When he saw Klibanov, the overhead lights transformed his face into an expressionless slab of mouth-absent Slavic meat. His eyes were cold and emotionless as he leaned over his patient. Topper could see that Klibanov was holding several large needles attached to rubber tubes.
"Will it hurt?" Topper asked in a small, scared voice.
"Yes."
Someone he couldn't see said, "Only after. We're going to put you out now." A hissing plastic mask was placed over Topper's nose and mouth, and a voice said, "I want you to breathe deeply and count backwards from 10."
Topper tried to count, but the numbers he was trying to say came out as words, "Rutabaga, Tits, Salami, Half-asssssssss..."
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
When Topper woke up, the warehouse was completely empty but for the bed that held him, a stand for his IV and a small bedside table. He groaned and rolled his head to the side. He felt bigger, as if he was swollen with fluid. Everything hurt.
Klibanov spoke to him from the screen of the laptop computer on the bedside table. "You have survived. Good." Topper rolled his head to one side and saw the doctor's face in a chat window on the screen.
Topper inspected himself. Bandages covered the injection sites. His wounds and their treatment made his small limbs feel stiff and awkward. He had never felt like the rhythm of his movements ever had any elegance, but now, at least, he could sense power. Or he thought he could. A thought caromed around the inside of his skull: Did I just get screwed?
"Ohhhh, my little head," said Topper, feeling like every hangover had just come back for a family reunion.
"As the cells reconstitute themselves, you will be dehydrated," said Klibanov without sympathy, "You should drink something. Not alcohol. You have some liver damage."
"Liver damage?"
"It is a byproduct of procedure. It should heal, but your liver was in such poor condition when you came in. The good news is you have survived. Please authorize the transfer of funds."
"Where the hell did everybody go, where are you?"
"I am safely away from you. In case you should change your mind about our deal."
"But who's gonna let me out of these restraints?"
"You are. They are no longer strong enough to hold you."
Topper tried his strength against the ties holding down his arms. The bed broke apart with an explosive noise, but Topper felt nothing. It was effortless.
"Oh ho," Topper chortled. "Oh ho ho ho. What other powers do I have?"
"Everyone is different. You have all the powers you asked for, and more than you should."
Topper floated up out of the bed. He was flying!
"HELL YEAH! Doc, you are very, very talented." From midair Topper entered his authorization code and watched the wire transfer go through on the computer screen. Klibanov didn't even bother to say goodbye. His chat window simply winked out of existence.
"Uh, you're welcome, asshole," Topper said to the laptop. Then he had a thought. He focused his anger and frustration into a small ball inside him. He pointed his arm and felt the emotion leave his body in a blast of energy. The laptop exploded into a small ball of an electrical fire and flaming pieces of it scattered across the warehouse.
"WHOOOOOOO!" Topper cheered.
He floated towards the door and then stopped and laughed at himself. "Heh, doors. Doors are for LOSERS!" He blasted a hole through the ceiling and flew off into the sky in search of a costume shop. After all, power was great, but you can't intimidate anybody with your ass hanging out of a hospital gown.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
It was late. The sky was perfectly clear. With no cloud cover to hold the heat of the day the warmer air had risen from desert floor and was lost into the upper atmosphere. It was cold and going to get colder. On the Strip, the gentle sweep of the Milky Way couldn't compete with garish, man-made luminescence. But here, far to the west, among the tracts of empty spec houses, the stars and the desert reasserted themselves.
It’s surprisingly difficult to for a super-heroine to stay in shape. Exceptional strength and power require exceptional effort to match. If Stacey let her workout regimen slide, it's not that she grew weak and listless. She had strength enough for ten normal men. It was that her tight, toned body would sag and bloat. You can think of her as shallow if you want, but for a driven career girl like Stacey Storm, her ass not looking good in spandex simply wasn't an option.
So she exercised as if she was doing penance for some horrible sin. Strengthening the body to the point of mortifying the flesh. And here, on the far edge of town, was where she could really push it. She couldn't go as fast as she wanted on rollerblades—they would melt—but right around 70 mph the good burn started in her glutes.
The cooling desert air pushed back against her, requiring her to apply more and more force to maintain her speed. Legs pumping, lungs heaving, it was hard to for her to resist the urge to fly. Stacey wanted more. She always wanted more.
Another 20 minutes, she thought, and then she could fly back home for a nice soak and an ultra-low-calorie beer. That's when the explosion knocked her off her feet and sent her skidding along the road.
As the ringing faded from her ears, she realized she was still alive. She spit blood out of her mouth. Bleeding, when was the last time that had happened? Middle school? She pieced it together as best she could. The gas station engulfed in flames was a clue. So too was the cackling noise that seemed to be circling above her head.
"HAHhahahaahahaHAHAHAHAHAHhahahahahahaHAHAHAHAHAH!"
She shook her head to clear it and wondered, what the hell just happened? Was that really laughter?
"Hey, baby, HOW YOU LIKE ME NOW?"
There, hovering several feet in front of her, it was—maybe she was still dazed from the explosion, but it looked like it was—that obnoxious dwarf, in an outrageous costume of loose-fitting spandex.
"Henh? You like the threads?" said Topper, "Pretty bad ass, right? But wait 'till you see the moves, baby!"
"You destroyed… the gas station?" she asked, trying to put it together in some way that didn't trigger the jackpot on the great slot machine of crazy that had just become her life.
"Oh, yeah, you betcha, toots. I'm just getting warmed up. I'm gonna turn this town upside down, clown! But before I do, can I just tell you, you have one of the best lookin' asses I have ever seen!"
"Are you insane? There were people in that gas station!"
"Oh, baby, there's nobody in this world but you and me." Topper flung his arms wildly and bolts of purple force exploded outward from them. Half of the nearby dry cleaner’s was incinerated. A 1972 Buick Rivera parked on the street exploded in a vintage fireball. "Isn't that shit cool?!" Topper shouted over the noise of the inferno.
In fact, there had been an attendant in the gas station. According to the freakish logic of catastrophes, he had survived the explosion, even after the force of the blast had thrown him through a window. Now, on the other side of the street, perhaps 40 feet further on from where Topper was pitching his dubious and destructive woo to Stacey, he was awakened by the secondary explosions. In agony and confusion, he cried out, "Help!"
Stacey and Topper did not hear this, because at that exact moment Stacey was asking, "Why are you doing this?"
"'Cause I'm EVIL baby. Dirty Sexy EVIL! And you can't resist it!" With that, Topper jetted into the sky. As he flew, he randomly hurled bolts of purple destruction down upon the suburbs. Stacey shook her head. What to do with this? She knew that this little runt wanted her to chase him, but c'mon, really?
She had half a mind to just go home. There wasn't going to be any glory in this. The photo op would be terrible. No matter how powerful he really was, a picture of her standing over a defeated midget would suggest that she was weak. What she needed was a big strong villain with bulging muscles to defeat. Story of her life, every time she needed a big strong man, she got some kind of midget. Most of the time an emotional midget, but this time... Ah, the hell with it. Life just wasn't
fair.
With every intention of packing it in, she got up from the pavement and dusted herself off. "Ow," she said as she brushed a hand across freshly abraded patch of leg. Road rash? Marring the legs she had worked so long and hard to make perfect? As she twisted her lovely flesh around and peered at the damage, she could have been modeling for a pin-up poster of considerable taste and intensity. Until the rage twisted her face.
She screamed and electricity exploded outward from her body incinerating her clothes and blasting fragments of rollerblades from her feet. WeatherGirl was revealed in all the skimpy, angry glory of her silvery, almost-something of a costume. She floated several inches off the ground, her body twisted into a position that was equal parts erotic and athletic.
"Help," said the gas station attendant. Stacey's head jerked downward and she spotted the man next to a parked car. For an instant she thought about helping him, but when she heard sirens in the distance, she decided there was no point in wasting time on a civilian. With a rushing of winds, she was gone into the sky.
"Help?" the poor bastard cried again. If he had been lucky, he might have passed out and been spared some pain. Then again, if he had been lucky, WeatherGirl might have stopped to give him some comfort. But that wasn't the way the world worked. At least not today.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
A blast hit her in the legs and crotch. It hurt, sure, but that's not what made her upset. It was the icky, tingling feeling that lingered afterwards. It was so disturbing that, for a moment, she forgot to keep flying. As she fell, she felt her skin crawl.
Topper moved into position above her and screamed, "Ah, YEAH baby, this is better than cocaine and sex all rolled into one!" He released another burst of whatever that horrible purple energy was. This brought WeatherGirl to her senses. She dodged to the right and the bolt crashed to earth beneath her. The desert floor erupted sand and bits of housing complex. Suddenly, she was blind.
Coughing, choking, crying, she flew on through the maelstrom. Now she was scared. What was this freak going to do to her if he caught her? And how was she supposed to fight him with sand in her eyes? This wasn't fair. This wasn't the way people with superpowers were supposed to fight. Not by any stretch of the rules.
"God, I love that ass!" Topper cried out.
She felt violated just by the sound of the little man's voice. Oh, this was terrible. As she struggled to clear her eyes, she felt more than saw the purple bolts of force, sick and slow, pounding into the ground around her. Enough of this shit, she thought. And then, drunk on a cocktail of anger and panic, she flew into the ground.
High above the cloud of mayhem and destruction he had wrought, Topper flew through the night air, free and powerful. "Come on! Come out and play." FOOOOOM! He flung another bolt of destruction randomly into the night. "Catch me if you can!" he said. Far beneath him, deep within the roiling dust of the bruised and battered desert floor, there was a blue flash as a finger of lightning illuminated the cloud of sand. Then another. Then there was an explosion of superheated air so loud it rattled the windows of the gigantic hotels miles away on the strip. Every particle of dust blew outward, and in the center, in a crater made of her own rage, stood WeatherGirl.
Stacey knew she looked like hell. She knew that there was no way WeatherGirl, her carefully cultivated alter-ego, should be photographed in this state. She knew there were no media points to be scored by taking down a little person. But right now, she didn't care. She was beyond angry. Beyond enraged. For the first time since she was 11, she really couldn't care less what her hair looked like.
She vaulted into the sky on wings of lightning. In the distance she could see a tiny speck of purple fleeing towards the glimmering lights of the strip. The little bastard was out of range, but not for long. In her heart, vengeance began to sing. She called the winds to her and raced in pursuit.
Topper saw the flashes and heard the lightning behind him. He knew she was coming. His plan, a terrible, twisted, hopeless plan, was to lure WeatherGirl back to his penthouse and complete his “seduction.” Yes this idea was stupid—incredibly, moronically, unbelievably stupid, even for Topper. But that's the thing about power—especially the kind of power that was coursing through Topper's diminutive, misguided body—it's a drug. Maybe the best drug in the world. That's how he could stand atop the tall spire of his casino headquarters, moments from complete disaster, and believe that everything was going his way.
As he saw the beautiful, powerful woman that he believed he loved racing toward him surrounded by a ball of lightning, he actually thought to himself, "My plan has worked. She's chasing me because she loves me." The feeling that filled his tiny little heart could not be adequately conveyed to another person without making them crazy too. But as that feeling washed over him, Topper threw back his head and cried, "MADE IT MA! TOP OF THE WORLD!"
And, for one brief moment, he had. But then it all went to hell.
It was not that a bolt of lightning came down from the heavens and struck him. It was that the air around Topper was so saturated with charge that when the lightning let go, bolts came at him from every direction imaginable. Bolt after bolt after bolt transfixed him, tearing holes in his cheap costume and illuminating his eye sockets with a terrible glow. When the air had discharged its fury, some of Topper's hair was on fire. Dazed, he staggered towards the edge of the tower. Before he went over, he had time to say one word.
"Ow."
Stacey Storm watched him fall from the top of the tallest tower in Las Vegas. She could have caught him. She could have slowed his descent with cushions of air. But she didn't. Her nostrils flared in anger as she watched gravity do its work. It took Topper so long to fall that she had time to think, "Serves him right if the fall kills him. That's what he gets for playing a grownup game in a child's body."
Topper crashed into the parking lot far below. His fall was slightly broken by that big dumb blonde of the American road, a Corvette. He hit with so much force that the car's windows shattered and the tires exploded. The alarm attempted to go off in protest, but died in a pathetic, spiraling warble.
WeatherGirl floated above him in triumph, her anger still crackling into the air around her. She had defeated her first supervillain. Well, kind of.... What a disappointment. Everybody had to start somewhere, she tried to tell herself, but as she looked at the small, unconscious man lying in the middle of a crushed car in front of her, a tiny voice in her head whispered, "Over. You should just start over."
She thought she should probably hand this guy over to somebody, but who? The local cops weren't equipped. She wasn't sure she knew anybody who would be. But as she was trying to figure out how to get out of babysitting this little freak, she heard a voice say, "Excuse me, Ma'am."
She looked up and there was a man in a black suit. He flashed a badge and said, "Agent Putney, Ma'am. Bureau of MetaHuman Affairs. If you are done with him, we'd like to take care of some business."
"But how?" She noticed a nondescript white panel van idling behind him and men in jumpsuits waiting to swing into action.
"We've been following him for some time in conjunction with another investigation. If you'll stand down, we'll take it from here."
"I..." She sized up Agent Putney. Nice jaw, clean-cut, standard issue all the way. As they had talked, he checked her out, but less than most men. She took this a sign of professionalism. If he hadn't have looked at all, she would have been offended. She floated gently to the ground and said, "Yeah, sure. Take the little slimeball."
The van pulled up next to the unconscious Topper and men swung into action. The man who had called himself Agent Putney injected something in Topper's neck. Then other men wrapped Topper's legs and torso in clear plastic to restrain him. Then they placed him in the back of the white panel van.
The Agent handed her a card and said, "Ma'am, we need to get him into containment, but please call the office tomorrow. We need to get you registered?"
"Registered?" WeatherGirl asked.
"Superheroine, actually."
"You didn't think you needed to do this all on your own did you? G'night, Ma'am." He gave her an official nod and then got in the van.
As she watched them drive away, she thought to herself, "You're on your way Stacey. You are on your way." She vaulted into the night sky and flew home with something very much like a song of victory playing in her heart.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
"And that's how I wound up here, with you. Whoever you are. No powers. No money. Nothing. Nothing at all. And you know what the worst of it is. I liked who I was.
"I mean, I didn't like the old Topper at the time, but now, I'd take that old life back in a second. Sure, things weren't perfect, but they weren't God-awful either. I had a fun job. I had a friend, a good friend. And I betrayed him.
"And I ran away from all of it. I tried to change the company. I tried to change myself. Sure, at the time, I said I was doing it help people. To help myself, y'know. To be a better person.
"In a fucked-up way, I was even doing for Edwin. Y'know, all that time that I was trying to teach him how to enjoy himself, I never once thought what it might have been like for him. Y'know? Maybe, while I was trying to teach him, he was trying to teach me something? Maybe he was trying to teach me how to control myself?
"I killed the only friend I ever really had. So you do whatever you want to me. It's never gonna be any worse than that. I mean, don't you get that? How can you not get that? So I'm done talkin'! I've confessed my sins. I've seen the fires of hell. And you know who's looking back from the bottom of the pit? Me."
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