into the hands of the horrid woman. Her fingers worked swiftly, moving with the almost subconscious efficacy of someone who has spent too much of their life untangling too many tiny bank pen-chains. In less than a minute, The Stunner’s hands were free enough to rub at her own wrists where the chains had dug into the flesh.
                “Now untie me.” Gillian commanded. The Stunner was more than tempted to just leave her there, but Helena respected that a deal was a deal, even with a demon. Crouching next to the desk, she pulled and poked at the chains with less skill than Gillian, but more brute force and passion. The pens clattered to the ground and Gillian took cover behind the partition of her cubicle.
                “What’s the plan then, hotshot?”
                “I’m going to give The Apologiser something to be sorry about.” The Stunner said darkly. Reaching her hands behind herself, she took a grip on the long, wooden handle which was strapped to her back, and pulled it over her head, revealing something which looked at first glance like a sledgehammer. On closer inspection, the head of the hammer was in fact a large car battery with several sharp wires poking from each of the terminals.
                “Why the hell did he not take that from you?” Gillian asked incredulously.
                “Super-villains love a bit of drama. Disarming an opponent is just too logical.”
                “Huh?” Gillian asked, a little taken aback at The Stunner’s honest response.
                “Arrogance.” Helena simplified, before emerging from the partition and moving into the lobby.
                The henchmen and The Apologiser were distracted with their work. The man himself was leaning over the counter, directing the clerks apologetically in which bags to pack first or hand over, and his henchmen were carrying the weighty sacks of paper notes across to their stack by the door.
                “HI BOYS!” The Stunner shouted, swinging her shock-hammer sideways into one of the thugs’ ribs. The sharp crack of discharging electricity filled the room and the quite-literally stunned man was thrown impossibly hard across the lobby by his own jolting limbs, slamming into the back wall.
                “Shocked to see me?” she asked with a smirk.
                “I am so sorry for doing that to you!” The Apologiser said, his veneer of convincing false sincerity was cracking, and his words sounded hollow.
                “You certainly will be.” Helena told him, leaping forwards and thrusting the hammerhead into another of the thugs. His groin felt the full jolt of the battery discharging and he crumpled in unnecessarily inflicted pain. Another of the men prepared to open fire on her, but The Stunner was no slouch, firing a wrist mounted taser dart into his shoulder. His finger pulled on the trigger as his muscles spasmed, firing bullets into the ceiling and surrounding masonry. No brickwork or polystyrene tiles would ever mess with him again.
                “Get to the van, lest remorse overtake us.” The Apologiser ordered his last henchman, adopting a new dialect in his panic.
                “If that’s your current plan then I think you’ll find some resistance” The Stunner punned mercilessly, throwing a hard cluster of expired AA batteries at the running henchman and catching him squarely on the temple. Immediately, his limbs went limp and he crashed onto the bag of money he’d been carrying.
                “You have my sincerest, unqualified apologies for this terrible, tragic happenstance.” The Apologiser over-articulated, staring wide-eyed into The Stunner’s face. “You have every right to be annoyed, but let me assure you that I will do everything in my power to make this better.” His eyebrows were on a daring crusade to achieve verticality, arching themselves upwards to show how devastatingly sorry he was. Millions of years of altruism and empathy, instinctively recognised by Helena’s brain, told her that she should calm her rage and let The Apologiser have a second chance. It told her that he was remorseful, and that he wouldn’t do anything wrong again. But the lump on The Stunner’s head had different ideas.
                “If this were a democracy, my man, then you would have my volt.” She said, devoid of context. Whilst The Apologiser was reeling from the entirely irrelevant electrical pun, The Stunner heaved her hammer into action and thumped it into his thigh. Sparks arced and jolted from the terminals of the battery as it swept his legs out from underneath him, jerking and kicking out from the electrical assault. The Apologiser thrust himself into the air, his torso still falling and pivoting around his hips, soaring through the bank like a disrespected mannequin in a high wind. The disabled-access handrail broke his fall, and also his hip, as he crashed into it.
                The Apologiser groaned, lying in an untidy tangle across the steel rail. The Stunner looked at him, seemed to weigh something up in her mind, and then shrugged to herself, lowering her hammer to the ground.
                “You’ll… regret… this…” the broken man managed.
                “Oh will I?”
                She pressed the battery against the rail and shot a jolt of electricity into The Apologiser.
                “Argh!” he replied, as could be expected.
                “Apology accepted.”
 
                The Stunner carried as many of the bags as she could to the doorway, using it more out of habit than any real need given that the windows had been smashed out. But standing in her way was Gillian.
                “I believe that money is mine.” She said, her beliefs and Helena’s remaining entirely incompatible.
                “One bag. There are plenty more on the ground.”
                “I think I’ve earned some interest on my investment.” Gillian raised a gun, taken from one of the henchmen, and aimed it at The Stunner’s head. “So I think I’ll take all of the cash, if it’s all the same to you.”
                “Were you asked to offer someone a radioactive mortgage plan once?” Helena asked. Whilst Gillian was trying to work out what The Stunner meant, she found herself peppered with a series of taser darts, with wires tracing back to Helena’s wrists.
                Gillian danced her way to the floor, appearing not to have a very good time, and Helena retracted the wires.
                “Probably not.” The Stunner said, stepping over the incapacitated advisor and taking her leave. She also took Gillian’s wrist watch for the journey.
 
                Sitting in the shadows of the cannery among her bags of stolen money, Helena couldn’t help feeling that her actions today hadn’t exactly screamed ‘justice’. If anything, they whispered ‘I’m doing this with mostly good intentions’ and then bellowed ‘I love to electrocute people!’
                The old cannery was strangely quiet at all times of day, the roads around it not frequented by much traffic or any regular pedestrians of whom to speak. Manufacturing facilities were rarely situated in busy high-streets, granted, but the whole street seemed to be devoid of life. It was the perfect hideout.
                All afternoon the police radio chatter had been buzzing with information on the fugitive who had stolen hundreds of thousands of pounds from the local bank. The perpetrator was reported as being slightly under average weight, in her mid-to-late thirties and wearing a rubber suit of some sort. Helena was shocked by the bare-faced cheek of it all; she was only 29 and significantly under average weight, she would thank them to note. She just had a lot of muscle, so her build looked more robust than people would necessarily expect. The next time the opportunity presented itself, she’d have her suit made more skin-tight, or perhaps execute some crimes whilst standing on a set of clearly visible scales.
 
                “The Stunner made off with over three hundred thousand pounds yesterday afternoon, in broad daylight.” Commissioner Harmon seethed. “I’ve got half the city and the bank of M. Bezler on my back to find it immediately, and I’m a laughing stock because other criminals are better at stopping these robberies than my Ministry is. You’ve got some nerve here, Burnley.”
                In the small office with the blinds drawn and the door closed, Helena sat bolt upright in her chair, facing the Commissioner as he raged at her. He had to keep his voice down to avoid giving the secret away to the other officers, so he was whisper-shouting every fury-filled word and chewing up unlit cigars at a rate of knots. Helena would have found it funny if she wasn’t so concerned about charges being pressed against her for the bank robbery.
                “I need to keep it convincing sir, you said so yourse-“
                “There is a difference between convincing and major bank robbery.” He correctly observed. The sunlight was trying to break through the slits in the blinds, backlighting the commissioner in horizontal bars. He looked a television which had been set up incorrectly.
                “We’ll recover more than enough from Professor Endtimes to pay the bank back. Besides, if The Stunner hadn’t intervened then The Apologiser would have got away with the money anyway. It’s no different this way.” Helena argued, leaning her elbows on the desk and gesticulating widely with her forearms.
                “The difference is that the case against The Apologiser would have led to his arrest and the recovery of the stolen funds. The case against The Stunner is not doing quite as famously.” A thick finger was pointing directly at Helena’s face. The finger was attached to Commissioner Harmon’s hand in the normal manner.
                “I… yes sir.”
                “We need to get something here Burnley. If you don’t get it soon then we’re pulling the plug on the whole Stunner operation. Bait’s no good if Endtimes won’t take it.”
                “Sir, I’ve barely been working on this for a week. But I’m on the cusp of something. I know I’ll have his attention soon.” Helena said, somewhat baselessly.
                “You better had. I don’t need the pressure of this bearing down on me.” He dropped his palms flat onto the desk and spoke down into it, too frustrated to make eye contact with Helena. “In fact,” he started, looking back up “it’s even worse. The mayor has requested that you’re put on the Stunner case now, Burnley.”
                “I… I already am sir.”
                “No, you misunderstand. You’re now in charge of the case against The Stunner. The mayor will be breathing down your neck to capture yourself. Maybe it’ll give you some incentive to move this along; if I didn’t know better I’d say you were enjoying this lawbreaking.”
                “But how is that going to work?” Helena was leaning forwards in her chair, hoping that getting closer to the commissioner would make his words more sensible.
                “I don’t know, but the mayor won’t be dissuaded. After your performance against Gatekeeper he’s got your name in his head.”
                “I’ll get right on it, sir.” Helena said, deflated. It should have made things easier, given that she knew all the facts already, but she would have to be careful not to reveal anything to the rest of the squad that she shouldn’t know. Vetting evidence for clear inferences was one thing, but vetting one’s own thoughts for what someone else might have noticed? Less so. The last thing she needed now was suspicion of colluding with herself, or suspicion of psychic powers. Everyone would be asking her where their lost tin-openers were, and annoyingly she would genuinely know the answer.
 
                Despite the dressing down from Commissioner Harmon, the following weeks passed with The Stunner forging a criminal reputation and Agent Burnley investigating anyone else doing the same. Despite both of her aliases taking on the criminal underclass, reports of incidents kept coming unabated. Whatever force was pushing these super-villains into action was unfazed by the Ministry’s efforts to bring them to justice.
                The Conductive Doom felt that he could lead a spate of armed robberies throughout the city, spurred on by the radioactive copper-wire he’d found during a routine electrician’s job. None felt safe in the streets until the Stunner shocked him into submission with extreme ease. Paraceta-Mole kidnapped a pharmacist and took her to his underground lair in the sewers. His attempts to weaponise over-the-counter medicine were thwarted by Agent Helena Burnley’s beat-down; she dragged him to the surface and returned the stash of meds to the pharmacist, helping herself to some tasteful hair dyes for the pleasure.  The Hosepipe-Bandit stole garden watering equipment in a string of robberies reminiscent of Iron Can’s tin-opener purge, but soon found himself dangling from a streetlight by his ankles. An extra-strong groundsman-grade pipe made sure that he wouldn’t escape, and The Stunner gained herself some extra hose.
                Helena noted with a hidden smile that many of the perpetrators brought into the station told tales of the new electro-criminal who was terrorising the city. Her reputation was growing, but so was the pressure. The mayor was pushing hard for The Stunner to be brought to justice, and Commissioner Harmon was demanding that she get noticed by Professor Endtimes.
                The Stunner had been getting bolder, and clashing with other villains more frequently, but she was still only committing crimes on the back of what others were already doing. It should have been enough for Professor Endtimes to want to intervene, but she’d heard nothing from him. Helena knew, deep down, that The Stunner would need to make a spectacle soon, before the mayor called in reinforcements. Whatever it turned into, however, would be entirely her own making, and she would be wholly accountable for its ramifications.
                For a long time Helena had considered breaking property development law or parking terribly as The Stunner, but she didn't think that these particular infractions would draw much attention from a criminal mastermind. Resigned to the inevitability of injustice, she started planning her grand works in earnest.
 
                Spaghetti-like webs of roads led to the centre of the city, converging on the Stubbing Shopping Centre; a labyrinth of sickly-scented soap shops, cryptically named clothing stores, and small stalls of almost certainly stolen mobile phone accessories. Among the other miscellany offered by the myriad emporia of seasonal tat, there must have been hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of merchandise. The Stunner, however, had no interest in such things. Her prize was sitting on the roof, unassuming in and of itself, but a vital component of her super stunner, and something which would capture the attention of any criminal mastermind watching the world.
                Wind whipped through The Stunner’s jacket, billowing it out as if she’d stuffed herself with marshmallows. The roof of Stubbing Shopping Centre was a wide, shallow dome of glass panels, joined together by a checkerboard of steel frames, and she was dangling above it from a rope attached to a helicopter. With a harness around her chest and loops of thick cable around her shoulders, The Stunner lowered herself towards the mobile phone transmitter tower at the peak of the dome, which reached up like a church spire to the holy majesty of interconnectivity.
                The helicopter hovering above the shopping centre was under remote control, using advanced garage-door-control technology which Helena had scavenged from Garagio’s trap in the garden centre of the damned. With the funds from The Apologiser’s thwarted bank robbery, The Stunner had found it all too easy to buy a helicopter with money to spare, and faced worryingly little scrutiny regarding pilot’s licences, having a place to land it, or even identifying herself. Helena made a mental note to investigate the people from whom she’d bought it later.
                Once the transmitter tower was in reach, The Stunner began to secure lengths of the cable to it via heavy steel karabiners, which closed around the steel structure with a satisfying clunk. Lower and lower The Stunner went, fixing cables to the tower as she descended, until she was able to touch down on the glass roof. Removing her harness for the moment, she unhooked a set of heavy bolt cutters from her back and sheared through the thick bolts securing the tower to the building. Heavy crunching sounds and the skittering of metal shrapnel across glass accompanied each successful crop.
                “STOP RIGHT THERE! YOU ARE UNDER ARREST FOR THE ROBBERY OF M. BEZLER’S BANK, SEVERAL COUNTS OF ASSAULT, AND THE ATTEMPTED THEFT OF A TRASMITTER TOWER. DO NOT RESIST.” Boomed a distorted, electrical voice from a police loud-hailer. Helena recognised it as Officer Peters from the station; he was undergoing negotiation training and this was clearly intended as a useful exercise for him, the poor chap.
                “The Stunner owns this city!” she shouted back, her voice competing with the roar of the helicopter’s rotors. Below her, in the carpark surrounding the shopping centre, a handful of police cars strobed the area with their red and blue lights. A gaggle of officers stood in a group facing the roof.
                “WE CANNOT HEAR YOU. ARE YOU RESISTING?” Officer Peters asked hopefully, his amplified voice harsh, even in uncertainty.
                “Of course I am!” The Stunner told him, with an exaggerated nod to make it obvious.
                The officers in the carpark conversed among themselves, and then nodded to one another.
                “WE WILL THROW YOU A LOUD HAILER. REMAIN WHERE YOU ARE.” They instructed. True enough, within a few minutes a loudhailer was tossed up to the roof, and Helena snatched it up.
                “THANK YOU. I SAID, THE STUNNER OWNS THIS CITY, AND NOW THIS LOUDHAILER TOO!” she projected down with a cackle.
                “YOU WILL NOT ESCAPE. COME DOWN AND WE WILL BE LENIENT.” Officer Peters lied. Helena knew full well they’d hit her with everything they could if she went down there now.
                “NICE TRY, BUT I THINK I’D RATHER TAKE MY MAST AND GET OUT OF HERE. SAYONARA.” Sayonara? Where had that come from? It was certainly criminal to use the term, but not in the way that The Stunner had intended.
                Turning away from the poor negotiators on the ground, The Stunner jogged back over to the transmitter tower and set about cutting the last of the bolts.
                “THIS IS YOUR LAST WARNING, STUNNER. COME DOWN QUIETLY OR WE WILL USE FORCE.”
                Helena ignored him. With the last bolts sheared away, she pulled her harness back on and started to ascend her rope back into the helicopter.
                “YOU WERE WARNED.” The loudhailer crackled ominously. Helena looked down to see that the officers were radioing someone with great urgency; she couldn’t help but feel that she was rapidly going to be out of her depth.
                Clambering into the helicopter again and scurrying to the cockpit, Helena deactivated the remote control and pulled the levers up. The helicopter started to rise, but stopped again suddenly as the ropes to transmitter tower became taut and started applying extra weight. With a noticeable increase in engine noise, and a commensurate increase in Helena’s concern, the helicopter slowly started to ascend again. The tower lifted gradually free from the roof of the shopping centre, raining debris from its feet and plunging the local area into mobile-network darkness as it swung freely underneath the chassis.
                Once her stressed helicopter had gained enough altitude the clear the tops of the city buildings with the bottom of her newly acquired mast, The Stunner wheeled it around in a tight circle. Immediately she regretted the choice not to take a slow, wide curve as the radio tower pulled the helicopter off-balance and caused it to rock disconcertingly in the air. Despite evidence from cartoons, this plan may not have been so fool-proof after all.
                The Stunner hadn’t made it far on her journey back to the cannery before a chorus of other rotor blades joined the noise of her own. Heading directly towards her around a wide arc in front were a dozen police and military helicopters, probably outfitted with more modern equipment and piloted by, well, pilots. Being surrounded by better-equipped and more experienced adversaries wasn’t the biggest problem The Stunner was facing, as far as Helena saw it. Nor was it the issue that her own aircraft was unarmed in the face of military hardware; after all, she had no intention of killing anyone. The main concern she currently harboured was that she would never make it back to the cannery unseen with her mast like this. She’d not anticipated that the police response would be so quick or effective, certainly not that they’d field aircraft to chase her down. Getting back unseen at the best of times would have been challenging, but doing so whilst being pursued was impossible. There was a chance, however slight, that she had got a little carried away.
                Changing vector sharply, The Stunner banked the helicopter around and felt it shake with the pendulous transmitter tower swinging below it. Whatever this vehicle had been used for previously, it had certainly not been for transporting radio infrastructure around subtly or securely. Helena fought to maintain control as the tower tried to pull the helicopter one way then another, failing to settle out. The superior governmental aircraft were closing on her quickly, forming a ring and tightening the noose around her. Allowing her own craft to wobble violently, she pressed forwards hard, hoping to clear the residential estates of the town in case she went down. Helena thought she saw a flash of yellow coming from the military choppers, but decided quickly that she must have imagined it. She’d only stolen a mast, after all; surely they wouldn’t…
                The first shots hit her fuselage with a sound like a hammer in a washing machine, rupturing the fuel tank. Jarring vibrations shook the chassis of the helicopter and warning lights began to flicker all over the control panel, informing her that bullet holes in the fuel tank would not increase the performance of her vehicle. The madmen were firing at her, actually firing at her, over a stolen mobile phone mast and an illegally piloted helicopter. Helena was no stranger to unleashing a bullet in the pursuit of justice, but this was beyond brutality.
                It seemed that the first volley was an isolated burst intended to make the point that the law enforcers were not playing around. Given the narrowly avoided danger of death, Helena considered the point to have been made amply. She leaned forwards onto the control sticks and spurred the helicopter on faster. It wasn’t far now; just a few more moments and she’d have a safe space to land on, or possibly crash into. A second burst of gunfire expressed distaste at her acceleration.
                Helena started to panic. It wasn’t often that she indulged in such childish things, but right now it seemed like the only reasonable course of action. The engines were losing power, the rotors felt like they weren’t turning quite so freely since being shot to pieces, and there was no way she’d get her tower back to the cannery; the mission was a bust and she was about to get killed.
                Ahead of her a large, green park with a fully equipped playground and moderately sized lake was rapidly approaching. At this time of night it was largely empty, and Helena had all her fingers crossed that no-one would be in the way; the park would be the best place to direct the inevitable crash.
                A third spray of gunfire gave the already hysterical instruments even more to worry about. The Stunner’s grip on the control sticks was vice-like, engaged in a pitched battle to keep the helicopter in the air long enough to make it into the park. The mast dangling below strained to pull the helicopter over to one side, the screaming engine threatened to give up, and Helena’s imagination was struggling to think of any way to resolve the situation favourably. But there were only a few seconds to go. She only needed to make it a tiny amount farther. Helena stared at the open grassland, clenched her teeth, and tried to ignore the juddering impacts of bullets against the ruined chassis.
                With a deep exhalation, The Stunner limped the helicopter and tower clear of the rooftops of the houses overlooking the park. She’d made it. Helena let go of the control sticks and reassured herself that she was going down in the course of duty. Few people would understand, but she’d only been trying to protect them all. As the radio tower struck the earth and dug deep trenches through the dirt the helicopter bucked forwards, jerked downwards by the tension in the cables. The chassis span around, completely beyond control, and Helena was flung hard out of her seat, her mind conflicted as to whether or not it would have been a good idea to have fastened her seatbelt at some stage.
                In a crunching of steel the helicopter crashed into the ground, shearing itself to bits and throwing debris and shrapnel across the park. Razor-sharp twisted chunks of steel sprayed out, fragments of torn rotor embedding into the trees, swings and dog’s mess bins. The wreck ploughed through the soil, rolling, collapsing and breaking apart as it went, until the foremost chunks of the chassis finally plunged into the lake. A perverse calm fell back over the park. The pursuit of The Stunner was over.
 
                Concussed, bruised, bleeding, and dazed. Helena drifted in and out of consciousness, bobbing in the lake. Fragmented visions of burning wreckage, merged with the sounds of helicopters, filled her mind. Everything faded to black.
 
                The Stunner awoke in the dilapidated office of the abandoned Daubenton’s cannery. She had no recollection of getting back there, or of anything else after the crash in the park. Sitting up gingerly, she was quickly reminded that the whole experience hadn’t been a dream, since every part of her body hurt in one way or another; sometimes both one way and another. Whatever anyone said to her, helicopter crashes hurt.
                She was still in her wet Stunner suit, but someone had thrown a thick blanket over her and left a glass of water by the sofa she’d been laid down on. A packet of aspirin was next to the glass, along with a note on thick, high-quality paper. Helena gratefully drank the water and swallowed a couple of the aspirin, not taking the time to scare herself by reading the side-effects. The note, she supposed, must have been left by whomever had put her to bed here. And whomever had put her to bed must have rescued her from the crash site before the police got to her. She owed them.
                Her hands shaking from exhaustion and pain, Helena unfolded the note, revealing a short message written with newspaper cut-outs, as is traditional for messages from super-villains.
                “I am impressed; we could have a future together. I’ll be in contact. Get well soon. Professor Endtimes.”
                Helena stared at the piece of paper in her hands and forgot all about her injuries for a moment. She’d done it. She was in.