Temporary Superheroine

by Irene Vartanoff

  I picked up a crowbar lying nearby and pried open one of the crates. Sure enough, a huge machine was inside, similar to what Diabolical Dave had drawn and Roland had described. What it did was anybody’s guess.

  I heard rushing feet behind me. I turned around, automatically swinging the crowbar.

  The Purple Menace’s two slimy henchmen were coming at me fast with a couple of baseball bats. I’d seen bat action in violent movies and television shows. I didn’t want to be on the receiving end.

  “Who do you think you are? The Yankees?” I asked. If I’d had time to think, I would have used my power bolts. I had a crowbar in my hands and instead I acted instinctively. I swiped at Mutt with the crowbar. My crowbar broke his bat. The arc of my swing sent the broken part flying into Jeff’s face. Both men reared back, which gave me time to throw the crowbar at Mutt, and use my bolts. They went down and stayed down.

  Wow. I did that. Twice in ten minutes. My superpower amazed me. Of course, I wasn’t quite in control of it, since the guys had revived inconveniently fast. I had no clue about how much power I ought to use to keep them zapped.

  I searched around a bit, found some rope, and did my best to tie them up. I was never a girl scout. My knots were probably lame. I hurriedly added most of a roll of packing tape to slow them down and make it harder for them to break out. By the time I did it, they were coming around.

  “Where did the Purple Menace go?” I demanded.

  “Uhhhnn,” said Jeff. He was the short one.

  “I ain’t tellin’,” Mutt defied me. He was the tall one, the one who always started the trouble. A creep on two worlds. I decided to try a threat. What could I lose?

  “If you don’t tell me, I might decide to start hitting you with this crowbar. You’d be messed up for sure. Maybe even die,” I said, as nonchalantly as possible. This visibly scared Jeff, who started whispering to Mutt. Mutt glared at me. I glared back.

  “You can’t stop him,” Mutt sneered.

  “Why don’t you leave foretelling the future to someone else, knucklehead, and answer my question? Where did the Purple Menace go?”

  This was exasperating. Time was critical. I started swinging the crowbar in a swaggering, threatening manner.

  Mutt hung tough.

  “No? Say goodbye,” I threatened. If they believed I was a stone-cold killer, maybe they’d talk. Jeff again whispered frantically to Mutt.

  Jeff broke. “The boss could be a couple places. His control center. Or his new lab.”

  “Why did he move?” I was frankly puzzled. How many secret lairs does any self-respecting supervillain need? Why leave this one?

  “He’s the boss. He don’t explain everythin’ to us.” This was said sullenly.

  “Where? Where are these places? How do I get to them?”

  “Don’t say anythin’ more.” Mutt bit out at his partner. “Or I’ll whack you myself.”

  I swung the crowbar in an arc in front of the men, threatening them, and Jeff cringed a bit. Inwardly, I was amazed at myself. At them, too. These were grown tough guys. I was merely a young woman in a stupid superheroine costume. Ahhh. The costume, symbolizing superpowers.

  “You need a visual aid,” I said, glaring at Jeff, the weaker of the two. I raised the crowbar over his head. He seemed to be more afraid of me than of Mutt, which frankly surprised me. I was working it.

  “On the roof—,” he muttered. Mutt head-butted him viciously. Jeff’s eyes rolled up. He was unconscious.

  “Hey, behave,” I chided. “Thanks for the info. As a token of my appreciation, I’ll call the cops in a while,” I promised. Which ought to get them arrested for something.

  “You witch,” Mutt said.

  “That’s ‘Ms. Witch’ to you,” I said gaily as I departed for the roof. It had to be the costume making me say all these silly quips.

  I found stairs in the hallway, leading to a trap door. I raised the door with caution, hoping it would not creak and alert anyone up top to my presence. As soon as I’d opened it a slit, I could see the roof was deserted.

  I lifted the trapdoor all the way, and propped it open, first looking behind me. No one.

  Strange. In the middle of the roof, there was a low platform in front of a painted outline. Something long, with a bulbous end. What was that about?

  Suddenly, an enormous purple arm swooped down at me. Its metal fingers closed tight around me, and the contraption pulled me into the air.

  “What th—?”

  I was captive in an iron grip. Although my head was above the fingers, they wrapped around my torso completely. My arms were pressed hard against my sides. I couldn’t shoot any bolts, not unless I wanted to give myself a hot foot.

  I tried focusing all my strength into moving one of my legs. A woman’s legs are supposedly much stronger than her arms. Perhaps mine were.

  No use. I couldn’t budge the metal fist. The grip tightened. Soon I would be crushed to death. Or perhaps the fist would turn upside down and jam my head into something and kill me. Gruesome thought.

  Good guess who was controlling the metal arm. It had to be the Purple Menace. Yet I didn’t see him anywhere.

  I had to save myself, move something. Even my big toe.

  “It’s not going to end this way. It’s not!” I yelled. Of course I was blowing hot air. The situation was bad.

  The giant purple forearm flew near the edge of the roof. If it let me go when we were over the street, the fall could kill me.

  Before the arm could take me farther—or crush me to a pulp—a purple bolt came from street level. The arm suddenly lost altitude.

  Another bolt made the studded fingers release. I fell, but only a few feet down to the roof again. Not exactly a soft landing, but good enough. My superheroine costume covered me enough to reduce scrapes. Not that I stopped to take inventory. The arm battled the purple bolts, advancing on their source somewhere out of my line of vision down the street.

  I should help whoever had rescued me. I shot my own bolts at the steel behemoth’s wrist, hoping to sever the hand from the arm. In combination with the other bolts hitting it, I succeeded. Smoke rose from the fingers and the joints. The arm was in big trouble now as it lurched over the street.

  Suddenly, I sensed my bolts had a limit. This was the first time I had used them continuously. They were running out of juice.

  I had a decision to make. Should I continue to fight the steel arm, and possibly face another opponent once the arm was fully vanquished? The bolts that attacked the arm were purple, after all, the Purple Menace’s favorite color. Or should I conserve my bolts and try to find the Purple Menace? If he wasn’t the one fighting the giant arm.

  Had I searched the building completely? Despite what his henchmen told me, the Purple Menace might be lurking on a different floor, controlling the enormous purple arm. If so, this was the perfect moment to catch him off guard.

  I ran downstairs again and searched every loft. I’d guessed wrong. They were all deserted. The henchmen were gone. I returned to the roof to check on the battle below.

  I couldn’t hear loud noises coming from the street anymore. I had to make myself walk to the edge of the roof to check. After my near-death experience on a rooftop earlier today, not to mention within the last few minutes, I wasn’t happy to be so close to the edge. Who knew what was waiting for me?

  The steel arm was in pieces in the street. The truck the henchmen had been loading machines into was gone. My mysterious savior had vanished. The street was empty. There weren’t even any gawkers.

  Freaky. How could I be alone in such a populous city?

  I turned away from the street to look at the rooftop landing zone. The space was completely flat. It had no secret nooks where anyone could hide. Then I noticed something that hadn’t registered before. The bubble transporter was behind the entrance to the roof.

  The machine the Purple Menace’s henchmen used to capture Roland. I’d seen it in my dreams, too. Up close, it wasn’t so magical. The b
ubble was a kind of transparent plastic. It had a pocket door with a recessed handle, and see-through controls made of plastic. A bench was built into one wall.

  Before, I’d experienced the bubble as a menace. At rest, the bubble transporter wasn’t daunting.

  I slid open the door and climbed inside. Probably stupid of me. When I sat down, the door shut on its own. The controls included a tiny video screen with some buttons next to it. I pushed a couple. One fired up the bubble and sent it flying rapidly through the air.

  “Holy cow.”

  The destination must be pre-programmed and, with any luck, would lead me to the Purple Menace.

  The bubble gently progressed above the streets. It knew where it was going, which was a good thing since I didn’t have a clue how to control it. I’d never flown anything except a paper airplane.

  The bubble cruised uptown, toward much more expensive real estate. Fat chance the Purple Menace would have a hideout here. I’d been an inept torturer. I hadn’t demanded enough details about where the Purple Menace was. Come to think of it, it’s said that people under duress make up answers. They’d probably lied to me. Now I was stuck on a ride going who knew where.

  Cruising altitude was high enough to avoid streetlights, but low enough to avoid the amazing futuristic sky highway above the island. Nobody stared out any office windows at me, or pointed at me from the sidewalks. We smoothly sailed up Broadway, passing 14th Street, then 23rd. Just as we approached Macy’s, I caught a glimpse of the Empire State Building down 34th Street and realized there was something radically different about it. But I had no time to gawk, as the bubble kept on taking me northwest on Broadway. At Times Square, it veered due north. When it neared Central Park at 59th Street, the bubble turned east. A couple more turns, and the bubble had taken me back to the Fantastic Comics building at 59th and 2nd. It hovered in midair outside Bodacious Barb’s 6th floor office.

  The blasted bubble had followed its course from earlier today. I would not find the Purple Menace in this contraption except by accident. I might as well ditch it. But how?

  In her office, Barb saw me and waved. I gave the universal shoulder shrug with palms out, to indicate I had no clue what I was doing. She pointed back toward Central Park.

  Good idea. It should make a softer landing than the tar or concrete of a city street or sidewalk. I touched the video screen, hoping it would respond to me directly. No. This world didn’t have the technology.

  I went back to pushing buttons. One opened the door. Whoops. I managed to get it closed as another button fired up the bubble again and sent it flying rapidly toward the park.

  “Yikes.”

  Quickly, I was over the park. The bubble wobbled, not cruising smoothly. With no idea how to land, I tried another button to move over Sheep’s Meadow, a large grassy open section of lower Central Park. No good. The bubble continued above dangerous, tree-covered areas instead.

  Jolted by the unstable ride, my hand hit the one button I knew was wrong. The door slid open again and my effort to close it went awry and tilted the bubble instead.

  “Lame.” I started to fall out as the bubble dropped. I sprawled half in and half out, holding desperately to the side of the control box. The bubble flew so low it bumped into a large tree branch. The door was still open. I was hurled out, fifty feet above the ground.

  I fell. I was going to die.

  Chapter 17

  I was falling to my death. If only I could fly like the Purple Menace. He would conquer our world because I could not fly, darn it.

  Wait. I was slowing down. Instead of accelerating and whacking into a tree and breaking all my bones, I slowed so much I slid onto a large branch. I grabbed smaller parts and hung on tight. It was a sloppy landing, but I’d take it.

  In New York they call these plane trees. They’re a kind of sycamore and they are enormously tall. I was still way up, still in a life-threatening situation. At least I hadn’t hurt myself. Yet.

  The bubble flew on, wreaking havoc in the branches of the next trees. Then there was a big crunching noise. Guess it crashed.

  I cursed myself as I hugged the branch. I was slowly sliding to its base despite my attempts to hang on. I checked out the next branch down. It was far out of reach. There weren’t a lot of small branches to help me, only big ones. Tarzan might have been able to jump lightly from one huge branch to another. I wasn’t Tarzan. Anyway, he had vines to hold onto.

  I suppose a real superheroine would take off her super-strong utility belt and wrap it around the branch and swing herself down. My utility belt was made of cheap vinyl from a costume closet. It wasn’t up to the task.

  Time to stop the mental babble and process what happened. I got tossed out of a moving vehicle in midair. I should have fallen like a rock. I didn’t. Instead, I had found some new power inside myself. It had saved my life.

  I was in an awkward position to try my new power again. I clung desperately to the thick branch, wrapping my arms and legs around the slippery, peeling bark. Sycamores don’t provide a soft nest.

  How could I get to the ground? Besides falling, once my arms gave out. To save myself, I must access whatever ability within me had stopped my freefall. Flying, I hoped.

  “Let’s see more flying,” I cried aloud, trying to psych myself for the next risk. I gingerly dropped one hand from the branch, and let myself dangle, all the while mentally trying to pull myself up. It sort of worked. My body rose up a bit. My head smacked the branch above me.

  “Wrong direction, dummy.”

  Next step, letting go and aiming for the next branch down, while mentally demanding a soft landing. My hands didn’t want to do it, but finally they obeyed my brain’s commands.

  I totally missed the branch and was falling again. “Darn it.”

  This was not working and I was about to need a hospital. I’d also lost my ability to curse on this weird world. The frustrated words escaping my mouth were all G-rated. “Drat. Phooey.”

  What a wimp. “Think soft landing. Think soft landing.” Could I save myself? I was still falling fast. Despite my desperately positive visualizations, as I neared the ground I automatically shut my eyes.

  I didn’t feel anything, no wind rushing by me. No twigs scraping at me. Nothing. Had I died? I finally dared to open my eyes.

  At first I didn’t process what I was seeing. Finally I understood. I was face down, hovering about six inches above grass.

  “Oof.” Of course I fell the rest of the way. I totally lost my concentration.

  “Oww. Not fun.” Oh, yes it was. I could fly. Sort of. Wow.

  Once safely on the ground, I was daring again. In the next few minutes I made several attempts to fly. I got off the ground a couple of times. By two feet for a few seconds. On the third try, only a few inches. Not impressive. Not a full-bore power like my bolts.

  Enough. I was wasting time.

  Now what? The city sidewalks were filled with people leaving work, and the sun was dropping low in the sky. I had no idea where the Purple Menace was, plus I’d broken his flying machine. So far I had failed utterly to achieve my mission as a temporary superheroine.

  What else was there to do but go see Barb? I brushed the dirt off my costume and trudged back to her building. She evidently wanted to see me too, because the moment I entered the Fantastic Comics headquarters, the receptionist waved me through. Most of the offices were empty now. It was after quitting time.

  Barb had donned a smart hat and some gloves, and was carrying a handbag matching her shoes. She looked very soignée if this was 1962.

  “At last. Let’s go have a cocktail.” She hustled me out of the office and down the street to a smoky bar. From the vestibule, I could see the bar was crowded with noisy men, classic Madison Avenue advertising types, all shouting.

  A hostess at a desk greeted us, not even giving my superheroine costume a second glance.

  “Unescorted?” she asked. She took us through another doorway leading to the ladies’ bar, a muc
h smaller room where it was still smoky but a lot quieter. She showed us to a table and left.

  I couldn’t help asking, “What did she mean by ‘unescorted’?”

  “No men with us. Women aren’t allowed in the men’s bar without an escort,” Barb explained. “It wouldn’t be considered respectable.” She ignored my wide-eyed surprise and got down to business. “Chloe, you aren’t making progress. I’m feeling urgency from Dave. You’ve crashed the transporter, haven’t you?”

  She lit a long thin cigar and puffed on it artistically. She still wore her wrist-length white gloves. A ring of sparkling rhinestones decorated the wrist edges.

  “Yes,” I admitted. “At least I wasn’t hurt.”

  Barb brushed aside my fall from the sky as if it were nothing. “Of course not. Listen to me. You must go after the Purple Menace and defeat him. Quit wasting time.”

  “I know my mission,” the words came out with enforced patience. “First I have to find him.” I recounted the story of my skirmishes with his henchmen, and the empty loft, and the steel arm.

  “Ahh, I see. Give me a minute.” Barb sat very still, looking at the plume of smoke rising from her cigar. Nothing else about her moved. She didn’t even seem to blink. Or breathe. I swear I watched her for at least a full minute, and there wasn’t a twitch.

  She took a big gulp of air, and came back from wherever she had been. “He’s in Brooklyn.”

  “What? How?” Had I witnessed a trance? Was Barb psychic? This world was filled with strangeness.

  Barb gave me a thin smile. “It’s a mental link thing, dear. Dave and I are connected, and the few people traveling between dimensions are, too, although not as well. Your boyfriend was no surprise to me when he showed up on my doorstep an hour ago.”

  “Eric came to see you?”

  “I wouldn’t give Eric the time of day. Your friend Roland Kirby was here.”

  “Why?” Now I was confused. Why would Roland have crossed over again? His job was to keep Dave awake. We couldn’t expect Jerry to do it. He was an old man himself.