Velveteen vs. The Junior Super Patriots

by Seanan McGuire

  Level four superhumans, aka, “the heavy hitters”: superhumans whose powers have progressed to a level which truly sets them apart from most of their fellow men. Interestingly, these are the superhumans most likely to become unstable, trapped too solidly between “god” and “man.” Many level four superhumans are told that they have been designated level three, a delusion which has been proven to preserve sanity, providing it can be maintained. Examples include Action Dude, whose invulnerability and super-strength are second only to Majesty, and Velveteen, whose capacities for spontaneous animation of the inanimate have yet to be fully charted, and may, if they continue to expand, eventually qualify her as a technical level five. Level four superhumans often have short, memorable careers.

  Level five superhumans, a.k.a., “the actual reason for antisuperhuman legislation” or possibly just “oh, fuck no”: superhumans whose powers have reached the point where they are limited only by the superhuman’s own expectations. For example, Trick and Treat—whose claims of originating in the subdimension of the Autumn Country have yet to be disproved—can manage almost any matter manipulation stunt within the limits of their own self-imposed Halloween-based delusions. Jolly Roger, Majesty, and Supermodel were also level five heroes, which goes a long way toward explaining what went wrong with the original lineup of The Super Patriots. When there is nothing more powerful than you, it can be difficult to keep a sense of scale.

  When asked about the possibility of level six superhumans, the scientists involved in the rating system began to giggle (some with an intensity that bordered on hysteria), and said, “If they exist? If they exist? Well, if they exist, this was all for nothing. Pass me the tequila, would you?”

  Government funding of The Super Patriots, Inc. was approved less than six weeks later, in an emergency Senate session.

  *

  Velma crawled back to consciousness like a shopping mall Santa the day after Christmas: slowly, painfully, and with the distinct fear that she’d managed to leave one or more of her essential internal organs lying in a parking lot somewhere. Her eyes were sticky. It was difficult to open them. She lifted her head from the steering wheel—also not particularly easy, also not something she enjoyed—and rubbed a hand across her eyes. It came away crusted with half-dried blood. She supposed she ought to be concerned, or possibly even panic, but it all seemed too much like work. Work could come later, possibly after the throbbing in her head had died down to a dull roar, or died down altogether. Dying altogether wouldn’t be an issue for her.

  Vaguely aware that she was still in danger, or something like that, Velma forced herself to sit fully upright and squinted at her reflection in the rear-view mirror. The blood that had gummed her eyes shut seemed to have come entirely from her bloody nose, as had the crust that covered her upper lip and chin. There didn’t seem to be any actual external injuries, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t managed to burst a blood vessel or something. Maybe she was bleeding to death. Inside her brain. “That’d be a great way to go,” she muttered, fumbling for the glove compartment. “‘Velma Martinez, posthumously identified as the rogue superhuman known as ‘Velveteen,’ bled to death of a brain embolism today—aw, fuck.” The tissues were gone. The tissues were never gone. But the tissues were gone because of that coffee spill back on I-5, and her head was pounding, and she suddenly just wanted to sit there and cry until The Junior Super Patriots came back to finish what they’d started. Taken down by the team she used to belong to. She didn’t really give a crap about the poetic justice of it all. She was just too tired to care.

  A napkin was pressed into her hand. She looked around, eyes widening, and blinked as she saw the battered plush rabbit, originally from the Isley Crawfish Festival, sitting alertly on the seat beside her. Another napkin was clutched clumsily in one paw, waiting for her to need it. One of its eyes was missing, probably torn loose during the most recent battle, and stuffing poked through a hole on its side.

  Velma swallowed. “I’m not currently animating you,” she said, somewhat accusingly. “I’d know.”

  The rabbit didn’t answer her, merely inclined its head and offered the other napkin.

  “Uh,” said Velma. “Thanks.” She could worry more about the unexpectedly animate rabbit later. Right now, she had napkins, she had a bloody face, and she had enough ground-in media training to know that sitting around covered in blood wasn’t a good way to make herself feel better. Appearances mattered. Appearing to be rough and ready and prepared for anything would do a lot to make it true. Spitting into the napkin, she tilted her chin up toward the rear-view mirror and began wiping the blood from her face.

  Once, there would have been someone to do this for her. Once, there would have been someone to tell her that everything was going to be okay (whether it was or not), that she was fighting on the side of justice (whether she was or not), and that whether she won or lost, she would always be a hero. Once, things were different.

  But that was a very long time ago, in a very different world. One that she had walked away from voluntarily.

  It took a surprisingly short time to clean all the blood from her face, the rabbit producing more napkins from between the seats as needed. Finally, Velma studied herself in the mirror, brushing her hair out of her eyes, and nodded. “Good enough for government work.” She glanced to the rabbit. “Thanks.”

  The rabbit nodded gravely, its single remaining eye seeming to look directly at her before it slumped over sideways on the seat, becoming as naturally boneless as something plush was supposed to be. Velma started the engine, struggling slightly as she worked the car out of the ditch, and drove on. To Oregon; to the future; to freedom.

  *

  “I don’t like this,” said Swallowtail, voicing what all of them were clearly thinking. She didn’t like it; she didn’t like any part of it. Didn’t like the man from Marketing, who smelled like stiff leather and over-priced cologne. Didn’t like the things he was telling them to do. Didn’t like the way Handheld, who was supposed to be their fearless leader, stopped being anything but another well-trained dog waiting for his master’s command. Most of all, didn’t like the fact that this woman they were going after was . . .

  Was . . .

  She was one of them, once upon a time, a teen hero with a costume designed by committee and a back-story honed on focus groups and fairy tales. She was the other side of the Marketing machine, and just the fact that she was who she was made all the other villains out there a little bit harder to believe in for certain and for sure. She could have killed them all. Instead, she just stood there and let them escape. She was a villain because Marketing said she was a villain, and realizing that was a little bit like realizing that there was no such thing as Santa Claus.

  “We don’t have to like it, Shelly,” said Handheld, unconsciously reverting to her real name under the stress—and how long had it been since she saw him actually stressed out over something? Over anything? This was the end of everything, and Bedbug was casting jealous glances in their direction, and she didn’t have the energy to pretend she didn’t see. Handheld reached for her hand, and she let him have it. “We just have to get through it.”

  “She’s not getting within a mile of Oregon,” said Super-Cool, posing like he thought the cameras were already in place.

  Candy Corn shot him a disgusted look. “Uh, dude, she’s already within a mile of Oregon. She was within a mile of Oregon when she kicked our butts the first time. Now she’s within two hundred yards of Oregon. Can you maybe pretend to be playing on the same intellectual field as the rest of us for, like, fifteen minutes at a go?”

  Super-Cool glared at her. Swallowtail sighed.

  “So we’re on for the fight?” she asked, squeezing Hand-held’s hand once before letting go. “Even with everything?”

  “Even with everything,” Handheld confirmed.

  Behind them, the members of the press milled, waiting for the story they’d been promised. Several members of the Oregon police were al
so in place, just in case the “dangerous supervillain” they’d been warned about managed to make it over the border and into their woefully unprotected state. The sound of tires approaching down the road called everyone to attention. The world held its breath.

  Velma’s car came around the curve.

  *

  Celia Morgan did not become Governor of Oregon by accident. No, she became Governor of Oregon by biting, kicking, and clawing her way up the political ladder, all with one goal held firmly in the forefront of her mind: she was going to keep her state safe. Not from terrorists. Not from horrible mutants dragging themselves out of the sea and devouring everything coastal. Not from global warming. No. She was going to keep state safe from the single greatest threat of the modern world, the one thing that needed the most guarding against: The Super Patriots, Inc. And most of all, their Marketing Division.

  The name “Jennifer Morgan” was nowhere to be found in the histories of The Super Patriots, Inc.; she was neither on their list of active nor fallen members. If mentioned at an official function, it would be met with either blank stares or polite excuses as the person to whom you were speaking suddenly needed to be somewhere else. Celia knew that to be a fact, because she’d mentioned Jennifer’s name. She’d mentioned it several times, before she gave up the attempt. The name “Jory” might be met with slightly better results, if it was brought up in the right circles. Geologists would, of course, recognize it as a specific class of soil found commonly in Oregon. And superhero fanatics—the ones who’d learned to save their clippings in physical form, to prevent the data from “mysteriously” changing to fit the party line—might recognize it as the name of a second-string superheroine who’d served, all too briefly, with The Junior Super Patriots, West Coast Division. “An elementalist, wasn’t she?” one of them might say. “Some sort of earth control . . .”

  “She was a level four earth manipulator!” Celia always wanted to scream. “She could make mountains by wiggling her fingers, and they gave her a stupid name and a little yellow mask and they sent her out to fight monsters! She was twelve years old!” Too young to have been where she was. Too young for any fights bigger than zits and boys and passing sixth grade. But they sent her out to fight monsters, and she never came home. Instead, there was a quick, quiet hush campaign, all her pictures airbrushed out of the magazines, all mentions of her typo-marked out of existence. Instead, there was money, blood money, enough to send Celia to the best colleges in the world, all with the face of her dead sister, her dead big sister, floating just out of the corner of her eye. Instead, there was this: Governor of Oregon, one of the last places in the country to believe that it was the human part of “superhuman” that mattered, and not the super.

  And now here was another god-damned supervillain making a run for her border, endangering everything she’d worked for, making The Super Patriots turn their eyes toward Oregon. Just another stupid fucking drop-out who—

  The ringing of her phone startled her out of the spiral she’d been starting down; the old familiar anger, the old familiar hate. She turned toward the sound, and frowned slowly, brows drawing together. That was her private line. The emergency line, the one only her family was supposed to use.

  She snatched the phone from the cradle before it had the chance to finish ringing for the second time. “Celia speaking,” she said, voice kept tight to prevent the sudden fear from showing through. “What—”

  “This connection’s not secure: just listen.” The voice that cut her off was light, feminine, and cold as steel. “We only have a few minutes. The ‘supervillain’ currently heading for your border has done nothing to warrant that label. She’s violated none of the superhuman restrictions, and she hasn’t actually committed any crimes serious enough to earn the punishment that she’ll receive if they take her.”

  Celia’s world went gray. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about an innocent woman whose parents handed her over to the Marketing division when she was just a little girl.” The voice grew, if anything, even colder. “She was just like your sister, Ms. Morgan. She didn’t know what she was doing, and she never had a choice.”

  “How do you know about—”

  “If you want to hurt The Super Patriots, this is your chance to do it. This is your chance to take a story away from them and make it into your own. You decide from here.” The line went dead.

  Celia was running for the door before she had even fully processed the desire to do so. By the time the phone hit the desk, she was in the hall, yanking her coat on and shouting for her driver to prepare the car.

  She had a battle to intercept.

  *

  Somewhere not very far away, a woman’s black-gloved hand rested briefly on a disposable cellphone. It had been bought illegally, cloned twice, and made to make a single call. One that she’d hoped, right until that moment, she would manage to talk herself out of making.

  “Fucked up times fifty-thousand, huh, Vel?” she whispered. A spray of golden sparks spread from her fingers, engulfing the phone and melting its circuitry into slag. “Well, it’s up to you, now. Last favor. Last chance. It’s up to you.”

  *

  Velma pulled around the curve to find herself facing the full membership of The Junior Super Patriots, West Coast Division. All of them were standing straight and proud in what she recognized instantly as the official Standing Off Against A Supervillain pose: chests out (but not too out, in the case of the girls, who still needed to look believably virginal), legs apart, hands held with just that right amount of careful tension. Ready for the fight of their lives. And unfortunately, she was on the wrong side of the battle. What looked like an entire army of reporters was waiting behind them, news vans and camera crews and young, attractive, totally expendable talking heads. It was a familiar publicity stunt. It said “we have total faith in winning this battle.” It said “you are completely safe with us.”

  It said “we have the entire membership of the adult team standing by, ready to sweep in if it looks like things are going to turn serious.” It said “the junior team is no longer alone.”

  “It says ‘congratulations, Vel, you lose,’” whispered Velma, stopping her car about ten feet from the line of heroes. She was exhausted. She was injured. And most of all, she realized, she was angry. How dare they? All she ever wanted was to walk away. They couldn’t even let her have that, could they?

  Grabbing her plush rabbit by one grubby arm, she kicked open the car door and stormed toward the line of junior heroes, shoulders hunched, eyes blazing. She could practically feel the cameras zooming in on her as the army of reporters held their breath. She realized that she was turning herself, almost subconsciously, to present her best angles to the media. Good. If this was going to be her last stand, she was going to make it one that they’d remember.

  “How dare you?” she demanded, gesturing toward the lineup with her free hand. Gesturing with the rabbit would probably be taken as a threat, and that would stop her monologue before she even got it started. She’d never given a supervillain speech before, and she wanted to make sure she reached the end. “I never asked for you to hunt me down! I was good! I played fair! I kept my head down, I didn’t leak anything to the press, I didn’t even hint at my identity! But you couldn’t leave it alone, could you? You couldn’t just let me fade away in peace.”

  Looking profoundly uncomfortable, Handheld took a step forward, and said, “By the authority of The Junior Super Patriots, West Coast Division, I order you to stand down, evil-doer!”

  “What evil have I done, huh?” Velma took another step toward him, now pointing a finger squarely at his chest. “I flunked community college because there kept being ‘accidents’ in my apartment complex. ‘Accidents’ that always happened right after I turned down another offer from Marketing. I couldn’t hold a job because these people wouldn’t leave me alone. So I disappeared! So I went into hiding! I didn’t do it because I was evil, I did it because I want
ed to be left alone. They’ve probably told you that you can quit when you turn eighteen, haven’t they? They’ve probably told you you’re going to get a walk-away-free pass, that you can go back to the private sector. You’re on the inside! You know what it’s like! How many have quit? Huh?”

  This wasn’t the way it was supposed to go. Handheld was standing transfixed, stunned less by what she was saying than by the sudden realization that none of this footage—not a single pixel—was actually getting out clean. Something was throwing static over the reports, removing essential words, until all the audience at home would see was Velma née Velveteen, furiously screaming, and looking every inch the supervillain that Marketing claimed she was.

  Something was very wrong.

  Super-Cool started forward, snarling, “Lady, I don’t care who you were, but you’re about to be a footnote on my road to awesome.”

  Velma turned around, all but laughing in his face. “Footnote? Footnote? They already made me a footnote, you third-rate Majesty knock-off. Now they’re making me a villain. I wonder what they’re going to wind up making out of you?”

  “Nanny, stop her,” hissed Candy Apple. “She’s muy loco.”

  “Yes,” said the Nanny, “but she isn’t naughty. She isn’t being naughty at all . . .”

  Super-Cool took another step toward Velma. Velma turned to him, raising her plush rabbit as if to block him from attacking her. After that, things got very complicated, very quickly. To make matters worse, not a single scrap of camera footage survived; as soon as the incident occurred, they all stopped transmitting. What everyone could agree on later was that a vast bolt of black light—not darkness, but actual light—came out of the trees and struck Velma from behind, lifting her off the ground, propelling her forward. Past the junior heroes that had been sent to stop her. Past the front tier of the media invasion.