“Hey, turn that up, would you?”
The bartender used a remote control to increase the volume.
“… destroying much of the West Madison Street apartment building best known as the home of All American Girl, Stella O’Clare.”
“No way,” said Stella.
“The two supervillains had apparently hoped to call out All American Girl, but were unaware that the sassy superheroine was dancing the night away at stylish Ditko’s in New York City.” A still photo of Stella, looking decidedly dazed as she exited the club, slid across the screen.
“No way,” said Stella.
“Though the Atomic Jack-o-Lantern and Dark Energy kept police at bay while they ripped up most of the city block, they were eventually sent running by the timely arrival of Skygirl.”
“No fricking way,” said Stella. She pulled the bottle to her lips and tilted her head back, finishing the rest of the bourbon.
“Karina Heinz was able to get a few words with the heroine of the day.”
And there she was—perfect long blond hair, perfect big eyes, perfect huge lips, and perfect gigantic boobs. The sky blue and white costume covering everything but her legs had her father’s alien symbol emblazoned across the chest. Like anyone would ever look at it. You could practically see through the white parts of that costume. And those biceps. Damn!
“Check out that rack,” said the bartender.
“You sent those villains running today, Skygirl,” said Karina Heinz.
“I was just lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time.” How could her voice sound so cultured? She was from fricking Missouri!
“So what brings you to town?”
“Actually, I’m thinking of relocating.”
“No fricking way,” said Stella.
“Kansas City is in good hands,” continued Skygirl. “Between Skyboy, Comet-Knight, and the Ebony Witch, I’m just not needed there. I think maybe here, I could make a real difference.”
“No fricking way,” said Stella, jumping off the barstool.
“You’re not driving, are you?” asked the bartender as she headed for the door. She shot him a look that would have killed him if she had heat vision.
She was airborne before she was completely out the door, shooting up above the highest buildings and heading west. Not keeping low as she had done on her way east, Stella kept climbing, feeling the air growing colder and colder as she did. At 37,000 feet, she found what she was looking for—a westbound 747. With a burst of speed, she caught up with the plane, and grabbing hold of the tail, she pulled herself into a comfortable place on the top of the fuselage. She rode the jet west to her home town.
As the jumbo airliner got ready to make its approach to O’Hare, Stella dropped off the side and flew down to skim just above the city. She made a quick pass over the remains of her apartment building just to get a look at the damage. The place was totaled. She’d have to think about a new place to live. In the meantime, she soared to the other side of the river and dropped down to land on the pavement just outside Johnny Liberty Ready Storage. The two story glass and steel building was brightly lit and the armed security guard looked up as she stepped through the front door.
“Good evening.”
“Nya,” said Stella with a shrug. “I need to get into my locker and I don’t have my key.”
“No problem,” replied the guard. “Step over to the microphone and say your last name and your password.”
This was one of the few storage facilities that had decent security, which of course was why Stella had chosen it in the first place. Not only did they have an armed guard on duty and a silent alarm system, but a first-rate voice identification system as well. She stepped over to the microphone which stood in front of a large panel of small doors.
“O’Claire. IWILL-KILL-UIFY-OUME-SSWI-THMY-STUFF.”
“That’s a pretty long password,” said the guard. “In fact, I think it’s the longest one I’ve ever heard. People usually go with numbers.”
“Better safe than sorry,” said Stella, as one of the small doors in the panel before her opened. She reached in and pulled out the key that was inside.
“Do you need me to show you to your locker?”
“No, I know where it is.”
Stella had only been here once, when she had first arranged for the storage locker. It was one of six that she had around the city. Still, with the eidetic memory inherited from her demigod father, she needed to see any location only once and she would remember it forever. Her locker was down the hall, around the corner to the left, then the second right, another left, and then second door on the right. The door was a sliding garage type, painted bright orange like all the others, with a key slot right in the middle. With a quick twist of the key in that slot, the door was unlocked and Stella slid it up and open.
The interior of the storage locker was roughly the size of a single car garage, but it was not as most storage units and even most garages are, filled with boxes of things that the owner no longer wants to look at. It was set up as an emergency home away from home, just as were the other five. A small couch which could fold out as a bed was placed against the back wall. Next to it was a chair and a white cabinet with a large red cross on the front. On the opposite side was a quite ordinary looking dresser and a desk covered with the latest computer equipment. Stella flipped on the power switch then closed the door after her.
She kicked her pumps into a corner and peeled off her little black dress, which she tossed into the bottom, empty drawer. From the top drawer she pulled a new All American Girl top and bottom and a pair of white ass-kicking boots. Once suitably attired, she sat down at the desk and booted up the computer. She logged onto the Brotherhood of American Dynamic Adventurers Security and Search, for which she paid a $500 monthly fee and almost never used.
She scanned through every bit of material on the Atomic Jack-O-Lantern and Dark Energy. There wasn’t much on the former. He’d never been in prison, never been caught. Nobody knew who he was for sure, though there were a couple of guesses. He might have been Buddy Parks who was decapitated in a Halloween novelty factory, or he might have been Martin Gothenburg, a pumpkin farmer who drowned when his tractor rolled over into a drainage ditch filled with toxic waste. In any case, there was no information about where he liked to go and what he did when he was not busy with super-villainy. Dark Energy’s file on the other hand could have filled several small books, and now that Stella thought about it, she had seen several books on Dark Energy in the discount bin outside the door of her local bookstore. He had been a martial-arts instructor, arrested for suspicion of molesting his young female students, when he had been hit by a fragment of a black hole shooting through this part of the solar system. He liked to drink, spout off his big mouth in local bars, and pick up underage prostitutes.
Stella knew just where to go—a string of “tough-guy” bars just south of Midway Airport on Cicero. She debated kicking back on the couch for a power nap, but she wanted to find this scumbag before she lost the edge off her anger. Closing the door and locking up, she passed through the lobby, handing the key back to the guard.
“Oh, Hey. I recognize you now,” he said. “Nice outfit. Way hotter than on TV.”
She didn’t know why, but the comment pleased Stella far more than it would have normally. Maybe she was still a little tipsy. Three steps out the front door, she launched herself into the sky heading south.
By the time Stella reached the fifth bar, her buzz was definitely gone. She now had a splitting headache, and she was more than tired of the smell of stale beer, unwashed human bodies, and urine that the dives in this part of town seemed to reek of. But there he was, in a back booth, with a black-labeled bottle in front of him and a hooker on each arm, whose combined ages barely surpassed All American Girl’s twenty years.
“All right you,” said Stella, approaching him through the bar.
Without lifting his hand off the shoulder of the girl on his righ
t, Dark Energy pointed with his index finger and a bolt of what else, dark energy, shot from its tip, hitting Stella in the chest, sending her flying end over end through the glass door, across the street, and several inches into the steel-reinforced door of the DeSoto parked across the street.
“Okay, if that’s how you want to play it,” she said, getting to her feet.
She hopped over the building and landed in the alley behind. Jamming her fist through the stone wall, she grabbed hold of a neck and pulled the person to whom it belonged out of the hole. The way she was feeling, it wouldn’t have surprised her if she had misjudged a bit, and yanked the wrong person through the wall. But her supernatural sense of direction hadn’t failed her. She lifted Dark Energy up in the air, leaving his toes dangling a few inches off the ground. When he started to raise his hand, she slammed him down onto his back so hard that the blacktop cracked for twenty feet around. She picked him back up into the air.
“Ow.”
“You’re going to think ‘ow’.”
She threw him across the alley and into the side of a dumpster, which collapsed into a boomerang shape around him. With a quick skip to his side, she took his face in her hand and threw him back across the alley and into the stone wall of the bar. He smacked up against it upside down and slid down to land on his head. Once again she picked him up by the neck and held him up high.
“Don’t hurt me anymore,” said the supervillain, in a remarkably high voice.
“No promises,” replied All American Girl. “You see, you messed with my stuff.”
“We didn’t go through your underwear drawer or anything. We just knocked down your apartment building.”
“You invaded my privacy. That’s no way to treat a lady.”
“It wasn’t my idea. It was the Jack-O-Lantern. He’s a freak.”
“If you mess with my stuff ever again, I’ll kick your ass so hard they’ll be picking Sputnik out of your teeth.”
Dark Energy raised his hands again. Stella slammed him once more against the pavement.
“Hey! I was just going to say ‘I promise I won’t’,” he whined.
“I think the police are waiting for you,” said Stella, grabbing him once more by the neck and leaping into the sky. This time she flew to the northeast. Thirty minutes later, Dark Energy was in police custody, special energy dampening hand-cuffs on his wrists, and she was back at the ruins of her apartment, looking to see if she could find anything salvageable. The paparazzi and the souvenir hunters had already been through it. If she wanted anything back, she would have to bid for it on eBay like everyone else.
“Oh goodie, you’re here,” said a droll voice behind her.
Stella turned around to see a slightly chubby man with salt and pepper hair and a mustache, wearing a white jumpsuit with large black letters spelling CPDRT across his chest, and a tiny nametag with Phil printed on it with red dymo-labeler tape. She of course knew of the Chicago Public Damages Reconstruction Team, since they employed more workers than the police and fire departments put together.
“You look familiar,” said Stella.
“Oh really? You mean you can actually tell us mortal humans apart?”
“I’ve seen you around.”
“You should. I’m in charge of the All American Girl Response Team.”
“There’s an All American Girl Response Team?” wondered Stella.
“You think all the buildings you crash through and all the potholes you gouge out of the road just magically repair themselves?” The man rolled his eyes. “Do you have any idea how many man hours it took to repair the damage you caused fighting Behemoth the other day?”
“That wasn’t my fault. He’s the villain.”
“If he were twice as smart, he’d be a half-wit,” said Phil. “How hard would it have been to lure him away from buildings and private property?”
“You know what, Phil,” said Stella, with as much sarcasm as she could muster. “Why don’t you join the Skygirl Response Team?”
“Don’t I wish,” he said, turning and walking toward the white panel van that Stella now saw was parked down the block. “I hear she actually cleans up after herself when she can.”
She stuck out her tongue at the back of the white jumpsuit, but Phil didn’t turn around, walking all the way back to his truck, climbing in, and driving away.
Suddenly Stella felt as though she needed to sit down, so she plopped her shapely bottom on a large piece of rubble. At first she thought it was the after-effect of a night of drinking followed by an adrenaline rush let-down, but as she became weaker and weaker, she slid down into the dust, no longer able to move. Then she looked up into the horrible, grinning face of the Atomic Jack-O-Lantern. He didn’t speak. He just stared at her with that frightful face and glowed with the radioactive energy that was even now, draining her life energy away.
Chapter Three
Azure Hotel;
Downtown Chicago;
Linda Ford stepped out of the front entrance of the hotel. The wind whipped around her. With her left hand she held down her pleated miniskirt and with her right hand made sure that none of her honey colored hair poked out from beneath the brown wig.
“Cab Miss?” asked the doorman.
“No thank you.” She smiled sweetly. “I’m going to walk.”
“Might not be safe this time of night.”
“I’ll be fine,” she said, stepping out of the halo of lights around the hotel entrance.
Linda was so happy to be out on the street that she almost started skipping. She turned north up State Street, her oversized Gucci handbag swinging at her side. Once again the brisk breeze blowing in from the lake caught her by surprise. She smiled as she brushed the brown hair out of her face. The smile disappeared however, when she picked up the words of a conversation directly ahead of her.
“If she’s at the Azure, we will have her all to ourselves. All the others are camped out around the Swiss Hotel.”
Coming toward her from the opposite direction were two tabloid photographers. They hadn’t spotted her yet, so she ducked into an alley. Following it till she reached a tee, she then turned north again into another alley.
Apparently Linda’s plan had worked—for the most part. She had taken a large suite at the Swiss Hotel for no other reason than to mislead the press. Her room at the Azure had been arranged by her business manager and was under his daughter’s name. Though she was now hundreds of yards away from the two men she had overheard, her super-hearing allowed her to determine that she had eluded them. They were still on their way to her hotel.
“Hold it,” said a voice from behind her.
She turned to find a tall, thin man pointing a gun at her.
“Toss your purse onto the ground.”
“You’re robbing me?”
“Throw it down and I won’t hurt you.”
“How really extraordinary. Nothing like this ever happens to me in Kansas City.”
“Throw down the purse, sweet-cheeks. You don’t want to get shot… or worse.”
“I guess you don’t know who I am,” said Linda.
“As long as you’re not All American Girl, and you’re not, I don’t care.”
“Well then, I guess you’ll have to shoot me.” She put one hand on her hip.
The man didn’t shoot. Instead, he rushed forward and slammed the pistol into the side of her head.
“Well, that’s just rude,” said Linda, standing completely unharmed, exactly as she had been. “I can see that this city really needs my help.”
She took a quick, deep breath and exhaled with such force that the would-be robber was thrown across the alley. He landed on his buttocks and stared at her open-mouthed.
Suddenly something going on miles away drew her attention. Her supervision saw spectrums far beyond the range of normals, and usually she just ignored it, but she wasn’t about to ignore this. She peeled off the blouse and miniskirt, rolling down the megamesh sleeves of her costume. Then she pulled th
e brown wig off.
“Since you didn’t actually steal anything or hurt me, I’m going to let you off with a stern warning.”
“Skygirl?” said the man, now that the symbol on her chest was revealed.
“That’s right.” She stuffed her outer clothes and her wig into her handbag and floated up into the air several feet, where she removed her high-heels and put them in the bag too. “It’s not too late to turn over a new leaf, you know. I haven’t had time to check, but I’m sure there is a twelve step program available for whatever your problem is. Now don’t let me catch you again.”
She lifted one hand in the air and shot into the sky like a rocket.
* * * * *
Ruins of Chicago Apartment;
West Madison Street;
All American Girl looked up into the horrible, grinning face of the Atomic Jack-O-Lantern. He didn’t speak. He just stared at her with that frightful face and glowed with the radioactive energy that was even now, draining away her life energy. Suddenly a blue and white streak hit the Jack-O-Lantern in the chest, knocking him away. Stella took a deep breath and tried to refocus her vision. She was so weak that it was difficult to even move up into a sitting position, but she could slowly feel the energy returning to her muscles. A minute later the blue and white streak was back. Standing over her like a blonde goddess was Skygirl.
“No fricking way,” said Stella.
“Here, let me help you up.”
“I can get up myself.” Stella climbed to her feet. Her knees felt like overcooked pasta. “Where’s glow boy?”
“He’s gone.” Skygirl brushed her honey hair back behind her ear. “I hit him three or four times, but then he just kind of blinked and disappeared.”
Women of Power Page 3
