by Baron Sord
CRACK!
Oops.
That was the asphalt.
I may have slightly cratered it where I landed. I’d have to edit that part out of the video. I took off running west along El Prado.
When I walked in the house, Arnold’s eyes were huge.
“Did you do it? Lemme see!”
“Yeah, I got it.” I handed him the camera and he loaded the video file onto his laptop and played it.
Watching, he said, “It’s kind of grainy, but I guess it’ll work.”
“Yeah, the low light functionality isn’t the best.”
“No way! No freaking way! Check out that view of the park! Whaaat?! How did you not die from jumping off that dome?!” The camera tilted up to the tower. “Dude?! Are you gonna jump onto the tower? That’s way too high! Ohhhhh whaaaaat?! You made it! You freaking made it, Doug!” Arnold was laughing his ass off. “Ow ow ow! My bullet hole!” He cackled painfully. “You made it! That’s like 20 stories high!”
I nodded, “Almost 200 feet.”
Arnold’s eyes bugged out of his head. “I can’t believe this! Look it! You can see all of San Diego! This is unbelievable, Doug! Nobody is gonna believe this! But it’s right there on video!” He was laughing again. “Oh, wait! Are you gonna jump off! Shit! That’s incredible! Oh, did you break the ground?!”
“Yeah. Cracked it a little. We can edit that part out.”
Arnold nodded. “Actually, yeah. We’ll edit out everything after the split second that comes before you hit the ground.”
“Why then exactly?”
“It’ll leave people wondering if you survived a freaking 200 foot fall! Nobody can survive that!” He laughed.
I grinned, “I can.”
“Damn straight! This is sweet, Doug. Freaking SWEET!” He offered his fist, which I bumped.
“Thanks,” I grinned. “There’s your video. Now I need to go eat.”
Twenty minutes later, when I returned from stuffing my face in the kitchen, Arnold was still busy on his laptop.
I said, “What are you doing?”
“I just edited and uploaded your video onto your YouTube channel.”
“I don’t have a YouTube channel.”
“The Masked Jumper does.”
“I do?”
“Yeah. I made it as soon as I ordered the GoPro. Check it out. The video is live.” He turned the laptop so I could see it.
“The Masked Jumper Jumps Again? That’s what you titled it?”
“Yeah. I think it works. Don’t you like it?”
“No, it’s good. But…”
“But what?”
“Why didn’t you put it on YourView? It’ll get more hits. Their recommendation engine is exponentially better than YouTube’s.”
Arnold rolled his eyes, “YourView is lame, Doug. YouTube is way better.”
“Why does everyone hate iSearch?” iSearch owned YourView. “I love iSearch!”
He ignored me and said, “Next we’ll have to shoot video of you as Wildfire. Not POV. We need to see you on fire. And see you setting stuff on fire.”
“Won’t that connect the dots between Wildfire and the Masked Jumper and me?”
“No. Like I said, we’ll shoot Wildfire from far away. Nobody is gonna know it’s you.”
“I guess,” I said reluctantly.
Arnold wasn’t concerned at all. “We should totally record something Wildfire-y at Heph’s ASAP. I’m telling you, Doug. People will freak when they see what you can do with your flamethrowers.”
“I can’t wait,” I said nervously.
He slapped his hands together and rubbed them vigorously. “Now we wait and see how many hits this video gets!”
“Have fun waiting. I’m going to bed.”
“What? This is your debut, Doug! Don’t you want to watch the counter climb?”
“I need sleep.” I was skeptical this was going to actually work. There were billions of videos on YouTube and billions more on YourView. Why was anybody going to look at mine? “Good night, Arn.”
I walked outside to the guest house and dropped into bed.
—: o o o :—
When I woke up the next morning and walked into the house, Arnold was in the kitchen grinning from ear to ear.
“We got over 900 views!” Arnold cheered.
“Please tell me you did not you stay up all night watching the count.”
“Nooo,” he said defensively while yawning. “Anyway, now we need to start monetizing the channel by running paid ads.”
“What, on my video?”
“Yeah. The more people who watch it, the more ad money we’ll make.”
“But we’ve only got 900 views.”
“922 to be exact, and that’s with zero effort on our part.”
“Don’t we need millions of views to earn any money?”
“We’ll get there,” Arnold said with confidence.
I wasn’t holding my breath.
“924!” Arnold cheered. “Two more views in the last minute! At this rate, will hit a thousand inside of an hour!”
“Really?”
“Yeah, look at the screen!” He turned the laptop to face me and refreshed the screen. “925! You just got another view!”
“Isn’t that from you refreshing the screen and reloading the video?”
“I don’t think so. Wait, I’ll do it again.” A moment later, “930! That’s definitely not me! I can’t believe it!”
I couldn’t either.
If we averaged a mere 3 views a minute (assuming constant viewing, which of course was nonsense, but for the sake of Arnold’s optimism, I would), that was 180 views an hour, 4320 a day, and over 1.5 million per year. It wasn’t huge compared to the superstars of YouTube or YourView, but it was still a ton of people watching my video. You could build a business on numbers like that. A small one, but you could do it.
Maybe Arnold was onto something.
Maybe this was the start of something big.
Or at least medium size — I was being realistic. But I would take medium-sized success with a smile on my face.
CLANK!
That was the sound of the ass-biting bear trap I mentioned a minute ago biting the smile off my face. Yes, my medium-sized high was about to get beaten to a pulp, and someone innocent would get beaten along with it, and not in a figurative way.
—: Chapter 48 :—
…I swear! I told you all I know! No, don’t! Don’t break anything! No, stop! STOOOOOP!…
I caught the distress call while up in North County (San Diego, that is) when I driving south on the 5 freeway on a Friday night.
So was everyone else.
Red brake lights as far as I could see.
Why so much traffic on a Friday at 10:00pm?
My guess, half of San Diego County was heading down to party in Pacific Beach or La Jolla or the Gaslamp downtown, or to TJ (Tijuana) if they were over 18 but under 21.
Thanks to the partiers, I would likely be late to help whoever was in trouble this time. I tried to tell myself being late was better than not showing up at all, and this distress call was still in the future, though I couldn’t say how far exactly. I never knew down to the minute.
Too bad I wasn’t charged up with heat. If I was, I could fly over this damn traffic. I sensed the distress call would occur within a range of 50 miles. I had enough body mass to make it that far, and I could get there in less than 10 minutes if I was flying at 250mph. But, I was not flying because I still didn’t have much control, and didn’t want to risk a crash en route, so it was probably good I didn’t have any heat to tempt me.
Driving was still the safest way to travel.
Eventually, I ended up in Spring Valley near an aging trailer park crammed in an industrial area loaded with auto repair shops. The trailer park, and source of the distress call, had a sign out front that said Bancroft Palms.
I drove to a side street behind the trailer park and stopped my car next to a Jehovah’s Witness
church.
Took a moment to listen for any signs of mental distress, but I wasn’t hearing any now.
Time to go investigate.
I pulled my ninja mask over my head, hopped out of Arnold’s Prius, and bounded across the empty church parking lot in huge leaps. Hurdled over a 20 foot wide concrete canal separating the church grounds from the trailer park and landed silently in the darkness behind a double-wide.
Most of the trailers were dark at this hour, but a few had lights on. In one, a TV set was blaring a loud action movie. Other than that, I didn’t hear any real violence.
The trailer park was set up in long rows. It took me maybe ten minutes to walk the grounds. Nothing but trailers, parked cars, and lawn furniture. No people, and no sign or sounds of anyone in trouble.
Had I been mistaken?
Was my emotional distress detector overloaded?
It was possible. I had been working hard since leaving YouDoIt earlier this evening, and I was dying for food and sleep. Exhaustion and hunger always muted the red devil bats of distress.
One row over, I suddenly heard the sounds of car doors slamming. An engine revved.
I dashed between two trailers, jumped over a plastic chair along the way, and skidded to a stop when I reached the next row.
A black SUV sped off, laying down rubber as it braked before bouncing onto Bancroft Drive. Engine roaring, it disappeared down the street into the night.
Where had they come from? I turned a circle, scanning trailers.
A trailer door hung half open.
I ran to it.
The interior was dark. I stuck my head in.
“Hello?” I muttered quietly. I knew my presence here was as suspicious as that speeding black SUV. “Anybody here?”
“Guuuuuuh.” A man groaned inside.
“Are you okay?”
“Guuuuh!”
I stepped fully into the pitch black trailer, sensing I was already too late. I slapped my hand around on the wall, feeling for a light switch. Couldn’t find one. Pulled the door shut because I didn’t want anyone seeing me snooping around and thinking I was the guilty criminal dressed in black with a ninja mask.
Where was that damn light switch? There. A single lightbulb popped on in the kitchen area over a small two-burner stove.
“Guuuh…” The voice came from the back of the trailer.
I padded down the narrow carpeted hallway to a bedroom at the end. There was somebody on the floor in a heap. Blankets from the bed were piled on top of the person underneath.
I whispered, “It’s okay, I’m here to help.” I carefully pulled the blankets off.
The guy huddled on the floor was a bloody mess. Someone had busted him up.
He took one look at me and his eyes popped open in fresh fear. “Guuuuuh!”
“Relax. It’s okay. I’m here to help.”
He didn’t know that because I looked like a ninja assassin. He started to panic and grunted again, “Guuuh!”
Hoping to reassure him, I pulled my mask above my mouth, revealing my smile. “Relax, I”m trying to help. Can you move, or…” I wasn’t sure what to do.
His eyes narrowed. “I go you.”
“What?”
“I go you!” His lips were swollen like he’d been punched repeatedly in the mouth. “You da comma guy!”
“Huh?”
“Da pesser! From comigon!”
“The what? From where?”
“Da kid! Dug ore!” His eyes flickered recognition, of what I wasn’t sure.
“Huh?”
“Da mass jugger! You da mass jugger!”
“The Mass Juggler?”
“No! Da mass junker!”
“Oh! The Masked Jumper!”
“Yug.” His face folded into a feeble and broken smile, followed by a wince. He struggle up on one elbow and groaned. He was quite portly, so I helped him up and pulled him to sitting on the edge of his bed.
He almost fell face-first on the floor, but I caught him before he did.
“Whoa, I’ve got you, buddy. Maybe we should put you in a chair. I saw a recliner in the other room.”
He nodded, “Yug.”
I walked him into the living room and sat him down.
“Yuh dug ore.”
“Who?”
Frustrated, he frowned, “Dug ore.”
Then it hit me. “Jeff? Jeff Strickland?”
“Yuh,” he nodded woozily.
Jeff, the publisher of Crash Comics. Lady Liberty’s publisher. The guy I was supposed to email so he could send me two script pages for S&M to pencil. That was two months ago. He probably thought I was a complete flake. I didn’t care. I was more worried about Jeff’s well being. And there was a nagging thought in the corner of my mind that this situation had something to do with Lady Liberty.
“Jeff, what happened?”
“Guuuuuuh,” he rolled his eyes. “I duh nuh. Dee guy kay inna ma hous an beed me ug!”
“What?” I could barely understand him. “Jeff, do you have a working laptop or a tablet?”
“Hug?”
“A laptop. Something you can type on.”
“Oh, guh.” He pointed at the dining room table across from the kitchen. It was piled high with comic books and paperwork and surrounded on the floor by stacks of white long-boxes of comics. It suddenly occurred to me that Jeff’s trailer might be the official offices of Crash Comics. Independent comics weren’t exactly big business.
I grabbed the laptop and knelt down next to Jeff. Found a word processing app, opened a blank document.
“Can you type?”
“A guy.”
“A what? Never mind.” I set the laptop in his lap and leaned over his shoulder. “What happened?”
He held his hands over the keyboard and shook his head. “Woo-ee.”
“Jeff, do you want me to call 911?”
“Naw yeh.” He typed out a message on the laptop, using only his index fingers, wincing every time his fingers touched keys. Had someone stomped his hands? Or broken his fingers?
I was afraid to ask.
When he finished typing, the screen read: Are you masked jumper?
I smiled, “Uhhh… promise you won’t tell?”
He rolled his eyes and typed: Yes.
“Yup, that’s me.”
I knew it.
“How could you know?”
Lady Liberty told me.
“She told you about me?”
Yes.
Why did I not like the fact she’d told Jeff about my powers and secret identity? And why was I jealous she probably talked to Jeff far more often than she would ever talk to me? Because I was human. I needed to set my jealousy aside. Jeff’s well-being took precedence.
“What happened, Jeff? Who beat you up?”
I don’t know.
“Did you get a look at them?”
Five gays.
“Five gays?” I pictured the cast of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.
Jeff groaned and hit back space and retyped. Five guys.
“Oh. Can you give me any other details?”
He glared at me. No they beat me up.
“Do you know why they beat you up? Did they rob you? Do you owe them money or something?” Now that I had seen what I presumed were the actual Crash Comics offices, I wouldn’t be surprised if Jeff was in debt up to his blackened eyes and bruised ears, and had borrowed money from the wrong people.
Jeff’s bloody face torqued into a scowl. I don’t owe nobody no money.
“Okay. So what did they want?”
Asked me about Lady Liberty.
My heart nearly stopped. “What did they ask?”
Where to find her.
“Why would they…” The answer came to me all on its own. Anybody who opened a copy of the Lady Liberty comic would see that Jeff published it. You didn’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to deduce that Jeff would know how to find Lady Liberty, or at the very least how to contact her. Ready to jump out of
my skin, I gasped, “What did you tell them, Jeff?! Did you tell them where she works? Did you tell them about Flashbacks?”
Jeff was crying quietly. Tears leaked from his eyes and cut lines through the bloody mask on his face.
They beat me, Doug. Beat me bad.
“Did you tell them anything else?”
No.
“Is she at Flashbacks now?!”
Jeff shook his head.
“Type it, Jeff!”
I don’t know. Maybe.
“Do you have a phone?”
He pointed to a cordless sitting on a charging station on the kitchen counter. I ran to it and hissed, “What’s Kristy’s number?”
Jeff typed it on the laptop and I dialed it.
It went to voicemail three times.
“She’s not answering,” I grunted.
Jeff typed, She probly cant here the phone. Never ansers at work.
I called a fourth time and left a hasty voicemail warning her to watch out for five guys in black. Then I dialed 911 and dropped the phone in Jeff’s lap and said, “When 911 answers, start moaning.”
Then I ran out the door.
I had to go find Kristy.
I had a real bad feeling about this.
A bad FwCKing feeling.
—: Chapter 49 :—
KRISTY! I thought as loudly as possible. IT’S DOUG! GET OUT OF THERE NOW! SOME GUYS BEAT UP JEFF STRICKLAND! I THINK IT’S THE SAME GUYS WHO SHOT ARNOLD AND I THINK THEY’RE LOOKING FOR YOU!
I sat in Arnold’s Prius in the Michaels Crafts parking lot next to Flashbacks. The strip joint was nestled between Michaels and the fenced-off compound that housed the Navy Regional Plant Equipment buildings on Midway Drive.
KRISTY! CAN YOU HEAR ME?!
She didn’t answer.
I needed to warn her. If she was anything like me, she wasn’t invulnerable. If she was somehow ambushed or attacked from behind, she could easily be killed.
After sending my thoughts several more times, I had to wonder, was she even inside? Or not working tonight? Or had she gone home?
Or, were my thoughts being obscured by the distance, the building’s walls, and/or the thoughts of whatever people were inside?
Thinking that might be the answer, I decided to text her. I remembered her phone number from having dialed it at Jeff’s house, so I punched it into my Robot and hastily thumbed the message:
