Gold Standard

by Kyell Gold

  “Just to the front porch.” Jake grinned. “I never blink in uninvited.”

  Sarah smiled hesitantly. “Could I…see?”

  Mike grinned at Jake. He pointed to a tree in the front yard. “Race you to the tree and back?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Jake said. “I don’t usually…”

  “Come on. Don’t worry about beating me.”

  “No, it’s just…” They were both looking at him. “Okay.”

  “Give us a start, hon,” Mike said.

  Sarah held up her black paw. “Ready…steady…go!”

  Jake appeared next to the tree and touched it just as a red blur slapped a black paw to the bark. He got his bearings and reappeared inside next to Sarah, a fraction of a second after Mike had skidded to a halt.

  “I think Mike won,” Sarah said. “But you did a very nice job.”

  “Of course you would say that.” Jake grinned as he said it.

  “Home court advantage!” Mike crowed, raising both paws in the air.

  “Now let’s try it with the door closed,” Jake said, and they all laughed. “All right, I gotta get going. Thanks again for the great brunch, Sarah.”

  “Lovely to meet you,” Sarah said, extending her paw.

  “Likewise,” he said, taking it gently. “You’re a lucky guy, Mike.”

  “Oh, I dunno,” he said. “I heard you’re dating Jenny Hightower.” He winked as Jake’s ears flicked back in a blush.

  “Stop it, Mike,” Sarah said.

  “Yeah, don’t worry, you won’t see me on the Internet anytime soon.” Jake grinned. “So long, guys.”

  He blinked back to his apartment and spent the rest of the day doing mundane tasks: laundry, some housecleaning, grocery shopping. His mom called just before sunset to wish him a happy birthday in advance, and after an hour talking to both parents, the city was growing dark and he could go out on his rounds.

  On Tuesday, he was woken up at quarter past seven by a phone call from his sister in Europe wishing him a happy birthday. He talked to her while he rubbed the sleep from his eyes, went in to work, and found himself growing more and more excited as the clock inched towards six.

  At 5:57 pm, unable to wait any longer, he blinked to Marcia’s apartment. “Birthday boy’s here!” he announced, dropping to the living room carpet.

  Soft music played from the bedroom. Otherwise, the apartment was silent. Jake straightened his shirt with a grin. “Oh, some concentration lessons? Well, I’m all for that.” He pushed open the door to the bedroom.

  Marcia sat on the bed. It took him a moment to see that her arms were tied behind her back and her mouth bound securely with tape. Her eyes widened when she saw him, and she motioned him back with her head, straining to talk through the tape.

  He heard a small noise to his right and felt a prick in his side. In an instant, he was back in his bedroom, landing unsteadily on the bed and falling to the floor. Dizzy, he got up and braced himself. He’d been shot with…something. And Marcia was caught.

  The yellow eye logo stared at him from the open closet. Had to get his suit on and go back and rescue her, he thought. He fumbled for a moment with the buttons on his shirt, wondering why his fingers seemed thicker. “Hell,” he said, and blinked out of his clothes, appearing naked in front of the closet and already reaching for the outfit.

  He got both legs in it and then his arms, fastening the snaps up the side and pulling the hood over his ears. The room was spinning slowly. He pulled the gloves on. Had to save Marcia. Had to…

  He blinked to her bedroom, intending to pop in, assess the situation, and pop out, like he’d done with the car thief. But he materialized a good two feet above the edge of her bed, landed awkwardly, and fell to the floor after getting only a glimpse of a white-robed figure striding toward him. Hands circled his neck as he struggled to keep his balance in the room, which was now not only spinning, but crazily tilted. He tried unsuccessfully to blink out twice before blackness rose up and swallowed him.

  Awareness came back to him in a reddish haze on the inside of his eyelids. His mouth felt gummy and tasted horrible. He ran his tongue around his dry lips and tried to open his eyes, but they felt gummy as well. He couldn’t bring his paws up; they were bound behind him somehow. His ankle hurt, too. The room he was in smelled sterile and antiseptic, but there was a person in it with him. Male, some kind of scientist or doctor, he thought. He could smell laboratory chemicals and the person’s scent under it, a light musk, like raccoon, but different.

  He forced his eyes open, letting in a bright white light that made him close them immediately. After several blinks, tears dripping down his muzzle, he was able to see the blurry outlines of what was in the room with him.

  Directly in front of him was some kind of lab bench, with two metal stools in front of it and a shiny metal contraption, probably a faucet. He could see a yellowish rectangular object to his right, approximately filing-cabinet-shaped, and beside it a long flat thing that looked as though another filing cabinet had exploded on top of it, showering papers and folders everywhere.

  His vision cleared somewhat as he looked over to his left, and saw the figure in white.

  It stood just a bit shorter than him, and not only was its lab coat white, but most of the fur he could see was white. Only a grayish patch between the two small pinkish ears marred the otherwise ivory fur. Behind him, a thick and furless pink tail curled up from the ground, and Jake could see his feet, covered in shoes. The dark brown eyes behind a pair of round glasses held his when he met them, and the long pointed muzzle below them curved into a smile, showing a mouth full of small, pointed teeth. A possum. Jake had never met a possum before.

  First time for everything, he thought, trying to clear his head. He’d find out what the story was, blink out of his bonds and subdue this guy, and then go rescue Marcia.

  “Welcome to my laboratory, Blink Coyote. Or may I call you Jake?” The possum had a deceptively pleasant voice, with a bit of a quaver to it. Jake cursed inwardly. His secret identity was out, less than two years into his career! It had taken WonderWolf thirteen to be found out.

  “Jake, then,” the possum went on. “I’m sure you’re wondering what you’re doing here. I’ve been working on some projects involving you and your fellow supernormals, and I reached a point in my work where it became necessary to prove a hypothesis before I could proceed any further. I required the presence of an actual supernormal in order to conduct a series of controlled tests, with myself as the control subject, to follow proper scientific method…” He blinked, looked around, and cleared his throat. “That is to say, I have been indulging in some extra research of my own, that my employer is not aware of. For my own benefit. With your power at my disposal, I will build a weapon that will make governments tremble!”

  Jake ignored the odd discontinuity of this exposition. “Who are you?” he croaked, and then immediately thought of a thousand better things to say. Why not, ‘you have the advantage of me, sir’? Or ‘you seem to know me, but I’m afraid I’m not familiar with you’? Or even the classic, ‘you’re mad!’? But no, he had to come up with the most trite line ever, and deliver it badly on top of that.

  “You will be the first to know me as Doctor…” He hesitated. “Doctor Defiance.”

  Jake frowned. “What are you defying?”

  The possum blinked at him. “Um, authority. Governments! You know.”

  “It’s not a very good name. I suggest you keep trying.” That was better.

  “Listen…you’re not in a position to discuss this!” Doctor Defiance was clearly as uncomfortable with his name as Jake was with his, if not more. “We’ll have plenty of time to compare names.”

  “Where’s Marcia?” Jake demanded.

  “Oh, she’s down the hall. After she saw me, I had to bring her along. She’ll be extra insurance to make sure you behave.”

  Fleetingly, Jake wondered how the possum had gotten them both to this lab. Must have henchmen, of course
, so there’ll be someone guarding Marcia. I’ll be ready for them. He flexed his fists. “This has all been very interesting, but I think it’s time for me to go.” He closed his eyes and blinked…

  …and opened them again to see the possum’s sneer. “Go on, then,” Doctor Defiance said.

  Jake felt a sinking feeling in his chest that passed a rising panic on the way down, a feeling he remembered last from looking up two years ago and seeing the red glow even through the wood of the crate as he balanced it on his shoulder. He tried again, and again went nowhere.

  “Not so easy, is it?” The possum clapped his paws. “It looks like my first hypothesis is proven correct! The collar works!”

  “Collar?” Jake could feel it now, constricting the fur around his neck. If he swiveled his ears downward, he could hear a very faint, high-pitched electronic whine.

  “Yes, my hypothesis about the mechanism of your powers was accurate. Once I had figured that out, it was child’s play to create a blocker.”

  This was not heading in a direction Jake was happy with. “How did you…”

  The possum waved a paw. “Oh, it’s a simple matter of working out the displacement factor and the transference energy. After that, there’s enough supernormal research to narrow it down. But perhaps I’m being too modest. It did take me six months, after all.” He hid a small laugh behind his paw.

  Jake felt his tail droop. Six months? This guy had come up with a way to negate his powers in six months? His career was over anyway. It didn’t really matter if some idiot with a stupid name was going to keep him captive to do experiments on. If it wasn’t this jerk, it’d be some other one.

  No! He was a member of the League of Crimefighting Canids, after all!

  Even if, he now realized, he had completely neglected to call the League and notify them of a dangerous situation. So none of them knew where he was, to come to his rescue, or even that he was in trouble. They might not figure it out until late in the week, when he didn’t show up for the League meeting.

  He still had his wits, though. Maybe he could trick the possum into taking the collar off. If he pretended to be choking, or something. Not right away, but…later, when his guard was down. His tail drooped further. Lame dialogue, lame escape plans. What kind of superhero was he?

  “Let’s start with a blood sample. I’ve been dying for that. Fortunately, you won’t have to. Ha ha ha.”

  The laughter sounded forced, but Jake couldn’t see how that would help him. He studied the possum for any sign of weakness, but without powers and with his hands and feet bound, he wasn’t sure what he could do.

  The possum tapped his muzzle with one claw, staring up and down Jake’s uniform. “Now, how does this thing come off?” he wondered, and Jake kept quiet.

  For all his supposed intelligence, it took Doctor Defiance a full minute to find the snaps down the right side of the chest of Jake’s outfit. His delicate pink fingers pulled apart the first one, then another and another. He exposed Jake’s shoulder and upper chest, and seemed to be staring for several moments to decide where to stick the syringe he held in his left paw.

  The possum cleared his throat. “Okay. Now, this might hurt a bit.” His dark eyes drifted up from Jake’s chest to meet the coyote’s eyes, and he blinked. “Not that I care!” He pulled loose several more snaps from the uniform and pushed the sleeve down Jake’s arm, exposing his elbow and his stomach down to the top of his hip. Once again, the possum paused and stared.

  “You go commando, huh?” he said finally.

  Jake was very aware of the cool lab air on his privates. He said, “I was kind of in a hurry when I put the uniform on tonight.”

  “Right, of course.” Doctor Defiance put one of his delicate pink paws on Jake’s chest. “You work out?”

  “Not really.” This looked like maybe a sign of weakness. Or something. Jake wasn’t quite sure what was going on.

  “You should. It’s important to stay healthy.”

  “That’s your job, now,” Jake said bitterly.

  The possum looked genuinely startled. “What?”

  “To keep me healthy. As your prisoner?”

  “Oh. Of course! Yes, I’ll do all that.” His paw was curling in Jake’s chest fur, his muzzle close to the coyote’s. Jake searched his eyes for any sign of trickery, but saw only reflected curiosity.

  Then Doctor Defiance leaned in and kissed him on the mouth.

  It lasted only for a couple seconds. The possum stepped back, holding a paw to his muzzle as if horrified. The syringe clattered to the floor.

  Jake blinked, trying to figure out what was going on. “How long have you been a villain?” he said. “Because I think you need some more practice.” Hey, he thought. That was pretty good.

  “Oh my God,” the possum moaned, “this isn’t going well at all.”

  Damn, Jake thought. Maybe he’s got a secret crush on me. Maybe that’s the weakness I can use. I can take another kiss if it’ll set me free. Actually, even if it won’t… “Maybe you should’ve asked me first,” he said.

  “Asked you?” The possum straightened. “Doctor Destiny does not ask!”

  “Doctor what?”

  “Defiance.” The possum’s shoulders sagged. “What did I say?”

  “Destiny.” Jake couldn’t help but grin. If this guy didn’t have him prisoner, he’d be kind of cute, actually.

  “Well, uh, would you mind if I kissed you again?”

  Jake knew he was going to say ‘no,’ but what surprised him when he did say it was the swelling in his sheath. And when the possum stepped timidly up and touched his lips again, Jake felt himself getting very hard, very fast. Good job, body, he told himself unconvincingly. Way to, uh, pretend that I’m aroused…interested…and then he stopped telling himself anything, because his long tongue was being rubbed by a shorter, thicker one and his uniform’s snaps were coming undone one by one under a set of gentle fingers.

  He felt those same fingers brush down his stomach and along his fully hard erection, only moaning as they curled around it and squeezed its hardness. “Mmm,” Doctor Defiance said, pulling back from the kiss. “God, you’re gorgeous.”

  Jake swallowed. “It’s not really fair,” he said, “I can’t undress you.”

  “Oh, right.” Smiling nervously, the possum stepped back and shrugged off his lab coat, then pulled off his shirt and slid his pants down.

  Jake stared. “Oh, my God. Are you okay?”

  Doctor Defiance reached down and brushed a finger along his half-erect member, purplish-blue and split into two forks, each with its own glans and slit. “Yeah, all possums are like this. You never saw one before?” Jake shook his head. “I got teased a lot in gym class.”

  “I bet.”

  The possum came back up close to him, sliding his fingers under Jake’s sac and then holding his shaft again. “You sure you’re okay with this?”

  “Yeah.” In a way he couldn’t explain, it felt better than with the self-assured rabbit, where every sexual encounter provided her with a chance to teach him something or show him the right way to do things. He appreciated her expertise, but there was something about the shy, hesitant possum that made Jake feel like they were doing things together (together?? he’s got you tied up and powerless! his rational mind shrieked) rather than him being led through every experience.

  The possum leaned up to kiss him again, and he kissed back, and both of them nearly got the tips of their tongues bitten off a moment later when a shrill female voice echoed through the room.

  “What the hell is going on?”

  Jake snapped his head around as the possum flinched, then dove for his lab coat. Marcia walked towards the possum, a gun held loosely in her right paw. “Charles?” Her tone carried that sharp warning that Jake knew meant trouble. Usually it was enough to send him blinking home.

  “How did you get free?” Jake asked, trying to distract her, but she held up a stubby paw to him.

  “Charles, maybe you didn’
t understand your role in all of this. You were supposed to be Doctor Defiance, budding supervillain. You have captured Blink Coyote and are beginning to perform experiments on him.” She eyed the lab coat he was hastily buttoning shut. “Of a medical nature.”

  “Marcia…” Jake started, and this time succeeded in distracting her.

  “And you!” She whirled, pointing the gun at him. “I set up this whole scenario, and it was not cheap, let me tell you, all to give you a nemesis and an adventure for your birthday, and I walk in to rescue you and find you kissing your nemesis?

  “Rescue me?” Jake said, just as the possum said, “Nemesis?”

  “And,” she said, pointedly looking down to where his shaft still hung hard and full over the flaps of his suit, “you’re into it. Does your little feathered friend know about that secret romantic side?”

  While Jake sputtered to reply, she turned on the possum again. “What were you thinking?”

  “That you don’t know how lucky you are. My God! He’s gorgeous! Look at that body!”

  They both turned to look at Jake, who squirmed under the scrutiny. “Hey, uh…”

  Marcia ignored him. “If I’d known you cruised that side of the street, I never would have hired you.”

  “I, uh, don’t really go out of my way to keep it secret,” Doctor Defiance—Charles—said. “I mean, did you see the poster of WonderWolf on the wall of my office?”

  “What does that prove?” Marcia waved the gun dismissively. “I’ve got that same poster. So does everyone.”

  Jake didn’t want to draw attention to himself again, but he was talking before he knew it. “The one of him looking over his shoulder from behind, where he’s naked?”

  “He’s not naked,” Marcia said pointedly, looking down at Jake’s crotch, which appeared to be enjoying the attention and begging for more. “He’s got a speedo on.”

  “It’s a butt shot,” Charles said. “The speedo doesn’t cover anything.”

  “That’s what I say!” Jake said.

  “Great butt,” Charles said, and inclined his head as though he were trying to see Jake’s. “Yours is too.”