Blurb: Henry Tilney doesn't want to be a villain, but don't mention that to his father. Henry is not a hero, but try explaining that to Catherine. Modern, heroes/villains.

Part 1: The Reluctant Villain

"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change," Henry muttered under his breath, scanning the headlines on his phone.

His father was at it again and every news source seemed to be spouting breathless coverage of General Terror's latest rampage in the English countryside. Why couldn't Henry have a normal father, like the kind who puttered in the garden or wrote scathing editorials in the local paper? Instead, his father was a villain -- a world-renown supervillain -- who considered the whole of Great Britain his stomping ground.

Henry's childhood had been singular. The best proof of that was that he had no friends with which to compare his unconventional upbringing and identify any strangeness. Languages, STEM, martial arts, world history -- he was homeschooled and never shared his tutors with another pupil. By the time he had been trained in useful villainy, he had been introduced as his father's sidekick ("Corporal Punishment", to keep with the General's military theming). Henry had tried to like it; his life would have been much easier if he could, but he wasn't made that way. And that fact got increasingly harder to hide from the one person who must never be allowed to find out.

Rather than waiting for his father to realize how disappointing Henry was, he preemptively announced that he was moving out. He made suitable obeisance to his father for his training, but it was time (he claimed) to prove his mettle on his own. And then, rather than waiting for his father to argue with him, Henry left. He got as far as the state of Washington along America's Pacific coast before the thought of crossing a second ocean gave him pause. At least the dreary climate was a fine reminder of home.

Henry tried to walk the straight and narrow when he arrived in the United States. He got a regular job on a regular work visa, earned a regular paycheck, lived in a regular apartment, and met regularly with co-workers and neighbors. There were no shrink rays, no neurotoxins, no robots, no trained sharks, no missile silos, no corrupt politicians, no mob bosses, no launch codes, no countdowns, no self-destruct buttons, no night vision goggles, no spandex. He was just Henry Tilney, the new guy with the funny English accent. Regular life was good.

He learned so many things after he left home, things that only called attention to how unique his early education had been. He finally realized how long it took to boil water when he didn't have a specially tuned laser to heat the kettle. He rode on public transportation and did his own shopping. He bought his own socks (and then went back to the store the next day to buy a second pair in the correct size). He tried keeping a houseplant alive (failing miserably, his father would be so proud). His charcuterie platters weren't yet good enough for the neighbors but he felt he was improving with each trial run.

Three months into his new life, Henry's father showed up out of the blue to help him "set up shop". This was villains' code for establishing a secret lair and pulling an elaborate bank heist in Henry's honor to introduce him to the city. Naturally Henry's sidekick costume and name had to remain in England lest some enterprising reporter figured out Henry's secret identity, but that didn't stop his father from picking an equally ridiculous American villain name for him. (For the record, Master Mind was just as bad and far more likely to get him booed in the States.)

Henry suddenly had to throw himself into villainy with the minimum amount of zeal needed to satisfy his father and send the old man back to England before people became suspicious of General Terror's hiatus.

And now he found himself in an unfortunate cycle of plotting and staging some elaborate, attention-stealing caper every few months just to keep his father off his back. It was exhausting, maintaining a double life. Between his villainy and the job he was ostensibly in the country to perform, Henry barely had time to take care of his dry cleaning much less establish meaningful relationships with people with whom he shared almost no cultural touchstones. He thought about running away again, starting over again, but he knew his father would merely follow, to the ends of the earth if needed.

There was a slight noise and Henry looked up from his phone. He had reached the front of the line at the coffee shop on autopilot while he doomscrolled the news reports and now the cashier was staring at him expectantly.

He had been coming to this shop once a week since he had moved to town so he gave his usual order: earl gray tea. Then he waited patiently for the cashier (a perpetual college student for the simple fact that he would never earn enough credits to graduate) to find someone else behind the counter who knew how to key in the order for tea into the coffee shop's register.

Content with this small, perfectly harmless bit of mayhem, he grabbed his cup of hot water with tea bag and searched for a vacant table. It was properly crowded at this time of day, and he'd have to share with some lunatic extrovert or take his cup and lurk at home in peace.

Just as he was about to give up, a young woman caught his eye.

"Are you looking for a table?" she asked as she gathered up scattered pieces of paper and shoved them into her backpack.

She started to get up from her seat, so Henry gratefully took the empty chair opposite her. "Thank you," he smiled.

"Oh, my god, your accent! You're English," she told him, dropping back down. "The latest General Terror thing is all over the news. You must be traumatized. Do you know any of the people who got hurt?"

Henry had a whole speech prepared explaining that the United Kingdom was approximately one-and-a-half times larger than the state of Washington and had about nine times as many people. The odds of him actually knowing any of the victims were small, even before factoring in being raised by a homicidal misanthrope.

However, before he could begin it, she continued with, "Of course, you get to deal with the master in America, so I suppose you're not totally safe here either."

"I'm sorry," he said, before he could think of a wittier reply, "but are you referring to Master Mind?"

"Oh, yeah, he's like our own hipster version of General Terror," she told him. "I mean, I think he used the same hoverbots to spray paint rainbows on the county correctional center as the general used to close down Heathrow."

"Oh," said Henry and he tried to figure out how to back away slowly. He didn't want to be evil but there was a certain class of people -- about a third of the general population -- who teased it out of him. The sort of people who campaigned for "leopards eating babies live on television" and then got angry because it was their kind of babies being eaten; the sort of people who had no problem with seeing other people's babies get ripped apart by ravenous animals. Empathically blind fans of evil. The sort who should never be given babies to begin with. The sort who made him think that he wasn't the only person who had been raised by a psychopath. "You like Master Mind?"

"I did not say that." She didn't disavow it either. "Oh!" but she exclaimed for no apparent reason, "you should tell me your opinions on villains on both sides of the Atlantic. It'll be perfect!"

His expression fell into the uncanny valley between confused and horrified.

She just laughed at him. "I'm a student," she said as if that explained anything. "I'm taking a media class and Professor Allen gave us an assignment to do a ten minute video segment on 'Both Sides.' I think most people are doing both sides of some hot-button issue, but I think getting your opinions on both the general and the master would be amazing."

"Don't call him 'the master,'' Henry told her.

"So you'll do it," she inferred, obviously hopped up on caffeine.

"I didn't say that," he sputtered. "I don't even know yo--"

"Catherine," she anticipated him, holding out her hand as if they were about to make a blood oath. "Catherine Morland."

"Henry Tilney." He shook her hand, his body (and mouth) moving via muscle memory rather than any real desire to keep going down this rabbit hole. He was nothing if not very, stupidly, politely English.

"Thank you so much for helping out, Henry!" She made it sound as if his cooperation was already a foregone conclusion. "Are you free tonight, or what about this weekend? Whenever, I'll owe you a coffee or something."

"I don't drink coffee," he said.

Catherine gasped, properly scandalized. Henry, bless his villainous heart, thought it made her look rather cute.

"Henry," she warned him in a stage whisper, "you're in America now! You can't say stuff like that! We throw foreigners into cages for lesser crimes!"

He giggled, an entirely inappropriate sound for someone whose bona fide secret lair had its own miniature dungeon, too smitten to do more.

---

The endorphins had worn off long before he was supposed to meet her again. It was only her text, "see u in 30min," heavily emoji-ed, that gave him the impetus needed to go to the address she had sent him.

She and another young woman met him at the front door. "Henry, this is my friend Isabella. She's partnering with me on this project," Catherine said politely. Then she turned to Isabella, "This is the English guy I told you about who knows General Terror."

Before he could explain that he didn't actually know General Terror -- who truly knew their own father? -- Isabella latched onto his arm.

"Yes, I see what you mean," she told Catherine conspiratorially as if Henry wasn't standing there with two perfectly functioning ears. "John will be so jealous."

Catherine gave a too-loud, uncomfortable bark of laughter and tried to explain. "You see, Henry, John is Isabella's brother and we were going to interview him for this project until you came along. He was sweet to offer, but both sides in politics isn't very --" Catherine stopped abruptly, as if she had just realized the topic was uninteresting. "Anyway," she shook herself, "let's get started."

With that, the three of them entered the building and wove through hallways and stairwells to a small office where a young man was already getting the equipment set up.

The new addition was quickly identified as John, who did his best to appear manly and intimidating. He crushed Henry's hand in greeting and stood territorially close to Catherine. Henry, however, had been raised by a madman and was not easily cowed by amateurs. He had stared down the chief of police, the mayor, far too many tech-bros, and a handful of up and coming heroes. He realized that John was merely projecting strength to mask weakness. Had Henry been vindictive, he would've found out where the guy lived and then terrorized him, but that was an important difference between himself and his father.

Before John could invent a new challenge, Catherine sketched out the interview questions. This allowed Henry to think of his answers while Isabella positioned him in a chair and adjusted the two small lights so that he would look neither washed out nor heavily shadowed. Then Isabella pinned a small microphone to his shirt, meticulously smoothed the fabric over his chest, and asked him to say a few words to check the sound. It was an impressive coordination, especially given the fact that they were both tripping over John.

"Ready to start?" Catherine suddenly asked. "Let me begin by asking for some basic background to get you comfortable and then go through the interview questions."

---

"So do you have any closing thoughts on the villains?" Catherine had been remarkably professional throughout the interview compared with the gregarious college student who had lured Henry into this. If maintaining two separate personas was not so thoroughly ingrained, he might have found it odd or clever.

Henry sighed. "They're evil. Of course they are. But not all heroes wear capes and not all villains wear goggles. One person doing a villainous act doesn't necessarily make everyone else a hero. And we may never unmask General Terror or capture Master Mind, but everyday we need to choose to be good, so we don't create new villains in ourselves."

Catherine just looked at him, smiling like mad, and Henry didn't have the strength to look away.

"And cut!" John announced as he turned off the camera. He had been consistently, irritatingly inserting himself into the interview, forcing Catherine to repeat questions or Henry to repeat answers to get clips without John's voice cutting in. It had gotten bad enough that Isabella had pulled John out into the hall for a little conversation so Catherine and Henry could get 5 minutes of uninterrupted back-and-forth.

"That was a really good interview," Isabella complimented. "You English types are always so good with words."

Henry blinked. She didn't look like she was trying to be stupid or condescending, but he didn't know any other ways to interpret that remark. "Yes, well," he said, as if that explained it.

Isabella began to remove the microphone from his shirt and carefully checked the fabric for wrinkles while John loomed over Catherine and rested a hand heavily on her shoulder. "Ready for an all-nighter to edit this down to ten minutes?" John asked in a quiet, low voice.

"Um," Catherine began, shrugging off his hold. "I kinda promised Henry that I would take him to dinner after this."

That sounded like a much better deal than coffee, even if Henry drank the foul stuff. Before he could wonder how much of this metamorphosis was Catherine's true interest in Henry and how much was something else, he was yelping as Isabella accidentally stuck him while removing the mic. The noise distracted Catherine from whatever John was going to offer next, and she leapt from her seat to help put equipment back in its cases. Isabella, however, quickly shooed her away, claiming that she and her brother could put everything back and the two young women could work on the editing tomorrow night.

Catherine needed no further prompting, and Henry was disinclined to see John's extended reaction so they were speedily up and gone.

When they were outside and safe from eavesdropping, he said, "I thought you offered me coffee."

"Some people have coffee for dinner," she said.

Something about how she spoke -- or maybe it was the way her eyes smiled -- told him this was a date, but he felt obligated to address the spectre of John hanging over her.

"Are you sure your boyfriend won't mind?" he asked with deliberate insouciance. It was blatantly clear to him that John felt some proprietary claim, but it was considerably more murky whether Catherine honored it. She could have been flirting with Henry in earnest, or she could have acted friendly toward Henry merely to get the interview.

"My what?" She had not been expecting that, but she understood exactly what Henry was talking about. "John's not my boyfriend. He just has this I want to date you vibe," she said, dropping her voice to a macho register for effect. "But it's a family trait. I'm sure you noticed that Isabella is super flirtatious; she's also really pretty so I've yet to meet a guy who has a problem with it."

Henry would be deceitfully obtuse if he denied that Catherine's project partner was aggressively tactile, but she was also a manufactured beauty. Compared to Catherine's natural ease, it was no contest who Henry preferred. However, Catherine wasn't about to let him get a word in.

"And I've always been like, John is Isabella's brother, not… You know? That's just how he is. How can I be okay with Isabella being flirty but not with John? And as long as he doesn't, you know, take it too far, it should be okay. But then for my birthday, he got me this gift. Like, a really nice gift. Really nice. And I just told him that I couldn't accept it, because obviously it was something you'd get a girlfriend, not just a regular friend.

"And he was all, ew, Catherine, I don't like you like that, now it's all awkward between us , and I was like, no, no, sorry, my bad . And I just felt like, you know, like… Do you know what I mean by an earthquake machine? If I had one, I'd've used it right then and just cracked the ground open and crawled into it and just, like, never come out."

Henry had received a contraption from his father as a housewarming gift that would produce exactly the destruction that Catherine was looking for, but he held his tongue and simply nodded.

"So, to summarize, I don't have a boyfriend, so no one's going to mind if I take you out to dinner right now." She gave him a winning smile before it got confused and slipped into a frown. "Are you, um, are you seeing anyone?" she asked nervously. "Because I wouldn't want her to feel weird or anything about this. If you want to invite her to join us, that's cool. I'm sure she's really nice and stuff."

"I don't have a girlfriend," he said, putting her out of her misery.

Catherine's smile was back to full wattage.

---

After the interview, Catherine felt released from any obligation not to sway Henry's opinions. She was finally able to share her thoughts on Master Mind and General Terror as they ate. She wasn't exactly a fan -- Master Mind had caused far too much chaos for that -- but she could appreciate nuance. It was immoral cruelty to release herds of exploding sheep into the English countryside while it was clever vigilantism to hack into the public school district's computer system and delete all the student debt records.

"Or what about the flowers he stole?" she said as she dug into her dessert.

"The what?" Henry played dumb to get her take on it.

"City Council and the mayor's office pumped a bunch of taxpayer dollars into revitalizing the old Carlisle Botanical Gardens, which, okay, is a public park, but then the mayor's son had his wedding and reception there right before it reopened to the public. It just feels a little sketchy."

"You think Mayor Vickers used taxpayer money to bankroll his son's wedding," he clarified.

Catherine nodded. "I mean, yeah, of course, just the venue. But then Master Mind snuck in the night before the wedding and removed all the flowers," she smiled. "He didn't hurt the plants, not really, and everything was still green and lush in the pictures, but everyone in the bridal party looked like they had swallowed a lemon. That wasn't a crime as much as it was performance art."

Henry pulled a face. His father had not been pleased with the prank, calling it beneath a villain's dignity to commit petty gardening, and if he wasn't ready for a city of his own, he needed to get back to England where his father could put him to proper use. Henry tried to explain that this was a strategic attack on the mayor's family, and that the elected official was responding as irrationally as predicted. He then had to forward several links to his father of the mayor's office announcing draconian changes to the park system and the police chief declaring a special task force to catch the elusive Master Mind and bring him to justice. It had mollified his father somewhat, but Henry still wanted to avoid more criticism.

Catherine reached for the check when it arrived but Henry was faster. It only made sense, he said, that he would pay for dinner. He had a real job that paid real money, and a secret trust fund to cover any outrageous or criminal expenses. Catherine allowed this generosity, but only after he promised to let her pay for his coffee or tea or whatever that weekend, which just proved that this was a date and it had gone very well.

They stood outside the restaurant, trying to gather the momentum to part for the night. Henry liked Catherine, a lot, and he wasn't really sure what to do about it.

"This was a good day," she said. "I'm glad I met you, and I'm glad you helped with my project, and I'm glad we could have dinner together."

"I agree completely," Henry said. "Except for the cheesecake. The cheesecake was awful -- really deserved to be fired into the sun. If you happen to know anyone who keeps a spare rocket for that sort of thing..." Henry's father had four of them.

Catherine was laughing, such a joyful, good sound. Her hands somehow got nested in his and of course she had to be standing close for that. And then she wasn't really laughing anymore but she was looking at him so sweetly. Henry leaned even closer as if he might kiss her because that was something he realized he very much wanted to do. Her eyes sparkled with encouragement until the last few inches when they fluttered shut and he could feel her breath warm on his face. And then --

"Freeze, villain!" ordered a voice from behind him. Instinctively he tensed but Henry thought the command was ridiculous on so many levels.

Firstly, this city already had a hero that spouted that line -- Celsia -- and Henry knew Celsia professionally, and that was not her voice. Heroes weren't territorial in the same way as villains, but they were respectful of each others' space. With Celsia flying around town with her wind-maker, using a signature catch phrase, and carrying a gun that could shoot hot and cold, similarly inclined heroes should have looked elsewhere for a city to protect or risk being branded a copycat.

Secondly, Henry wasn't being a villain; he was an ordinary citizen resident on an impromptu, ordinary date, and he had been about to kiss someone who had given every indication that she would like to be kissed. There was no villainy here. He had even called an Uber for her and stayed with her while she waited for it to arrive, putting him solidly on the chivalrous side of things.

Thirdly, cold! Cold, cold, cold ! Cold as the coldest thing he could think of which, given the shock to his system, was himself. Up and down his back, from his neck to his ankles, he was frozen and immobile.

Unless the idiot had figured out his secret identity, this was a big, painful misunderstanding. And Henry secretly swore to himself that in the future he would restrict freeze rays and similar weapons to super heros and people properly dressed for the attack.

But first he needed to get out of this mess.

Part 2: The Reluctant Hero

Faced with a sudden, sharp, and sustained drop in temperature, Henry's body froze. Without his Master Mind costume, the cold leeched right through his civilian clothes and he shivered as much as his limited range of motion allowed.

Catherine had been standing right in front of him, holding his hand and looking quite kissable just a moment ago. She was still there but she now looked panicked, her fingers clutched painfully in his. "Oh, my goodness! Henry, are you okay?" she cried, heedless of her own distress.

Henry tried to tell her that he was fine, but his teeth were chattering too hard to let him speak. He couldn't even turn to glare at the blundering hero who had frozen him.

"Release the damsel from your clutches, villain!" ordered the oaf as if Henry was dangling Catherine off the edge of a skyscraper.

Henry did not obey, mostly because every muscle in his body was trying to clench for warmth. It was agony for him but he had to be squeezing Catherine's fingers something fierce.

"Stop it!" Catherine told the hero. "You're hurting him. He hasn't done anything wrong."

"Release her," the hero ordered again, strutting into Henry's line of sight, "and I will let you go."

The man's chin looked vaguely familiar. Maybe Henry had witnessed him posturing on the news, issuing challenges that Henry never bothered to meet. That was one of his father's lessons: no one can be your nemesis without your consent.

But this guy was definitely pretending to be a hero, with the same catch phrase and freeze gun as Celsia, and a matching costume. Henry wasn't aware of any weapon that could transform a body like that, but he couldn't discard the idea out of hand. It's wasn't like he kept on the cutting edge of mad science.

"C-c-celsi-si-ia?" he pushed through his chattering teeth.

"What? No!" the man shouted in affront. "Celsia's not here right now so I get to keep an eye on the city for a bit. I'm getting rid of the riffraff for her." With that, Henry could hear the gun charging for another shot. "Now do what I said and let her go."

Henry was hardly in a position to fight back on a level playing field. He had no defenses against the cold such as he was, and his brain had probably jettisoned 40 IQ points to help his body stave off hypothermia. He tried to relax the death grip on Catherine's fingers and in short order she was free.

"There!" Catherine exclaimed. "He let me go, now honor your promise and unfreeze him."

The hero yanked Catherine behind him as if to shield her from the cold mist sublimating off of Henry. "Don't worry, miss. I, Mr. Perfection , will protect you!"

Mr. Perfection? Henry nearly gagged, wondering if hubris was this man's kryptonite.

"I don't need protecting," Catherine said, struggling to free herself. "He wasn't hurting me. You're supposed to be a hero; help him!"

"Stand back," the hero -- Henry was not going to refer to him as Perfection -- posed. With one hand he swept Catherine behind him while he used the other to aim the freeze ray at Henry.

There was a blast of light and heat. No longer frozen in place, Henry felt every muscle relax in exhaustion. His jelly legs dumped him unceremoniously into a heap on the ground.

Catherine called out to him, but Henry was too dazed to reply coherently. He merely moaned noncommittally as his body tried to schedule when it would begin thinking about how to move again.

"And now, fair Catherine, I think I deserve a kiss as my reward," the hero announced.

Henry couldn't have heard correctly, because heros didn't expect rewards. Or their idea of reward was something altruistically stupid like witnessing good triumph over evil. People didn't get into hero work for the diamonds or the action figures or the naming rights, or at least they didn't stay in it if that was their motivation. And they certainly didn't demand kisses; that was creepy and gross.

But Catherine had apparently heard the same thing, because she started to get away from him, saying very stupid things like, "What?" and "You can't mean that."

Henry had grown up knowing one didn't say things like that to a villain. Smart people didn't use phrases like Do your worst or No when a villain was more than capable of doing evil even without provocation. Henry began a mental countdown to whatever fireworks were now coming and wished his limbs would be more responsive.

The hero… the villain… the perfect idiot grabbed Catherine by the waist and launched them both into the air, propelled by Celsia's wind-maker. Henry was flattened by the downdraft, but when the gusts faded to a gentle breeze he was able to get shakily to his feet. He looked in the direction where he had last seen Catherine, carried off by a new evil-doer who had clearly stolen the local hero's hot-and-cold gun and wind-maker.

He had been quite slow in realizing that Perfect Idiot was actually a villain, but Henry was still a villain too. And it was a good thing for Catherine that villains were ferociously territorial.

.o8o.

Knowing he could do little for Catherine while only Henry Tilney, he travelled to his secret lair as fast as he could, listening to the news as he went. If Celsia had been attacked and defeated, he would have expected breathless coverage of the battle but there was silence on that topic. On the other hand, the announcer repeated a story of how a routine press conference at an underfunded shelter had ended dramatically when the mayor's daughter had rescued two children from a rickety jungle gym and had broken her leg in the bargain.

Henry sighed in frustration. In Master Mind's only second fracas with Celsia, he had thrown the fight early and fled the scene. It was a feint, obviously, and he had a drone trail the hero back to her lair and discovered she was secretly Eleanor Vickers, the mayor's daughter. Know your foe had been another one of his father's dictums of successful villainy, which was intended to cover a hero's strengths, weaknesses, and attacks. Henry had taken it one step further but he had no plans to exploit that information; he was a villain but he had boundaries. In general, Henry wanted to keep matters with Celsia strictly professional and figured attacking her civilian identity was a line he didn't want to cross. That had been a big reason why he had vandalized the park the night before the Bettinam-Vickers wedding rather than crashing it the day of when Celsia would be acting as a bridesmaid.

Nothing in the broadcast explained how Perfect Idiot had stolen Celsia's equipment, but at least Henry knew he couldn't count on the hero to save Catherine from this wannabe. It also meant that Henry wasn't going up against Celsia right now, so he had no qualms against sneaking into the hero's lair to hunt down Catherine's abductor.

When it came to it, stealth proved unnecessary. He could have waltzed in wearing tap shoes and strobe lights for all the attention paid to him. Catherine and Perfect Idiot were engaged in a shouting match. Henry could hear her yelling to, "Stop this now!" and, "Let me go!" with enough force to allay Henry's immediate concerns about her wellbeing. Celsia's replacement shouted back that, "You don't understand!" and, "Think about it, Catherine!"

Henry finally got close enough to see the pair. Idiot's mask was off although Henry could only see the back of his head. Catherine tried to project an air of calm but she was red in the face from shouting.

"John, please," she said, striving to be reasonable, "whatever you think you can achieve, this is not the way to do it."

Henry'd had enough. He didn't bother to announce his presence, just fired a tranquilizer that struck Perfect Idiot in his unprotected neck. The man stopped blathering midword and collapsed in a heap. Satisfied with Idiot's initial reaction, Henry strode forward to double-check that a full dose of the drug had been successfully injected. Better safe than sorry was another one of his father's precepts that Henry took to heart.

He paused for a microsecond as he recognized the junior villain as John, Catherine's clingy shadow from the interview. It explained why Henry had been attacked and why Catherine had been abducted, but since Master Mind wouldn't know any of that, he was forced to feign ignorance. Still, he took gruesome delight that John wouldn't wake up any time soon, and would be in pure agony when he did. He picked up the discarded freeze ray and turned his attention to Catherine.

Catherine had yelped in surprise when Mr. Perfection had lost consciousness. When Master Mind picked up the weapon, she looked absolutely panicked, like her situation had gone from bad to worse.

"Are you okay? Did he hurt you? I'm going to try to get you out of there," he said, his tone nothing but professional detachment. As Henry, he'd help her deal with the trauma later (it was called post traumatic stress for a reason) but first things first, he needed to unfreeze her before her ankles suffered frostbite.

She didn't say anything exactly but her throat made frightened little noises. Henry fiddled with the gun, testing it on a spot of the floor before he took aim and fired a hot blast at Catherine's feet.

"Don't try to stand up just yet," he told her when the ice was gone. "Get the circulation flowing for a bit before you try to walk." He'd had the recent experience to guide her.

Catherine nodded, not looking at his face. It was a weirdly purposeful avoidance, as if she might later be able to deny she had ever been near Master Mind if only she didn't look directly at him. She wiggled her toes and grimaced at the painful sensation. She gave him a quiet, "Thank you."

"Don't mention it," he told her. Innocent civilians shouldn't be grateful to villains like him.

"What did you do to him?" she asked, her eyes flicked to her abductor.

"Administered a very powerful tranquilizer called Blackout," he replied. "He'll wake up tomorrow with the worst headache he's ever had and he won't be able to remember how he got that way."

Catherine seemed to consider this. "He won't remember he kidnapped me," she concluded.

John wouldn't remember much of the last six to eight hours, but he was still the sort of person who would abduct Catherine if he had the means to do so. And if John had stumbled upon Celsia's hideout this morning or earlier, then he'd still remember he had the means.

"This is important, Catherine. I need you to think carefully," Henry told her. "In all of your conversation, did John mention when he found this place?"

Catherine's head jerked up in surprise and she nearly looked at him until her survival instincts kicked in and forced her head back down. "How do you know our names?"

Henry barely needed to think of an excuse. "You were shouting at each other," he reminded her, "you and John. It's not really a secret at 90 decibels. So what did he tell you before I walked in?"

Catherine was chastened but still answered. "I, I, I don't know," she stuttered. "He didn't say."

"If you had to guess?" he prompted her.

She shrugged, tearful. "Today? Maybe?"

Henry wanted to massage a nascent headache at his temple but he was wearing goggles so he settled for rolling his shoulders. Ambiguity wasn't good; it was really just a synonym for bad. In this case it meant that he needed to have a professional chat with Celsia about whether she had any security system that would have recorded when John first found this place. It would be phenomenal luck if John couldn't remember the break-in, and it would be as much Celsia's problem as his if there was a new villain in town.

"Are you going to drug me too? So I don't remember being kidnapped?" She stared at her feet as she rubbed her ankles.

"No," he said. He didn't want to hurt her and that headache was legendary. Besides, he didn't have an endless supply of tranquilizer and he wanted Catherine walking and talking to help him as needed. "It's for the best that you know exactly what kind of person your friend really is. Not all villains wear goggles."

"Henry!" she exclaimed like an epiphany.

The name came at him unprepared and gave him a visceral twist of panic. "What?" Had she figured him out? Had he given himself away somehow?

"Henry," she said again, less explosive and more expository, "he's my, my friend. We had just finished dinner when John showed up. And then John froze him and just left him there."

As heartwarming as it was to listen to Catherine worry about him, now was not the time. In addition to getting Catherine safely home, he needed to dump the John problem on Celsia.

"He'll be fine," he said distractedly, trying to decide if Celsia was the sort of hero to have a holding cell where he could store John for the night. There had to be at least a closet he could repurpose. Henry needed to talk with Celsia tonight to see if she had security recordings that could pinpoint when John discovered her sanctum so they could determine if the Blackout drug would wipe all traces of the secret or if they needed to get creative. And yes, it might look like John was being kidnapped and held against his will, but that was just karma.

"You don't know that," Catherine told him, still fixated on his civilian self.

"Catherine," he said, trying to sound calm and reassuring rather than cold and menacing, "you were hit by the freeze ray and you're fine. I'm sure this Henry will be the same. Now, before I take you away from here, I need to lock up John so Celsia can deal with him later. Stay put a bit longer for me."

He would have said more but she had apparently gotten over her earlier aversion and was staring openly at him. It was a little unnerving how she observed him, like she was breaking him down into his component parts. He stalked off before Catherine could say anything else.

He soon found a small room that would serve the purpose and then dragged John into it, ankles first. With the door shut and locked, he sighed wearily and tried to roll the tension from his shoulders. Leaving the would-be villain locked up like this only reinforced that he needed to speak with Celsia as soon as he took care of Catherine.

When he had originally discovered Celsia's civilian identity, he had done a thorough if slightly illegal investigation into the mayor's daughter. As such, he had an aptly named contact -- "Weather Girl" -- on his phone with an unlisted number he had never called. He had never needed to contact her or coordinate with her before now, but short of showing up at her apartment, he didn't know how else to get a message to her. At least Master Mind had the tech back in his lair so he could call her without her being able to trace anything back to him.

Confident that John wouldn't be going anywhere for a while, he decided it was time to get Catherine away from this place. He probably needed to phone her as Henry as soon as Master Mind dropped her off at wherever she asked to go. By remarkable coincidence, he could feel his cell phone vibrating in his pocket. Almost no one had that number and fewer still ever used it.

Like a curious and well-trained idiot, he fished it out and looked at the display: Catherine . He blinked rapidly and tried to decide if this was a conversation he could have now (no, absolutely not) and what possible excuse he could give for not answering immediately or not calling her back as soon as possible (perhaps the freeze gun had drained his battery) before he silenced the call. It was probably the rudest thing he had done all day, barring legitimate villainy. Without waiting for regret to prompt him to do something foolish like send her an apologetic text, he shoved the phone back in its pocket.

"Are you ready to go?" he called out to Catherine as he strode closer.

She yelped in response and put her own phone away, then nodded mutely and trailed after him as meek as a lamb. He led her to a vehicle that looked like a nondescript minivan on the outside. The thing was so dull-looking that it actively repelled attention; in that respect, it was nearly invisible. The inside, however, was a completely different story and he had the satisfaction of seeing Catherine's mouth fall open in awe as he ushered her into the passenger seat. He didn't bother with a blindfold because he expected Celsia would move her hideout very soon now that she knew it had been discovered. And he believed that blindfolding Catherine after she had already seen everything was pointless theater.

They had a terse conversation in which she gave him an address at which to drop her, and then they were in motion.

"So what's going to happen to John?" she asked timidly.

"That depends," said Henry. "I need to talk with Celsia and see if she can pinpoint when John figured out where her lair is. If it was this afternoon, then the Blackout drug should make him forget all about it. Otherwise, it's a great deal more complicated and I'm sure Celsia will want to take the hero's highroad which puts you at higher risk."

"Do you think he'll kidnap me again?"

"Celsia will protect you from John," he told her with confidence. "Now that she knows about the two of you, she'll keep an eye on the situation." If the hero wasn't going to speedily resolve the problem, she could hardly abandon an innocent civilian to evil machinations.

"What about you?" Catherine asked.

"She'll protect you from me as well," he said.

Catherine frowned with her whole face, from her lips to her eyebrows. "No, I mean, will you protect me?"

Henry made a few abortive choking sounds but the vehicle had enough collision detection software to avoid crashing into anything while he paid no attention to the road. "No. That's not… I don't," he tried to explain. "Are you, are you serious? Have you any idea who I am? I'm not one of the good guys; I'm evil, I was raised to be a villain. And one happy accident isn't going to override a lifetime of conditioning."

His words were harsher than he intended but he couldn't exactly walk them back and still prove his point. Instead, he sat like some miserable gargoyle, a true credit to his father, eyes forward and hands on the wheel.

Silence fell over them, thick and oppressive until she called out a turn. It wasn't the way Henry was planning on going, but he complied because he was sure he had scared her enough for one night.

"Drop me off here," she said, pointing to an open spot along the curb.

He pulled in and then waited patiently for her to leave. She fidgeted a bit, her hand on the door, until she blurted out, "Thank you. Thank you for everything you did tonight."

The gratitude made his skin crawl with an unfamiliar sensation. "Don't thank me," he told her. "I'm not a hero."

"Well, you kinda are," she pointed out as if to spite him, "to me."

He wanted to warn her against disagreeing with people like him. No matter her moral convictions or abstract principles, it was needlessly reckless. Heaven knew Henry had plenty of practice in silencing his own ethical conscience with his father; he could give Catherine lessons in how to behave. And speaking of his father, if the General ever heard of tonight's escapades, there would be more trouble than Henry wanted to deal with.

He needed her to realize the danger. Surely she would be careful to avoid it if he just explained it to her.

"Catherine," he said, preparing for a lecture.

"Henry," she parroted back.

"What?" He couldn't have heard her correctly. He prayed it was some by random auditory hallucination.

Catherine looked through the one-way glass as traffic flowed around them, pedestrians on one side and cars on the other. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to figure it out," she said in a small, contrite voice.

"How?" he sputtered.

She looked at him like the answer was obvious to anyone paying attention. "Your costume -- the goggles and the hood --" she said, pointing to her own eyes and hair -- "they're really effective at obscuring your identity. I mean, I had no idea. When I met you at the coffee shop, it didn't even occur to me. But then I must have spent most of dinner just staring at your mouth and that's like the one part of Master Mind's face that I can see. And, well, once you know what to look for, you can't not see it."

It was a testament to his father's training that Henry briefly thought of the tranq gun before dismissing the idea out of hand. He didn't want to hurt Catherine. He didn't want to make her forget. But he did need her to be smart.

"I won't tell anyone. I'll keep your secret," she volunteered. "It's just, after today, I can't think of you as a villain anymore. You said it yourself: not all villains wear goggles, and not all heroes wear capes. Sometimes it's the hero who wears the goggles instead."

He started to protest.

"You saved me, Henry," she told him, the words weighted with importance. "So many little things you could have done differently and you chose the hero's path. You're not evil, and I have a bone to pick with whoever tricked you into believing otherwise."

That indignation on his behalf? That was funny. He laughed and it released some of the tension he had been carrying. "Remind me never to introduce you to my father," he said. He couldn't imagine how such a meeting would go down except in flames.

"So," Catherine began as she thought through his words and came up with the best interpretation, "does that mean I'm going to see you again? I mean, I still owe you, like, a coffee or a tea or something. It's not smart to be indebted to a guy with his own EMP generator."

She gave him what he could only interpret as a flirtatious grin and he smiled back. After everything, if she didn't have a problem with his hobby, why should he let it get in the way of spending time with her?

"Saturday, ten o'clock, same place as we first met."

Catherine gave out a girlish noise of victory and pressed a quick kiss into his cheek. "It's a date," she confirmed. "Text me when you get home, yeah? I don't want to be up all night worrying about you." She then slipped out of the car and onto the sidewalk, waving to him as she walked away.

Henry huffed a sigh, too pleased with this cock-up of an evening for his own good. There would be plenty of negative consequences from this night, but he couldn't bring himself to regret it. Instead, he maneuvered his vehicle into traffic and headed home. He had a hero to call, and a text to send.