Chapter 15: Mall Madness

By a/k/a Simon
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There isn’t a lot of supervillain activity in Putnam. Like rats and cockroaches, supervillains tend to stay confined to more urban settings. However, also like rodents and bugs, supervillains have been known to cause trouble outside the city limits from time to time.

When this happens it’s usually a catastrophe, the local cops ill-equipped to deal with such extraordinary criminals. If they took more time to think about it, supervillains might be more interested in the suburbs, with their smaller, less skilled police forces and the absence of any real superheroes. As it is, the fast money and the seats of power are more readily available in the cities, thus making them more enticing targets for the superpowered thief looking for the big score or the evil mastermind out for world domination. All the suburbs have to offer is a lower cost of living, more space to build, and fresh air.

Shadowclaw wasn’t in the suburbs looking for money or power. He was simply an escaped convict trying to lie low until he could plot his next scheme. With contacts in the area he hoped to hide out for a few more days. Local mom and pop stores would know everyone in town. When he needed supplies he hoped the anonymity of the mall would work in his favor. What he didn’t count on was an overweight mall security guard, who happened to be a fan of America’s Most Wanted, picking his face out of the crowd. Even more than that, he didn’t expect the guard to do anything about it. Mall cops didn’t even carry guns. Turns out, a walkie-talkie can be just as much trouble.

The kiosk crashed into the Victory Gate and shattered it to pieces. Eddie instinctively lunged out of the way, quickly turning his head back to follow the action. He saw Ryan and the guard that had stopped their almost-fight standing there, frozen in fear. As parts of the Gate sprayed through the air, the guard broke from his paralysis and pushed Ryan to the ground, covering him with his arm as he pulled his blazer over his head. All around, panicked shoppers scattered, sending chaos down each branch of the shopping complex. The east entrance was within eyesight and Eddie could see as people shoved each other trying to exit the building. He was struck by how crazed the people were. City people had almost taken superpowered events as an expected part of their environment, like panhandling homeless people or taxicabs almost running you over as you tried to cross the street. These mall patrons were maybe seeing their first real live supervillain ever. How quickly they found out what real panic was.

“Clear! Clear out!” The rotund security guard who had identified Shadowclaw came running into the scene, flailing his arms about, trying to disperse the shoppers. He was breathing heavy from the exertion, sweat pouring off his brow and dampening the front of his shirt around his stomach. A trickle of blood ran down from his hairline, across his right cheek, which was swollen and bruised. “This is Halgren,” he yelled into his radio. “I’m at the crossroads. We have a positive ID on Shadowclaw.”

“Who?” a voice crackled in confusion.

“Shadowclaw. The supervillain. Don’t you watch the news?”

“Have you been drink—?” The voice stopped short. “Wait, I’ve got it on the monitor. Calling for backup.”

“What should I do? This wasn’t in the training manual?”

The voice took a moment to think. “Get everyone clear. And try not to provoke him.”

Halgren looked at the radio, his expression reacting to the idiocy of the voice’s suggestion. He stuffed the walkie-talkie back into the holster and took in the situation. On the ground, in front of the Victory Gate, he recognized his fellow security guard, Anders. Standing between Anders and him, Shadowclaw was dressed in normal-looking clothes, a brown leather bomber jacket, jeans, and boots. Nothing about the way he dressed said ‘supervillain’. What did announce his occupation, were the two swirling masses of Dark Matter that began at the tips of his fingers and misted up to the sky, forming enormous, monstrous hands, a bench in one, the other ripping tubes of light from the ceiling. It was destruction for the sake of spectacle, a common supervillain game.

Shadowclaw turned around, having heard everything Halgren said. His eyes were blank, yellow, and oozing darkness at the corners. When he smiled at the guard the blackness wafted out of his mouth like chilled breath on a cold day. “Back again?” he asked mockingly. “Didn’t you learn your lesson the first time? It’s no fun playing hero.” The villain waved his right hand through the air, pulling the Dark Matter hand with it. Halgren backed away, too slowly to help in any way. Helpless, he stood there as ebony fingers closed around him, dissolving into a solid form once the grip was tight. Pressure increased as the Dark Matter squeezed him tighter. He wondered if this was how it was going to end, if Shadowclaw planned to squash him like a snake constricting around captured prey.

“Relax,” Shadowclaw said. “I’m not a murderer. Not if I don’t have to be, anyway.” Halgren breathed a sigh of relief, before being tossed a hundred feet and through the front display window of Fashion Bug Plus. Shadowclaw exhaled, bored, and wondered what was next.

The villain turned his attention to Ryan and the cowering security guard Anders, who had backed themselves up against the wall that surrounded the ruins of the Victory Gate. The Dark Matter hands retracted into Shadowclaw’s fingertips. He crossed his arms and approached the two. “I come to the mall to do a little shopping and look at what happens. It’s really too bad. Dirty Harry over there,” with a head tick he motioned to Halgren, unconscious amidst a pile of broken mannequins and torn blouses, “never stood a chance against me. Maybe he should have watched the entire television show instead of getting up for another snack break.” He bent down to be at eye level with Anders. “What kind of shows do you like?” he asked, with a suspiciously friendly tone. His gaze was fixed. He expected an answer.

Anders was on the verge of tears. Being a mall security guard was just a part-time job for him, a way to make a little extra cash heading into the Christmas season. Usually the complaint is that the holidays come on too fast. Now, December seemed so far away.

Shadowclaw nodded his head. “It’s okay to answer,” he assured him.

Anders’ eyes shifted back and forth, his lower lip quivered. “I—I mostly watch sitcoms. Everybody Loves Raymond, King of Queens, that sort of thing.”

A grin stretched across the villain’s face. “Comedy,” he said. “Well, it is good to laugh. Life can be so depressing sometimes.” Turning to Ryan, “and what about you?”

Ryan was shivering, a sharp contrast to the strong presence he was always cautious to maintain. His eyes kept shooting over to Eddie, expectantly. Shadowclaw noticed the repeated action and took notice of Eddie, lying on the floor twenty feet away. Most everyone was making a dash for the door. Why was this one staying behind?

“What are you waiting for?” Ryan yelled to Eddie. “You’re the superhero. Do something!”

“A superhero?” Shadowclaw echoed, intrigued by the turn of events. He stood up straight and walked over to Eddie. As he approached, a trail of Dark Matter slipped from his hand and slithered around Ryan, closing in on him and lifting him into the air. “Are we going to fight now?” he asked Eddie, matter-of-factly.

Eddie stayed silent. Throughout the last few days he’d faced situations that seemed unusual to him. The verbal games of a supervillain were something he was more than familiar with.

“Help me!” Ryan yelled, dangling in the air, engulfed in blackness.

“Yes, help him,” Shadowclaw taunted, “superhero.”

“I’m just here shopping,” Eddie said, helpless to do anything against a being such as this. The villain laughed, thick puffs of darkness exhaling out with every chuckle.

From outside the mall could be heard the squeals of approaching police cars. Every available unit in Putnam was arriving on the scene, with reinforcements from five other neighboring towns on the way. Heavy footsteps pattered across the roof, the shadow of men casting through the skylight and onto the floor below. One by one, every exit was being sealed off.

Shadowclaw looked around, assessing, his mind working out an escape plan. “Idiots,” he said more to himself. “I’m not letting a bunch of glorified cowboys take me back.” In his search for a solution he caught sight of Anders, attempting to sneak away. “You!” he yelled, calling down the tremendous hand, taking up Anders and pressing his body against Ryan’s. The thread of Dark Matter shortened, bringing the pair closer to the source of the evil power. “You’re a security guard here. Tell me what other exits there are besides the main ones.”

Anders sniveled, sucking nervous snot back into his nose, tears glistening his face. “Th—there’s a se—security entrance ne—next to the Belden Jewelers.”

“Thank you,” Shadowclaw said. “You’ve been very helpful. You live.” He let Anders’ body slip through the dark vice. The security guard fell to the ground and looked up. From his mouth Shadowclaw spit a glob of Dark Matter, hitting Anders in the middle of his forehead, knocking the guard out cold. “Can’t have you suddenly developing a spine, though.”

“What about me?” Ryan pleaded.

“You,” Shadowclaw said, then looked again at Eddie and scooped up the former hero, bringing him in physical contact with Ryan “and your consumer hero, here, are coming with me. The cops might risk taking a shot at a security guard, line of duty and all that, but they wouldn’t dare risk capping a couple of civilians. Think of the PR nightmare.”

Two dozen police officers stormed in through the east entrance of the Victory Gate mall. Using his other hand, Shadowclaw picked up a nearby Sunglass Hut cart and launched it at the assembly of law enforcement, knocking them all to the ground in a single stroke.


Dark Matter pinned Eddie and Ryan against the dumpster outside the food court end of the shopping center. Random french fries, taco shells, pickles, and a vomitous beige sludge littered the ground around and underneath them. The stench of decaying fast food and other consumer refuse made the air almost unbreathable. All around, the sounds of sirens blared, some near, some far. It was dark by now, visibility limited to the light of outlying stores and the oscillation of red and blue concentrated near the main entrances to the mall.

Shadowclaw was ducked behind the wall separating the dumpster from the back parking lot, poking his head out quickly to catch glimpses of the scene. He thought about the city, and how much easier it was to lose oneself in a back alley or down a subway tunnel. Escape was simple in a metropolitan setting, options plentiful. What he was facing now was a vast parking lot, bordered by a field to one side and a sparsely populated condominium complex to the other. The only other direction was the highway, which left him standing in the middle of the road, in the dark, with cars passing by at sixty miles an hour. Any escape involving the highway would be a messy one and would no doubt lead to a car chase, something he was never good at. He was left with the condos. If he could get to the condos then there was a chance he could hide out in one of them, or maybe steal a car and sneak away undetected. It was not ideal, but then he never expected to get spotted at the mall.

“You’re kind of stuck,” Eddie observed. “Aren’t you?” It was a gamble to taunt the supervillain. But Eddie could tell that Shadowclaw was, as he himself had said earlier, not a killer. This was a common thief, or possibly a thug. His powers seemed impressive to normal people, but they were really just simple brute force. There was nothing sophisticated about the way he used them, tossing objects and smacking people around. He talked a good game, came off as intelligent by the way that he spoke, but Shadowclaw was a wholly unspectacular criminal. He wasn’t going to kill anyone and he hadn’t thought out his plan. If irritated enough, a simple-minded villain will start to make mistakes, hopefully a mistake the police could capitalize on. It was the only thing Eddie could think to do.

“Quiet,” Shadowclaw ordered. “Don’t make me show you what I’m really capable of.”

“I’m just saying, you seemed to be low on options. You’re not thinking of making a run for the condos,” Eddie said, as if it were the stupidest idea ever thought of.

“Would you shut up!” Ryan barked. “You’re going to get us killed.”

Eddie looked down at Ryan’s leg. A dark patch spread across his right thigh. He had pissed himself, the fear causing him to lose control of his bodily functions. Ryan’s eyes were bugging out of his head, his skin white, lips turning purple as he bordered on hyperventilating. “He’s not going to kill us,” Eddie whispered to him, a futile attempt to ease his worry.

“You should listen to your friend,” Shadowclaw said to Eddie, not hearing what he’d told Ryan. “That mouth of yours could get you into trouble. Especially since you don’t have any powers anymore.”

“How do you know that?” Eddie asked, surprised that this otherwise dim criminal would come to such a logical conclusion. The more he could keep Shadowclaw talking, the less time the villain would spend thinking of an escape plan.

“Obviously, if you had powers, you would have used them by now. Unless, of course, they’re really pathetic powers and you realized you’re outmatched.” He was still darting his head out from behind the wall as he talked.

“Who says I even ever had powers?” Eddie continued, coaxing more conversation.

Shadowclaw turned from the wall and regarded the verbose captive. “I assume this gentleman here,” he pointed to Ryan, “knows you, but not very well. Maybe he knows you used to be a superhero and thinks you still have powers. Or maybe he’s just stupid. I don’t really care. The point is, I’ve got you pinned against a dumpster, and if you had powers right now, that wouldn’t be the case. Now would it?”

The villain gave a look that said he was proud of himself, having caught Eddie in a web of logic, seemingly winning the battle of words they had engaged in. Of course, Eddie’s goal all along had been to keep Shadowclaw occupied until something could happen. He looked at the roof, only ten feet high and fifteen feet away.

“Or maybe I was just waiting for the right time to use them,” Eddie said. Shadowclaw stood there, his back to the roof, confused by Eddie’s sudden pomp.

“Heads up!” a gravelly voice from overhead warned. In the night sky a dense figure leapt from the mall roof, in mid-air his body curled into a ball. Parking lot lights danced across his rocky, round form as it soared down and crashed into the villain, knocking him to the ground. Dazed, Shadowclaw staggered to his feet. Before him, a boulder rolled across the pavement and came to rest. The stony sphere unfurled, massive arms and solid legs spreading out from the sides. Atop a thick, granite trunk was the smiling head of a man, his body language taunting the supervillain to respond.

Shadowclaw was out of sorts. It was becoming more and more clear that he didn’t have an expert rating as a supervillain. Never mind that the best villains wouldn’t allow themselves to be distracted by the ridicule of a hostage, even semi-competent bad guys react to the initial attack of a hero faster. Whoever this super-type was, he was going to make quick work of Shadowclaw.


Less than a minute later it was over. Eddie thought of that old bully joke, ‘there’s only going to be two hits; me hitting you and you hitting the floor’. That was essentially what happened. Shadowclaw was no good in a strength match against someone who knew what he was doing. As it turns out, Sledgehog, the hero who defeated him, had also been responsible for every one of Shadowclaw’s previous arrests. Once he’d heard that Albert Mendelhaus had escaped from the BOX, he knew where Shadowclaw would be going and knew it was only a short matter of time before the guy made a stupid mistake. To Sledgehog victory was becoming almost tedious.

As dull as the hero made it sound, Eddie still envied every second of the short battle he had witnessed. Despite the brave face he put on, diverting Shadowclaw’s attention while others could act, he felt terrible about having someone else come to his rescue.

On top of everything, the experience did nothing to teach Ryan a lesson. “You tell anyone I pissed myself,” he warned, as the police arrived to collect statements, “and I’ll kick your fucking ass.” Eddie wondered if there was room enough in the police wagon for two.

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