Hey there, friends!

It's time for more bonus content! The following scenes are from chapters 3 & 4 of The Supervillain and Me, but this time they're told from Iron Phantom's point of view. As long as you've already read the first few chapters of Supervillain, then you won't find any spoilers. :)

And just a reminder that The Supervillain and Me is now available in paperback!!!! The best part about the paperback is that is has some super awesome extras attached, including a Q&A, a list of Red Comet's Superhero Essentials, and also a never-before-read bonus scene that you won't be able to find anywhere else! So if you like that sort of awesomeness, visit the links in my profile to get a copy!

And now for the fun stuff...

Enjoy your trip inside the mind of everyone's favorite supervillain/vigilante/sweet cinnamon roll, Iron Phantom.

~~~~~~~

IRON PHANTOM

My super suit was chafing me in some seriously strange places.

They don't tell you that when you buy it. The chafing, I mean. They don't tell you much of anything, really. I guess they wouldn't. I ordered the suit online, so there wasn't exactly human contact involved. Secret identities need to stay secret, and people tend to ask questions if they see a teenage kid shelling out his entire allowance to play vigilante. (Except, of course, during the mishap I had last week when I took the suit to the local dry cleaners. The only question the manger there kept asking me was why I wanted him to launder my footie pajamas, which was both a relief and an embarrassment.)

Though to protect myself, I didn't tell anyone the truth of what I was up to, and in return, no one told me about the chafing. It wasn't a fair trade, but in this line of work we didn't exactly have a form handy to lodge a complaint about this kind of stuff.

But damn, was it uncomfortable.

And humiliating. Like, how is it possible for spandex to rub right in the crevice between your—?

You know what, never mind. I pushed the horrific image away as I crept into the mayor's office. The room was deserted except for a hulking wooden desk, grand enough to make the US president's desk look like a toddler's plastic playset. Claw feet dug into the carpet, ornate floral carvings snaked their way up and down the sides, and dozens of polished handles gleamed in the lamplight. I knew it would fetch a pretty penny on the internet. A pompous statue of a bald eagle taking flight sat on top, keeping watch over a holiday photograph of Mayor Hamilton's kids. The girl was smiling wide at the camera, ringlets of blonde hair framing rosy cheeks. The boy was giving the girl bunny ears. Classy.

I ran my fingers over the desk's edge. It looked like it might have been made from ash. I hoped it had been made from ash. Because I needed something that would burn hot and long. No exceptions.

City hall was up to something, and if I had a chance in hell of figuring out what that something was, then I needed the world's greatest distraction.

This is such a horrible idea.

For the record, I never intended to become a criminal. But once you put on that suit and that mask it does something strange to your inhibitions—or lack thereof. The suit made me feel invincible. But, you know, still stupid.

I'm an idiot. I'm an idiot. I'm an idiot. The chant rang through my head while I struck the match and dropped it on the desk, the flame obscuring the girl's frozen smile. Her rosy cheeks. The laughter in the boy's eyes. Then my gaze swung to the office wall, to a photo of Mayor Hamilton holding the key to Morriston in his grubby hands. I didn't know if he was involved in this madness or not, but with the microchip burning a hole in my pocket I found that I didn't care.

Arson be damned.

This chip, whatever it was, could lead to destruction in the wrong hands. To oppression. Anger burned beneath my skin, tingling like the powers that I'd grown so accustomed to using over the past eight years. I would end this. And whoever was responsible—I would end them too.

But... I couldn't do it alone.

The flames grew, flickering around the office. Sparking and popping like a symphony. Five different alarms began screaming—two outside the office doors, three in the streets in front of city hall. Clouds of smoke mushroomed through the air. I couldn't stay much longer.

Summoning the reserve of power that lurked just beneath my skin, I homed in on my destination and felt my body fold into the void of teleportation. Just before expanse of blackness swallowed me completely, I caught the glass from the picture frame on the desk glint one final time.

Maybe I couldn't solve this mystery alone, but I might stand a chance if I had a partner.

~~~~~~~

I wasn't a stalker.

Okay, I know that's like the quintessential stalker thing to say, but really. I wasn't a stalker.

Really.

I mean, anyone with half a brain could have found out her address. She was the mayor's daughter after all. And all right, maybe not anyone could have teleported halfway up the sixty-foot oak tree that was perfectly positioned just outside her window, but would it be fair to neglect the talents that the universe bestowed upon me? Of course not.

So here I was, edging across the branch closest to the house, hoping her window wasn't locked. It wasn't. Good, because A) that would have been embarrassing and B) teleporting inside the house in the middle of the night would definitely qualify as stalker-ish, and I wasn't a stalker, remember?

I hopped off the branch and through the window—almost twisting my ankle in the process. Yeah, that was definitely karma's way of telling me that I was a huge creep and deserved to fall flat on my face. Thanks, Karma. Love you too.

But desperate times called for desperate measures. Besides, the entire city already thought of me as a villain. Might as well play up to their narrative.

"You should really lock your window," I told the girl huddled in bed, blankets wrapped like a burrito around her shoulders. As if that would be enough to protect her. "Dangerous criminals are running rampant around this city, you know."

Her arm twitched almost imperceptibly, but she didn't speak.

I moved cautiously across the bedroom. "Psst. I know you're not sleeping." I placed a hand on her shoulder. "Hey—"

"Get away from me!" she hissed, leaping from the bed like I'd electrocuted her. She whirled around, holding—wait, was that a knife? All right, she was definitely more resourceful than expected, but I couldn't exactly blame her. As long as she didn't throw it, then maybe we could form some kind of kumbaya friendship moment here.

Or I thought we could. Right up until she bent down, grabbed a textbook out of her backpack, and whipped that sucker right at my face.

Wicked arm, I thought as I teleported over a few feet to avoid her new weapon. The book whizzed by, nearly clipping me in the ear, then hit the wall. I stepped on it, claiming it for my own, and I noticed the girl across the room wince in fear.

"Easy there, Bazooka," I laughed. I didn't think I'd ever given anyone a nickname in my life, but I gave one to her, and I almost laughed a second time when her eyebrows crinkled in distaste. The name was fitting whether she liked it or not. After almost accosting me with a knife, I had a sneaking suspicion that, like a bazooka, Abigail Hamilton would soon prove to be the perfect weapon.

Small. Unassuming.

Until she exploded like a rocket launcher and attacked.

I continued to size her up, observing from the shadows, using the darkness in the bedroom to my advantage so that I could study her without her getting a close look at me. We had met before, of course, but she didn't know who I truly was, and I didn't exactly know much about her either. If this plan of mine was going to work, then that needed to change.

Here were the (very limited) facts that I'd gathered about Abigail Hamilton so far:

1) Spunky. Snarky. Could throw a textbook like a pro and knee a mugger in the groin, but couldn't necessarily throw a punch at said mugger or work up the guts to throw a knife at a supervillain. The later I was rather thankful for, to be honest.

2) I wasn't here to do anything more than coerce her into being my city hall informant, but it didn't escape my notice that, well, she was really pretty. Prettier than in the photograph on her father's desk. More real, just as she had been when I met her yesterday, with her hair in tangled curls and the redness from lack of sleep dotting the corners of her eyes as the moonlight flashed across them.

3) She smelled sweet. Like peaches or pomegranates or something stupid that had nothing to do with the reason I was here in the first place, so I was just going to ignore that fact entirely.

I smiled at her a little, grinning even wider when her fists clenched and the blade of her knife flashed silver in the dark. "I'm not allowed to pay a visit to the damsel in distress I rescued?" I asked.

If looks could kill, then Abigail would have one badass superpower. "No." She scowled. "Why don't you pay a visit to one of the people who almost burned alive today in the fire that you set instead?" She snatched the note I'd left her earlier in the day off her nightstand, waving it through the air. "And how do you know where I live?"

"Oh, good. You got it." Frowning, I noticed the unopened chocolate bar I'd given her along with the note. Forget me committing arson, she was the real criminal here for daring to leave a piece of chocolate untouched. "You didn't eat it?" I asked. "It's not poisoned."

Abigail looked down at the chocolate. Looked back up at me. Blinked.

"It's not poisoned," I repeated. "And maybe I know where you live because maybe I followed you here last night to make sure you got back safe."

See? See? Let me say it one more time for the people in the back:

I. Was. Not. A. Stalker.

But Abigail didn't look like she agreed. I saw her fingers tighten around the hilt of the knife. Then, without ceremony, she sucked in a breath, puffed out her chest, and screeched, "Da—"

Oh no. Not her father. I wanted to have more than a few words with that man, but definitely not like this. Lunging for her bed, I grabbed a pillow and chucked it at her. It smacked her stomach, then fell limply to the floor.

"Shh! What are you doing?" I demanded.

"Getting help. What are you doing?"

"Getting you to shut up. If you were really in danger, wouldn't a super have come to rescue you already?"

"I..." Her gaze pierced mine through the dark, as if she could see the real guy underneath the mask. I reminded myself that she couldn't know. I was disguising my voice, standing ramrod straight, exuding more authority than I ever did in the real world. Here, I was Iron Phantom. I wasn't... that other guy.

"Wave that butter knife around all you want," I growled, dropping my voice an octave lower, and stepped toward her, "but if you were really scared, you would have thrown that at me, not the book. Actually, if you were really scared, you would have grabbed a larger knife."

She stayed quiet. And, as expected, the knife stayed firmly clutched in her fist.

"Fine. You don't trust me. I get it. But I wasn't trying to hurt anyone today. You don't understand why I did it." I turned to a cluster of pictures on her desk, examining one of her and her friend Sarah smiling on the beach. Why did I do it? Out of anger, obviously. Revenge. Because I knew that while wearing this suit I could do anything I wanted and no one would know my name. But there was something else, something deeper. I burned down the office out of fear. I was afraid the microchip would harm me, but more than that, I was afraid it would harm people like Abigail and Sarah—people who had no clue what was even coming.

Abigail's voice was soft when she finally spoke, curious. "Make me understand."

I turned away from her photographs, pressing my palms to my eyes. "Look, I didn't want to hurt anyone. I was trying to send a message."

"To who?"

Who indeed. I responded by reaching into my suit pocket and presenting her with the small square microchip. I could tell she couldn't see it well in the dark, so I stepped closer, leaning across her bed toward where she stood against the wall.

"What do you know about microchips?"

"Pretty much nothing," she said. "Why?"

I watched her intently, trying to decipher her body language, her eye contact, trying to figure out if she was lying. I didn't think she was. "Here's the issue," I said. "I've seen microchips like this before. This looks like a tracking device, the kind that can be implanted under a person's skin, and believe me, there are plenty more where this one came from. But whether they're for people like you or for people like me, I can't say."

"People like you? Supers?" Her eyes widened with alarm. "Someone wants to follow the supers . . . to find out who they are?"

"Maybe more," I said. "To capture them, to control them, to test them. Use your imagination, Bazooka. Or maybe they're to spy on the rest of Morriston for some inane reason. I don't know. I'm really just spitballing here. You see, this particular microchip is actually empty on the inside." I dug my thumb into the side of the chip, popping it open and showing her the obvious lack of tech hiding within. "From my experience, that's not normal. I want to know what should be there and why it's not. That's where you come in. Think of it as your . . . supersecret mission." I wiggled my fingers—jazz hands always appealed to a theatre kid like her—trying to really sell the idea (because at the moment it was the only idea I had). And I knew I looked like a dork, but hey, I was also dressed head-to-toe in chafing spandex. No matter how cool and anonymous I felt, I supposed the Dork Ship had already set sail.

Much to my disappointment, Abigail didn't seem to find the jazz hands all that impressive. "I don't want a supersecret mission," she said.

"Too bad. I need you to find out what's up. But don't ask your dad outright. Be sneaky about it, because if someone catches on, I'm not sure it would be a good thing."

"Wait, wait, wait. Hold up. My father?"

"Yeah, your father. I may be new to the whole superhero gig, but I'm not stupid. I knew last night you were the mayor's daughter." I dropped the chip back into my suit, zipping the pocket to keep it safe and sound. "And I also stole this little guy from his office this morning," I added as an afterthought. But really I just needed to get a rise out of her. I needed to get her invested in this plan.

Success. I saw Abigail's arm twitch, and she almost—almost—threw the knife. "You are no hero," she spit out, her voice as well as her entire body shaking like a leaf stuck in a hurricane.

I pointed at my suit, egging her on. "Is that so? The costume begs to differ."

"A hero wouldn't have burned down city hall. You're a villain."

Now, now, Abigail. Name calling isn't very nice. But if she wanted a villain, I could certainly give her one.

Rolling my eyes, I teleported to her side of the bed, clamping a hand over her mouth. Her breath came out in warm, quick pants against my skin.

"Abigail," I begged her to understand. "I'm not the bad guy. I'm not a villain. If I wanted to hurt you, I would have done it already."

Something I said made her go completely still. For a moment I thought it was a trick. Maybe she was challenging me to let my guard down so she could bite my finger off. Or try to call for her dad again, or her brother. But she just stood there, as if she'd forgotten how to speak. She wasn't looking at me with disgust anymore, like I was an insect stuck to the bottom of her shoe. But she also wasn't looking at me like she trusted me either.

The scowl on her face made my heart sink. I had done a lot of bad things recently, but I wasn't a bad person. Iron Phantom wasn't a villain, like all of Morriston said. He wasn't a hero either. Iron Phantom, or me, or whoever I was now... I was exactly like the massive fire I'd set in Mayor Hamilton's office. I didn't want to be extinguished by a microchip. I just wanted to survive. I had survived so much already.

"Someone in city hall is clearly up to something," I said at last. "I need you to help me."

"Absolutely not." The insect-stuck-to-the-bottom-of-her-shoe look was back.

"Please. Please, I need you to see if you can find out anything about the microchips. I'll be back again in a few days."

"Why should I help you? You could have killed somebody today."

"You should help me," I said, "because as much as you hate to admit it, you already trust me."

She seethed. "I do not—"

"You do." Or I hoped she did. Her refusal to murder me was a good omen, at least. After all...

"You haven't stabbed me with that knife yet." I smiled at her. "You didn't run for help or try to force me to leave. Instead, you listened to what I had to say. You trust me." I nodded toward her nightstand. "You should try the chocolate. I've had, like, three bars today. It's really good."

With those final parting words, I teleported from her side, exchanging the darkness of her bedroom for the bright lights glowing in mine. As I tossed my mask on the edge of my desk and unhooked the straps securing the plates of black armor across my shoulders, I felt an impossibly large grin bloom across my lips. Try as I might, I couldn't rein it in. This plan of mine, this silly little idea ripped from thin air and conceived in Mayor Hamilton's office, was going to work. And it wasn't because his daughter was one of the most beguiling girls I'd ever met. I certainly wasn't thinking about that. And as I crossed my room and fell face-first onto my mattress with a groan, I certainly wasn't thinking about the warmth in my cheeks, the thud in my chest, the anticipation of getting a chance to spend more time with her. I certainly wasn't thinking about how, somewhere all the way on the opposite side of the city, she might have been thinking about me too.

No. I wasn't thinking about any of that at all.

Pulling out the microchip, I rolled the metal square between my fingertips.

I had a job to do.

And that job didn't involve thinking about Abigail Hamilton one bit.