Normalized (The Complete Quartet)

by David Bussell

  As I sat there among the wreckage I imagined the Star of India sat safely in its exhibition case and smiled.

  April 30th

  Who is Mister Normal?

  That’s what all the news sites were asking this morning. Sat below the headlines were grainy CCTV stills of me at the museum handing the Prof’s lackey his bionic butt. Turns out that geriatric guard I saved sold his story to the press, crediting his astonishing rescue not to a superhero, but to a mysterious plain-clothed stranger. A stranger the papers had dubbed ‘Mister Normal.’

  This was something brand new. Foiling gem heists was cape business, yet there was this guy – a regular Joe – staring down the forces of evil without a superpower to his name – and dressed in a two-piece from Men’s Warehouse no less. No wonder I was making headlines like a corduroy pillow.[91]

  Rex Kettner rushed out a TV special on the Mister Normal story. “Where does he come from?” he asked. “What’s his master plan? Is he here to do what the law can’t?” He even made an appeal to shake my hand and sign on as C.H.O.M.P’s poster boy. The nerve. The only reason Kettner wants anything to do with ‘Mister Normal’ is because it serves his anti-superhero agenda. What a crock. Every day he’d curl a hefty one on Captain Might, now here he is rooting for the exact same guy without even knowing it! Suddenly I stink like miracles just because I’ve done a fraction of my old job, only this time according to his little non-superpowered playbook? Is that the way it is? Finally I’m a hero just because I’m not super? The spine on that weasel. Get into bed with Rex Kettner? I’d sooner spoon a stegosaurus.

  May 1st

  I was making a food run when around the corner of Fifth Avenue came a rainbow-colored horde. They were marching right down the middle of the street and making all kinds of commotion. At first I thought it was a Pride thing, but instead of the obligatory PVC biker hats and ‘I heart KY’ t-shirts, I saw cowls and capes. It wasn’t a parade, it was a rally – a superhero strike – and the costumed comrades were chanting:

  “We won’t work for zeroes! / Pay your superheroes!”

  “Until we get our rights! / We won’t wear the tights!”

  “Treat me like an ape! / And I rest my cape!”

  Small wonder things have come to a boil. Trying to restore order after the prison break must have put a huge strain on the law. The bad guys have been treating this town like Mardi Gras, which for C.H.A.M.P’s officers will have added up to late nights, thin shoe leather and a whole heap of unpaid overtime. Something had to give.[92]

  The strike had a hell of a turnout. Just about the entire roster of registered superheroes had downed tools far as I could tell, from Alpha Man to Zebra Lad.[93] The administration and custodial staff showed up to demonstrate too – I even saw old man Gerry waving a banner and shouting into a megaphone. Guess that’s the pair of us off of the invite list for the next poker game. Birdy and Fish Face I didn’t see at the demo, but then Birdy was on the management side and Fish and him had always been tight. The two of them went together like soccer and racism.

  So that’s that. The shop’s shut, the cowls have cried foul and Johnny Law’s off the clock. This is nuts. Without the C.H.A.M.P camp keeping the peace we’re a frontier town without a sheriff. An open goal for the bad guys. Mark my words, things around here are about to get a whole lot uglier before they get worse.

  May 3rd

  Since crime won’t fight itself and our capes have developed a bad case of the f*ck-its, someone else had to take up the slack, whether they were fit for the job or not. With C.H.A.M.P’s officers blowing off their civic duty, the City’s seen a huge surge in have-a-go superheroes. Guys big on heart but small on brains doing their best to uphold justice, whatever the odds. It’s a boom time for the brave and foolish, with unregistered capes loitering our street corners, openly panhandling.

  “Hero for hire, ma’am?”

  “Battle your Arch, sir?”

  “Two-for-one on vengeful symbiotes, my friend.”

  It’s only a matter of time before one of them gets themselves greased.

  Someone has to nut up, and soon. Someone who knows what they’re doing out there. Someone... and I hesitate to say this... but someone like me. Yeah, I know I’m not the watchful protector you had in mind, but I reckon I still have my uses – seeing off Mimix and trashing the Prof’s Mandroid was proof of that. Proof that I might not have powers but I’ve still got skills.

  Another thing I have is an insight too few have – and that’s that superpowers aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. I used to have a big old pile of powers – I could tunnel to the Earth’s core with my bare hands if the mood took me – and how did Professor D’eath take me down? With a pile of junkyard scrap, that’s how. Because powers made me lazy. I thought those God-given blessings were all I needed to get by and that got me living on the front foot. No wonder I was a leg sweep waiting to happen.

  But I’m not the only one. There are hordes of guys out there who didn’t earn their powers either. Guys who’ve gotten blinded by their own sense of superpowered entitlement. I’ve seen them in action – no technique, no finesse – like horses riding cows. They’ve got the means but they sure don’t have the method. I know I can make something of that. I just need to focus. To strategize. To stare into the eye of the tiger and say, “Hey, f*ck you, tiger!”

  If I think smart and exploit the right vulnerabilities I can still be a contribution, I know I can. It’s all a case of preparation. Of selecting the proper targets and knowing my sh*t chapter and verse. But where to start? I made myself a hit list, jotting down the names of the prison escapees and underlining any who seemed like they might fit my weight class. I read it back:

  Fräulein Frigid

  Miss Fortune

  Strong-Man

  Acro-Bat

  The Murder Circus. If I was going to ease myself back inside of this thing I’d need to take it nice and slow, and those jumped-up Juggalos were just the lube I needed.

  May 4th

  As supervillain groups went, the Murder Circus were straight up inconsistent. Take Fräulein Frigid – how exactly did she fit into the mix? The rest of the Circus I understood – a gymnast (Acro-Bat), a strongman (Strong-Man), even the witch worked in a sideshow capacity (Miss Fortune), but what did a dame made of ice have to do with anything? Wouldn’t a fire breather be the way to go? Is it any wonder the Circus were nommed for the Worst Supervillain category at the Supeys three years on the trot?

  Another of the Murder Circus’s inconsistencies was their lair, or rather lack of lair. Contrary to what you might expect, they don’t all cosy up in some big top, which is a shame as it would make finding them so much easier. Still, it’s probably for the best. I can’t be taking on a syndicate of supervillains mano-a-mano. I’m not the Jupiter of this solar system anymore – if was going to pull this off I’d need to pick off the pack one by one. Work my way up the ladder a rung at a time, up to the Murder Circus, on to the next pack of villains, then maybe, just maybe, a day would come that I climbed that ladder all the way to D’eath himself.

  But first I’d need to take down this pack of clowns.[94] I hit the underworld and rattled some cages – a push here, a shove there, a kick in the dick there – whatever it took to get those canaries singing. Soon enough I’d asked the right questions of the right deadbeats and had a lead on my mark: Fräulein Frigid. I knew she’d have to be holed up somewhere chill, but without the word on the street, who knows how many cold storage plants and derelict ice rinks I’d have scoped out before I wound up at the vacated morgue she called home?

  I’d need to play it just right if I was going to stand a chance against Fräulein Frigid, so I posted up outside the morgue and cased the joint. It was tough keeping a distance – all this biding my time stuff is virgin territory for me. Back when I was Captain Might I never worried about blind spots or escape routes or any of that junk. I was unbeatable – a chainsaw at a pillow fight. Not any more though. One foot wrong this time and that da
me would turn me into a people popsicle.

  I waited for Frigid to head out then jimmied open a back window and slipped into the morgue. Inside was pure nightmare fuel. Splintered tiles and spiderwebbed embalming machines and sluices for fluids I didn’t even want to think about. I’m telling you, my heart was bouncing around in my ribcage like a wasp off a windowpane. It was sub-zero in there, but that didn’t stop a bead of sweat the size of a jawbreaker rolling down the length of my spine (before my butt swallowed it).

  I crept on. The plan was to find a place to hide, wait for Frigid to return then seal her into the freezer she’d converted into a bedchamber. After that I’d shut off the cold from the outside, melt her down to H2O and deliver her to the authorities before she had a chance to reconstitute. No fuss, no muss. Well, some muss. Quite a lot of muss.

  I looked around for somewhere to stash myself. I was about to hunker down behind a forensics slab when a draft made the hairs at the nape of my neck prickle and a biting frost etched snowflakes onto the lenses of my glasses. I lowered my specs and turned around to see a pair of eyes tunelling into me from the semi-darkness. Fräulein Frigid had arrived home early. My balls turned the size of acorns.

  “Ice-ta la vista, baby!” she screeched with the lungs of a banshee, then blasted me with a blizzard from the cold part of hell.

  The force of it bounced me off a wall and left me with the worst ice cream headache I ever had.

  “What is it with you guys and your goddamned puns?” I croaked.[95]

  Another shot like that and I was done for. I took off in the opposite direction and made a run for the window I’d slipped in through, but Frigid had iced it solid.

  “Snow way out,” she said.

  I ran again, almost losing my footing on the slippery deck before rounding a corner and throwing myself through a door. It was only as I wedged my back up against it that I realized I’d succeeded in trapping myself in a utility closet. That was definitely counter to my intentions. Suddenly this whole scheme of mine made about as much sense as a pregnant lady doing the worm.

  Outside, Fräulein Frigid cackled. “What’s the matter, did you get cold feet!”

  Things were going from worse to worse. My first real outing as Mister Normal and I’d already choked. Way to stage a comeback, buddy.

  I felt the door on my back turning Siberian as Fräulein Frigid assaulted it with fresh frost, sealing it around the edges and cutting off my air supply. I was, as the French say, ‘le f*cked.’

  That’s when I laid eyes on my salvation. Sat there on closet a shelf; a can of Raid insect spray. Snatching it up, I quickly hatched a plan, or at least stole one from an old movie.

  Sucking in a last rasp of air, I kicked open the door and hurled myself into the fray. Rolling to avoid another blast of ice, I came up, struck my Zippo and aimed a jet of flaming aerosol into my tormentor’s face, ozone layer be damned. Fräulein Frigid shrieked and liquefied at my feet like a Nazi with an Ark. I did it! I beat that bitch so bad I knocked her umlaut off!

  The clean-up was a bit of a comedown. The best I could think of was to mop Frigid up with a sponge and wring her into a bucket bit by bit. I called quitting time after I figured I must have collected a good 80 percent of her. Surely that was enough for her to get by with once she’d re-solidified. What do you want, it’s not like I’m getting paid for this gig.

  I poured Fraulein Frigid into a Tupperware container and Fed Exed the package to C.H.A.M.P HQ, addressing it to my brother. I trusted the mailman would be okay crossing the picket line that had formed outside the building. To help Birdy out I even wrote Frigid’s name in the contents box, because I am nothing if not thoughtful. As for the sender box, well, I meant to leave that part blank but I reckoned a work of art deserved a signature. I took out a pen, popped the lid and scribbled a note in a handwriting my brother wouldn’t recognize.

  Dear C.H.A.M.P Chief Officer,

  About time this one cooled her heels.[96]

  Mister Normal.

  May 5th

  I was starting to get a feel for the game again, but that game was about to get flicked to veteran setting.

  Next item on the docket was Strong-Man, and he was one bad bastard. The guy was so buff he could twitch his pecs and put me in a different room. No way I was winning a throw-down with that big galoot. Not since Professor D’eath gave me the proportionate strength of... a man.

  I had to come up with a fresh angle. I couldn’t beat Strong-Man with my body but that didn't mean I couldn't smash him with my brains. I may be a bit short bus in the head but that obelisk had an IQ south of 20. Way I saw it, beating Strong-Man in a battle of wits wasn’t exactly going to be chess with Kasparov. All I needed was the right preparation. Abe Lincoln once said, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I’ll spend the first four sharpening the axe,” and that’s what I needed to do with this guy. Lincoln his ass.

  I knew exactly where I’d find Strong-Man – at Powerhouse – the superhero gym he’d watched me spill my ass at. I rocked up good and late and there he was, head like a wrecking ball with a walnut for a brain. When I kicked open the door he was busy making a murder victim out of a punching bag. He saw me and we locked eyes, High Noon style. The rest of the juicers dropped their dumbbells and made a beeline for the exit, but Strong-Man just sneered. Obnoxious gym music pounded like war drums, amping up the tension. It was on like King Kong in a thong smoking a bong.

  “Put your hands behind your head and don’t try anything cute,” I ordered.

  Strong-Man snatched up a couple of barbell plates and whipped them at me like they were saucers from a little girl’s tea set. The oversized discuses missed me by a whisker and buried themselves in a solid foot of concrete. Nothing cute about that.

  Strong-Man flexed the two sacks of snakes he called biceps and growled. I tossed a barbell his way but it might as well have been a pixie stick for all the damage it did. I ran like hell, scampering across the gym and making for the locker room. Strong-Man steamrolled after me, bursting through the changing wall and a stale cloud of Axe body spray.

  I rabitted into the sauna, cloaked in steam but cornered.

  “I have you now,” the big oaf boomed.

  He picked out my silhouette through the hot fog, took his marks then came at me faster than a ping pong ball at a Bangkok nightclub. There was no escaping him, but then that was never the plan. I’d already sharpened my Abe Lincoln axe.

  Activating my insurance policy, I pulled the cord I’d placed in his path, causing a high tensile steel cable to spring up at ankle height. With no time to maneuver, Strong-Man struck the tripwire full tilt and went down like a squid in a washing machine. He hit the ground headfirst, mowing out a strip of floor with his face before coming to a dead stop. As he shook his head to shoo the halo of circling birdies I moved in and slapped on the tibonium cuffs. All he could do was stare at me like I was an algebra test.

  Score two for Mister Normal. I pinned a note to Strong-Man’s toga and made an anonymous call for Birdy to collect his next prisoner.

  May 6th

  Time for the hat trick. Third on my to-do list was Miss Fortune, the bitchin’ witch of the Murder Circus. Real shady lady, she was – if I didn’t play my tarot cards right with her the next magic trick she’d perform would be disappearing my birth certificate.

  I knew just where I’d find Fortune – knocking back flagons at Legerdomain with the rest of her conjuror cronies. Legerdomain was the city’s favorite hangout for spell-casters – the bar where all our Gargamels went to get lit. Annoyingly, the place wasn’t listed on Yelp though – in fact, the only way to get to it was through a mysterious, Narnia-like door that was prone to magically skipping zip codes. No one outside of the magic circle knew where the entrance to the sorcerer’s speakeasy was going to land on any given night. I’m telling you, the place was tougher to get into than an airline chicken kiev.

  Then I remembered I had an in with the miracle mob, at least to a fashion. I’d met her at
her husband’s funeral a while back – Dr Rune’s former wife and current widow. Maybe she knew a way to duck the velvet rope and get inside Legerdomain. Not that I imagined she’d be crazy keen to get a visit from me, what with the fact I was the guy who tore off her spouse’s arms and sent him into a spiral of depression that led him to his grave. Some people can hold a real grudge over stuff like that.

  I stopped by her home, ditching the glasses so there was no mistaking who I was. I’ve done some sketchy things in my time but I wasn’t about to add duping a widow to the list. All told, our meeting went better than expected, which is to say she didn’t kick my balls into my lungs. After some initial name-calling she told me she didn’t blame me for what had happened to her husband. She laid the charge for that on him and his magic habit. She hated that whole scene, she told me. The number of times she’d had to drag him out of that stupid bar. It was only because she’d gone there to give him a thick ear one time that a drunken game of dominoes hadn’t cost him his precious enchanted crown.