“You?” I give half a laugh of surprise, confusion, affection. “You? Baby, half the things I did, back in those days at least, I did because of you. I wanted my little girl to be proud. It was one of the frustrations of my life that I couldn’t share this with you. I’m glad those days are behind us.”
“Even if it means I have powers?”
“Yeah,” I shrug, surrendering to the observation.
I’m still not thrilled to see Tessa going into the wrong side of the family business. Judging by the chauffeured town car that comes and drops her off for her twice weekly visit, my wife Beth made the better call when it comes to professions. We shared an interest in the law initially – her as a student and later practitioner, and me as a guy who dresses up in gaudy outfits and beats on villains – and that sure wore thin over time.
Windsong replaces her mask the same way I do – it’s one of mine, after all – two fingers pressing it in place either side of her brow. The transformation into young adult is miraculously complete. Last time I glimpsed her on the NBN news I instinctively checked out her cans, her stocky childhood legs fast thinning out and I hope not from any starvation diet. Although I am in good health – miraculously so, given the events of the past month – my own obsolescence is dawning on me the more I’m confronted by my replacement.
“I used to think you would resent me,” Windsong says at last.
The words tumble free in a rush that I recognize from my own habits. It’s a sudden confession. Her face turns away so I can’t see if her masked eyes still water.
“Why?”
“Well you’ve got to admit it, dad,” she says and gives a throaty laugh, wiping her face with the back of her fingerless gloves.
(They’re a little bit Young Madonna, but I don’t have the heart to tell her. Kids will be kids and I can recall stomping around for a year in Maxine’s high heels pretending to be Gene Simmons at one stage, though admittedly I was a lot younger than fifteen).
“No one could blame you if you had masculinity issues.”
“Really?” I say, like this is a revelation to me.
“Well, take a quick check: you grew up thinking your father was a gay sperm donor and you were raised by two dykes. You knocked up your childhood sweetheart when she was, what, eighteen? And rather than be the bread-winner, because of the whole costume thing, it was mom who went on to graduate from law school and bring in the paycheck. I thought one day you would be looking after me and something would happen, some urgent call, and you just wouldn’t come back. Like I just didn’t matter.”
There’s silence for a moment, but not for long. It’s not like me to let such feelings linger.
“And did I?”
“No,” and she laughs softly, a commiseratory sound. “No, you always came back.”
“Better still, babe, there were plenty of times the police scanner went off and we couldn’t get a sitter or it wasn’t your day at kindergarten and I just watched it on the news. I just left it, let guys like Mastodon and the Wavemaster and Aquanaut and, that other guy, the guy with the fucking horns. . . .”
“Capricorn.”
“Ha, you know your shit, don’t you?”
Windsong laughs.
“Put your mask on old man. You sound like Zephyr again.”
As I comply, I give a wry smile and watch Windsong roll her arms around like she has any idea of what a warm-up is. We flew here from Atlantic City and I clocked her top speed at just under four hundred mph. Not a dash on mine. Still not a warm-up, to my way of thinking.
“So are you ready to get this show on the road?”
“Yep,” she nods, and starts pulling back her hair from her heart-shaped face. “Combat training 101. That’s what I want, Zephyr.”
“No, honey, that’s what you need,” I reply. “I saw you trash that jewelry store heist on CNN on Tuesday. That guy with the crowbar almost had you.”
Her face pales as she realizes she’s been busted.
“You . . . saw that?”
“I sure did,” I say without much of the amusement I feel. “You’re lucky I didn’t tell your mother.”
“She’d only blame my visits with you.”
“Exactly,” I say back. “Why do you think it’s our secret?”
“Thanks, dad,” Windsong says through lowered lashes in the true tones of the abashed teenager she is. “I appreciate it.”
“You owe me,” I reply. “And payback starts here.”
She looks up. There’s fire and determination in her eyes, though unfortunately not a whiff of experience. I make a slow lunge with my hand lit up like a birthday cake and rather than defend herself, Tessa just wrinkles up that cute snub nose of hers and I think she’s about to say “Dad!” in her best irritable teenager voice. And then she’s launching backward courtesy of a significant but low voltage shock.
Windsong lands fifteen feet away and doesn’t move. The idiocy of my grin drips steadily off my face until, with concern, I hurry forward to check I haven’t hurt her too badly.
And walk straight into her attack.
Zephyr 4.2 “Standard Expectations of the Genre”
THE CHANGE IS coming to Atlantic City, and at last those of us who spend our times in costumes and masks posing for the cameras and occasionally getting our heads kicked in before them can relax, knowing at least now, as the first snow comes, it’s not because the harbinger of some alien god is preparing to walk onto the set and begin throwing cars and buildings around with gay abandon. It’s simply getting cold. Winter is yet to arrive, but here in the northernmost quadrants of the city that buried the ghosts of old New York, that first touch of frost seems to be coming earlier and earlier each year no matter what the boffins say about global warming. You can see and feel it on the streets. The cops spend more time blowing on their coffees than tackling the crime rate, the hookers wearing coats and the homeless people drawing even less attention from the upwardly mobile than usual as the weather soaks into their weary metabolisms and those at the fatal ends of the population curve simply don’t move any more as the snow starts stacking up around them, the result being an unexpected burial with Miracle On 41st Street trappings.
It’s not all doom and gloom and hell, we’ve really only had one day where the city called out the snow sweepers. The kids are still filling (new) Central Park without enough to toboggan, it’s never too cold for an ice-cold Coke – they’re considering me for a new ad campaign so I am practicing my smile a lot and trying to look carefree – and the cold weather also means less street battles as a few of the more sensible bad guys decide to holiday somewhere warm and return to conquering the world when the weather improves.
Being a child of this weird megalopolis I love it all, and it’s only the fact that cold weather means the inevitability of Christmas that some of the shine comes off my enthusiasm.
It’s not like I have a lot to cheer about. For some godforsaken reason I am yet to quit my apartment and hand it over to my seemingly forever angry and increasingly estranged wife and our darling progeny, the superhuman prodigy you’d know best as Windsong. Beth has full custody, having threatened to gang up with her lawyer pals and cut off visiting rights altogether unless I agreed. She’s shitting in her LeCroix of Paris stockings that any time we spend together, Tessa and I are going to play dress ups and plan her future crime-fighting career. Funny that I was married to this woman for seventeen years and she can’t understand I don’t want our daughter dragged into this crazy life any more than she does.
The bigger problem remains Tessa. I guess saving the city from Ras Algethi on her first outing has somewhat gone to her head. Sure, we hardly talk about anything else on our walks, coffees at Gonzo’s, lunches at Ribaldi or Piccolo or that theme sandwich bar in SBSCC Tower where the waiters dress as mime artists and beatniks. God forbid we should discuss why her loving parents of fifteen years are seeking divorce. I’m really only learning now just how filled my little girl’s head is with this costumed, larger-than-life
world – she who, among so much of the world, I thought I knew so well.
The diehard fans have discerned and may well even be pleased to know I have embarked on a minor costume redesign. The identical leather ensembles do little to change the previous version except my insignia is no longer red but gold. My publicist’s idea. I hear more from the disgruntled guy who maintains my online forum than the public relations queers I have allowed to siphon off ten per cent of my income, even from the marketing deals I made before I hired them (unlike Miss O’Hagan, I was fully aware just how little I was drawing in). Nonetheless, when the Enercom phone flashes, or buzzes I should say, if it’s Hallory I always pick up. What the hell. Technically, I am single again and maybe it’s my inner Irishman craving a redhead.
*
SEEKER’S INVISIBLE FORTRESS has the crazy acoustics like you’d expect from any thousand-year-old castle. The frustration in my voice bounces vibrantly off the walls, coming back to us just in time to blend with the sound of my boredom as I throw down the clipboard with doodle marks all over the page, my micro tantrum getting pretty much no one’s attention as Seeker and Mastodon stand in the enormous, austere chamber power-tripping on the three flunkies before them.
“Try-outs have barely started and we’re already down to these nobodies?” I say more loudly this time.
If at first you don’t succeed and all of that.
Mastodon turns and gives me his best badass scowl, but I know he’s just playing school captain because he thinks he might get into Seeker’s pants with his responsible older superhero act. He didn’t spend three years on the same team with her as I did. No one’s going there. The frigging Pope’s not getting any pussy from Seeker. Well you know, of course he’s not, but you know what I mean. If anyone was going to score with our perfect preacher, maybe he’d be the guy to do it. Or maybe not. Hell, this is a lifelong habit of mine, speaking with no real good idea of what I’m gonna say next.
The new kids on the block are Ash, a white kid in a kimono called Samurai Girl, and believe it or not, a dominatrix who speaks in the third person named Madame Lash. I’m not sure she’s got the whole “hero” thing down yet. I could tell from the moment she walked into the room that Mastodon wanted her on the team. Only thing we haven’t told Mastodon yet is that we’re only offering him a Reserve position. It’s not the age. It’s more that Seeker’s not too comfortable with the old boy’s pharmaceutical interests and the faceless Wallachian monks who prowl the corridors down here stop and flatten themselves against the walls when Mastodon goes past. Perhaps it’s just those fucking horn things jutting out from his collar, but I doubt it.
As my last outburst resounds from the walls, the teenager with the Asian sword appears in my face – a good trick, since I can still see her across the room out of the corner of my eye – and waggles her finger before slapping me and disappearing again.
“What the –?”
“Show some respect, mister,” she says.
“How about you earn some?”
“Easy, people,” Mastodon adds in the folksy tone he’s adopted for the evening.
“Hey, ‘Don, give me a frigging break here,” I start to say only to get cut abruptly by a hand signal from my offsider and nominal co-captain Seeker.
“Everyone please try and remain calm,” Seeker says. “Zephyr, I know you’re impatient to finalize the roster, but please. We have a lot of people interested in the new team and I want to give everyone who applies the courtesy of a real try-out.”
“Madame Lash thanks you, Seeker,” Madame Lash says and scowls at me.
“Hey lady,” I add, ignoring Seeker’s ongoing implications. “I’ve never even heard of you before, so don’t go giving me all that ‘tude, OK?”
“Jesus, you are like twice the asshole Madame Lash has heard,” the corset queen replies.
“Heh heh, sounds like she’s got you pegged, Zeph.”
“No seriously, ‘Don,” I say. “Don’t you think we’re going to have a little problem with a bondage fetish on the team? And in this place, don’t you think that’s a bit bizarre?”
“You’re in all that leather and you’re sayin’ I have a fetish? Madame Lash finds that rich.”
“Zephyr,” Seeker warns.
“Jeez guys, can’t we all chill?” the bald guy Ash says.
His face is a mask of warring emotions.
“I was really pumped about these auditions, but now I’m not so sure. Shit.”
He sounds like he’s gonna cry.
“Okay, okay,” I say and put up my hands, and a little of the heat goes out of the room, but even though I am grinning at them, I feel like a total ass because there’s no way I’m letting this one go, even if the others think I’ve suddenly learnt a little diplomacy.
“Just tell me what your powers are, Lash baby, and I’ll relax.”
“Powers?” she says and blinks.
“Yeah,” I reply. “We all see the whip and that’s awesome. Ditto the cleavage. Very nice. But what can you do?”
The others look like they want to voice a protest – Seeker looks like she wants to boil me alive – except for the fact it’s a pretty good question and Madame Lash is a more than a touch slow to answer.
“We already had to kick Madrigal out of here, so, like, you know, we need to know who you are and what you do, since you don’t have a reputation of your own to trade in,” I say slowly, a wiseguy despite trying to be even-handed. “How else are we gonna know you’re not some plant, you know, a Cheese agent or something?”
“Cheese agent?” Samurai Girl frowns.
“K.A.A.S., you know, the uh European um, death to parahumans mob?” Mastodon shrugs.
“Kaas is Dutch for cheese,” I take my turn to say. “It’s an old joke.”
“I’ll have to remember that.”
Eyes swivel back to Madame Lash looking increasingly infuriated.
“If you’re not interested in the power of my lash, then perhaps Madame Lash should take it elsewhere,” she cries and pulls the handle of the whip from her belt and unrolls the sucker and gives it a whopping great crack. Mastodon flinches and grins.
That’s my cue for another one-liner, but instead, the air above our heads sizzles with a faintly familiar noise and then a handful of costumed figures sporting enormous grins start dropping through. I recognize the leader of the cohort almost straight away, as well as the figure beside him, and I’m on my feet quicker’n you could shit.
“Well well,” I say loud enough to make sure my colleagues hear clearly. “If it isn’t Captain Jackass. It’s been a long time, pal. I see you brought your boyfriend.”
I gesture to the crouched figure in the black body stocking, a hockey mask on his face: Kid Kaos.
“Got some new friends too though, huh?”
“Just like you, Zephyr,” the madman says and giggles and steps forward, only the jaw of his scarred face visible beneath the spray-painted gridiron helmet he wears. “We heard you was havin’ a party. Can’t do that without inviting the Kaos Krew, Mister Zephyr! You know what I always say: you bring the babes, I’ll bring the raging boners!”
As if on cue, Jackass’s allies scatter at his gesture as another one of his portals opens up over the young trio in the middle of the room and through the hole in space-time pour a few hundred pounds of decomposing crap including bones and a decaying treacle that may or may not be dog food. Ash immediately drops to his hands and knees and starts puking, while Samurai Girl uses super-speed to evade – and Madame Lash just gets the fuck out of the way like any sensible person would.
Jackass is one of the guys who gives the supers world a bad name. With no real agenda except proving himself above the law and out for his own brand of retarded laughs, the self-styled captain exists just to piss into the wind for heroes everywhere. He adamantly refuses to play ball with some of the standard expectations of the genre, including clear distinctions between good guys and bad. He doesn’t want to take over the world – just make the rest
of us look like assholes.
I open up with an electrical attack, but the captain teleports out of the way and the charge hits his long-time accomplice instead. Kid Kaos kicks out wildly and lands on his back twitching like a frog in a biology experiment.
Jackass pops up from another black energy disc just inches behind Seeker, leaning his diseased chin on her shoulder and tilting his head playfully.
“Silly me,” he yodels. “I’ve introduced myself, but not my friends.”
He sinks back through the portal before Seeker can properly turn and nail him, and moments later the caped fuckwit reappears on the far side of the room, his companions around him.
“Guys,” he says, “meet Zephyr and his little team. We’re inviting ourselves over to play, but I’m sure they won’t mind. They look like sports. And Zephyr, these are my new recruits: Murderboy.”
A preppy-looking but nonetheless Emo kid runs fingerless-gloved fingers through his dyed black comb-over and turns abruptly, striking a deliberate mock model’s pose.
“Prankster.”
Stockier than any of the others, this guy wears a Kevlar vest and heavy skate armor. A slim backpack that may or may not be a parachute, and an ordnance belt with a variety of grenades and canisters jingles musically at his deliberately bad dance moves.
“And The Drill.”
The fifth member of the team also wears a helmet, though it’s like the one Red Monolith wore, complete with a tinted face visor. The Drill pulls a pair of power drills from holsters at his sides and crosses them over his chest in a clear imitation of the skull and crossbones. The bastard then levitates into the air, head touching the ceiling some forty feet up just to show us he’s got powers in his own right.
“Well gosh, Captain,” I say and do my own fake chuckle. “Shame you didn’t let us know you were coming. Now we’re just gonna have to kick your ass!”
I give a roar and blaze with energy that throws the room into an electric blue focus as I launch from the floor and power straight towards my grinning nemesis.
Zephyr Box Set 1 Page 31
