Chapter 209 Turf.

Chapter 209: 209 Turf.

Oh, yeah.

Sleek, dark metal polished to a mirror gleam. Hubcaps styled into vaguely threatening geometric blades.

A chrome skull hood ornament and heavily tinted windows to really sell the whole ’do not fuck with the driver’ aesthetic.

The Firefly Cruiser was a custom-built electric luxury sedan, which meant heavy battery coils and plenty of dense metal for me to throw around if a fight broke out on the highway.

Another corporate perk from a boardroom looking to use my notoriety for free advertising. And it was time to take it for a spin.

I slid into the leather driver’s seat and hit the ignition, the pointed ’P’ keychain jangling against the steering column.

The Cruiser purred to life with barely a whisper. I backed out of the spot, merged into the afternoon traffic, and soon left the cramped concrete canyons of downtown Metropolis in my rearview mirror, winding up into the quiet mountain roads toward home.

I sighed happily, sinking deeper into the lumbar support. Damn, this thing was a smooth ride. Not even a lunatic with chainsaw fingers could ruin my mood today.

Things were genuinely looking up. I rolled my shoulders, feeling the lingering tension from the precinct brawl finally starting to fade. Now that the dust had settled, maybe I could actually focus on my day job and organize some proper, old-school villainy.

A classic bank heist sounded great right about now. Maybe I’d check my encrypted messages later. Knocking over a vault was technically beneath my new pay grade, sure, but what good was being an infamous supervillain if you couldn’t indulge in the classics every once in a while?

So yeah, I was feeling pretty great as I rounded the final bend leading up to the chalet.

Right until a deer wearing a knitted cardigan jumped directly in front of my car.

"Jesus!" I swore, slamming my foot down on the brake pedal.

The seatbelt locked, biting hard into my bruised ribs and squeezing the air right out of my lungs as the Cruiser stopped on a dime. Fucking ow. Well, the factory brakes were top-notch, too.

I winced, rubbing my chest as I looked up over the dashboard to see if I’d clipped the animal.

Instead, I saw a whole lot more.

My jaw dropped. Crowding the narrow mountain road right in front of the chalet’s iron gates was an absolute sea of people, animals, and... things that looked like they had crawled straight out of the back pages of the Necronomicon.

Either Comic-Con had gotten lost on a nature hike, or every asylum on the eastern seaboard had organized a field trip to my front yard.

"What in the hell?" I breathed, staring at the mob of costumed weirdos swarming the perimeter.

"Polaris!"

"Shit!" I yelped, jerking back as the deer I’d almost turned into a hood ornament suddenly popped up right next to my driver-side window.

Except it wasn’t a deer. It was a skinny guy wearing a bleached deer skull over his head, antlers and all, paired with a thrifted sweater covered in damp forest moss.

Beneath the bone snout, his jaw was painted stark white with vertical black lines drawn over his lips like a Spirit Halloween skeleton.

"Polaris!" the lunatic shouted, pressing his painted face so hard against the tinted glass it left a greasy smudge. "Hi! I’m Stag-Night! I was bitten by a cursed tick at a music festival, and now I command the dark forces of woodland hexes and weaponized Lyme disease! Huge fan!"

"...What?" I said blankly.

"It’s him! He’s here!" someone else bellowed from the back.

I looked around in rising panic. Stag-Night’s yelling had blown my cover. Within seconds, dozens of costumed freaks broke away from the gate and swarmed my brand-new car, slapping their hands on the hood and shouting over each other in a deafening wall of desperate networking.

"Lord Polaris! Behold Doctor Microwave! Once a humble breakroom technician, I peered too closely at a spinning burrito when the magnetron ruptured! Now, I lukewarm my enemies to death from the inside out!"

"Hey! Look over here! It’s the Crustacean! Abandoned at a Red Lobster as an infant, I was raised by the tank lobsters! I have returned to the surface to pinch the dry-landers!"

"Uh, hi! I’m Drawn Butter. I don’t actually know the lobster guy, this is just a really awkward coincidence for my branding..."

I stared out the windshield at the sea of shouting faces waving homemade ray guns, glowing staves, and a disturbing variety of mutated limbs—some of which were tentacles, and others that were actively on fire.

Okay. Way too weird. Even by my standards. Time to create some personal space.

I took my hands off the wheel and engaged my powers, wrapping a tight magnetic field around the Cruiser’s chassis and lifting the entire vehicle straight off the asphalt.

Shouts of awe echoed from below as I floated the car twenty feet into the air, gliding smoothly over the heads of the crowd toward the chalet gates.

Unfortunately, half a dozen weirdos with flight capabilities immediately launched themselves off the ground to chase my bumper.

"Hi! Wait up! I’m Pigeon-Hole!" a woman in a feathered vest squawked, flapping frantically alongside my passenger window. "Part woman, part city pigeon! I eat trash, ignore traffic laws, and my stomach acid can strip the paint off a Lexus!"

"Polaris! Witness the Leafblower!" a guy in gardening goggles roared over the deafening whine of four commercial landscaping turbines strapped to a lawn chair. "When the Homeowners Association fined me for yard work after six PM, I swore a blood oath of vengeance! Tremble before my eighty-mile-an-hour gusts!"

"Wait! Take my card! I am Captain Asbestos! Banned by federal building codes in 1989, I lurk in the ceilings of society to cause long-term respiratory complications over thirty to forty years—!"

CRACK-THOOM.

"Attention assembled freaks, losers, and weirdos!" Rhea’s voice boomed gleefully from the heavy-duty loudspeakers mounted on the gate pillars. "Polaris, Master of Magnetism, is now entering the estate! All unauthorized personnel will remain behind the perimeter line or face immediate atomic disintegration!"

The threat—which, knowing Rhea’s current access to the sub-basement lab, was definitely not a bluff—worked like a charm.

The airborne job-applicants braked hard in mid-air, retreating hastily back toward the road as I sailed over the wrought-iron spikes.

Inside the courtyard, Glacia was standing calmly near the center of the driveway, right beside her latest ice sculpture of me.

Today’s frozen monument featured a twelve-foot version of my armored self heroically holding a crystalline globe aloft.

Having her carve graven images of me on the daily was Equal parts flattering and deeply unsettling, though right now I was just happy to be on my own turf.

I set the Cruiser down on the gravel with a soft crunch, popped the door open, and hurried out.

"Glacia!" I gasped, gesturing wildly back toward the gates. "What the hell is going on out there?"