Shark Tank

“Come on, talk to me already!” I said as I pounded my fist on the glass. “You lost, so just give it up!”

“Ha!” Land Shark just laughed at me, her new orange jumpsuit clearly clashing with her usual appearance. She turned her head and glared at me with her bright emerald eyes. It was a huge struggle to get her to be still long enough to remove the goggles and mask from her, but we couldn’t risk that the Puppeteer had some kind of communication device in it. “You think I don’t know how to handle an interrogation?”

“I’m telling you, just let me in at her. I’ll have her squealing in no time,” Regina said as she flexed her fingers.

“You know why we can’t,” Shayna said as she rubbed her temples. “We’ve been over this yesterday and I’ll say it again. Land Shark is far too strong for any of us to fight. Even Hera struggled against her.”

It has been about three days since my fight with Land Shark, and we haven't made any progress. Unlike Felicia, who I was able to recover a bit of her true self, I hadn’t been able to bring that out in Land Shark. This new personality that the Puppeteer put in was much stronger.

“A good fucking will get her talking, and we’ll have Hera and all you girls to back me up,” Regina said as she not so subtly pushed her tits against the glass for Land Shark’s amusement. However, all that did was give Land Shark a target, as she lunged towards the glass, causing Regina to stumble back a bit. “We’re sure this thing will hold her?”

“Sure as hell will,” Mark said as he patted the cage. “Even the great Comrade Catherine would be held in here, and she can wrestle polar bears like they’re teddies.”

“How exactly did you two come across this technology anyways?” I asked. “I mean, stuff like this is usually reserved for Babel protocols.”

“Trade secret,” Shayna said as she put her finger to her lips. “We might be teammates, but we’re not spilling the beans quite yet.”

“Anyways, what are we going to do about her?” Regina said as she pointed to Land Shark, sticking her tongue out at her. Land Shark responded by doing the same, showing off her pointed teeth.

I sighed and rubbed the bridge of my nose. “Well, for now, we’ll just have to keep trying to get a breakthrough. There has to be some way.”

“Isn’t your fancy little magic gadget supposed to be able to do that?” Shayna asked, pointing at the ring.

“I told you, I’m not strong enough yet to break it,” I said as I gently rubbed the Reality Ring. “Whoever is doing this is clearly above a Level 7 Super.”

“Then how did you manage to break through to Friendly Paws?” Mark asked, still a bit confused about how the magic and everything worked.

“I’m honestly not sure. Maybe she was one of the first and therefore didn’t have as strong of a hold on her?” I say, theorizing. “There’s still a lot that we don’t know."

"Aren't you some kind of superfan, though? I thought you would know all the dirty little secrets," Regina said with a wink and a nudge.

I groaned at her. "At best, I'm an amateur journalist when it comes to knowing about supers; I’m not some kind of expert in the field.”

“An expert?” Felicia perked up, tapping on the glass of her cage. “Wait a minute, I think I might know a guy.”

“Oh?” I said, excitedly moving over to her cage. Not just excited because we might have some kind of lead, but also just because I really enjoy getting to talk to Felicia. She’s gotten more and more control now, but it’s still only for minutes at a time. “Well, don’t keep us waiting.”

“Well, I don’t know too much about the man. We all just kinda called him Professor Gear. He made a lot of our equipment and stuff,” Felicia said as she mimicked having her special gloves. “As a result, he had to do a lot of intense tests on us to figure out limits and all sorts of things to better build us stuff. If anyone’s gonna have in-depth knowledge about the Twelve, he’s your man.”

“That’s amazing, Felicia!” I said in a cheery voice. “Where can we find him?”

“Uhhhh…” Her voice trailed off as she scratched the back of her head. “Well, most private life info is kept classified, even from us. I only know his codename and that he worked at the Legendary HQ. Other than that, I don’t know much.”

“So, what?” Shayna asked, a bit annoyed at the lack of information. “We’re just supposed to waltz into the Legendary HQ and ask around for a Professor Gear?”

“No, we definitely need a more subtle approach,” I said, thinking. “But, this is good. We have a lead that we can follow.”

“Speaking of leads though, you need to be more on guard.” Felicia’s expression turned stern and serious. “Two of the Twelve have gone missing in this sector; one from here and another that came here. That’s going to raise some alerts and attention here. If you all aren’t careful, the rest of them might swarm the city.”

“I guess we’ll have to lay low for awhile,” I said.

“Actually, that might be a bad idea,” Mark said. “We need to keep up some kind of semblance of normalcy. Otherwise, we might get people snooping and figuring things out.”

“Wait, what do you mean?” I asked.

Regina came up and put her arm around me, chuckling. “You haven’t figured it out yet?