Wearing the Cape

by Marion G. Harmon

  "You have very aggressive instincts." he said turning back to me.

  "Oak Park High field hockey, MVP."

  He studied me for a long moment.

  "And you're a cool one. You're fit to be tied, but no conniptions. I reckon you've got something to say to me?"

  "Why did we do that?"

  "Do what?"

  "Don't act stupid." After pulling myself together I'd gone back through the hole in the wall with my prisoners to help with the cleanup, and I wasn't going to close my eyes again tonight. I kept seeing Diceman, a Brother, lying in far too many pieces. I suppressed a near-hysterical giggle. He'd been diced.

  "We could have shut that fight down before it started." My voice shook. "Nimbus could have blinded half of them in a flash. Rush could have tased everybody Nimbus didn't blind. Blackstone could have flooded the building with fog while you and I went through with infrared vision and cuffed everybody still standing. There's got to be a dozen ways we could have done it. Nobody needed to get hurt. Nobody needed to die."

  He gave me a pitying look, like he was about to tell me there was no Santa.

  "Now there you're wrong."

  "Why?"

  "If we had shut it down before it started, taken them all in, what would have happened?"

  "Three of them would still be alive, and Sprints wouldn't be in the hospital." The Guardians had waited to go in till we got there, and hadn't been as lucky as us.

  "You're right. And then?"

  I just looked back at him. Where was he going?

  "How long would they have stayed off the street?" he asked. "They'd have lawyered up. Claimed they were there for a 'friendly meeting' and been out in a day. Stopping the fight, easy. Shutting them down? Whole different thing. So we waited till there was blood on the ground, then gave them plenty of room to kick up a fuss."

  I shook my head. "Tell me we didn't wait for someone to die."

  "I could, but I'd be lying. I wish we could have waited longer."

  "No. We're heroes." Tears began prickling my still-aching eyes.

  "You're right," he said. He folded his arms and dropped the Texas drawl. "We don't use deadly force, and when we do there has to be a damn good reason. Remember what I told you? We wear the cape and do what we do to show normal people that we can protect them, that they don't have to be afraid of us. What do you think the Brotherhood and the Sanguinary Boys showed them? That they should be very afraid.

  "We went out there tonight to stop them," he went on relentlessly. "Not to stop them from throwing down—to stop them. Three dead means three homicides, more injured means battery, aggravated assault, attempted homicides. They met to fight—that's premeditation and conspiracy to commit, and all of them are culpable.

  "They're all going away for a good long time; the courts will give the maximum sentences without possibility of parole. They've got no patience for superhumans who do what they do, so the score is three dead bad guys and the rest in prison for at least a decade or two, maybe three. Hopefully they'll kill each other there. Our hands are clean, and the good citizens of Chicago will sleep a little easier."

  I took a breath, then let it out and slid off the table. He stayed where he was and I headed for the door the long way around him. I stopped, my hand on the latch.

  "You're wrong about one thing," I said without turning around.

  "And what's that?"

  "Our hands aren't clean."

  Chapter Fifteen

  Headhunter was found dead this morning in South Side Chicago. At this time there are no suspects, and since he was not in costume, police are positing a hate-crime. Also, with no further declarations from the Teatime Anarchist, the Chief of Police has upgraded Chicago's security-status to nominal. Last night saw a major battle between the Sentinels and Guardians and both of Chicago's rival supervillain gangs. We will have the full story for you at twelve.

  Chicago Morning News

  * * *

  So naturally I was in trouble.

  The Clocktower Fight hit the news, pushing Headhunter and even the Teatime Anarchist off the air by lunchtime (after all, he hadn't blown anybody up today). Dad came out of a pitch-meeting when Mom called, and both called me. The conversation started with orders to pack—suddenly the US Marshals Program looked really attractive. Dad sounded ready to rip Atlas' heart out; he started with what the hell was that grandstanding son-of-a-bitch thinking?

  It went downhill from there.

  So I said no. Then I said when Hell sells timeshares and ducks sing freaking opera. That stunned them and Dad started Young-Ladying me. He hadn't done that since my last Shelly Adventure. I put the phone on speaker so I could wave my arms while screaming, ended with and forget Sunday dinner! and hung up on them.

  Thankfully I had no patrol that day, so I didn't see Atlas, and when Chakra said that we had to celebrate my first fight with a Girl's Night Out I jumped at the chance to get out of the Dome. I didn't even ask where it would happen; it would at least start at The Fortress.

  Chicago is the Metropolis of the superhero world, and we have more superheroes per capita than any other city. New York and LA have theirs, but ours? Cooler. New York's are mostly supercops and LA is up to its eyeballs in phony silver-screen heroes. The Fortress? The club for capes and cape-watchers.

  One of the Rush Street clubs between Oak Street and Chicago Avenue, it might be world-famous but from the outside it makes me think of a maximum security prison: two stories of grey stone walls with narrow windows, iron trim, and no name over the entrance—just a five-cornered shield with an F in the middle (no imagination; it's basically Superman's symbol with an 'F' instead of an 'S'). Taxies pull up at all hours and at night there's always a line. They come to see the superheroes.

  No taxies for us, of course. Only Quin couldn't fly, and she was perfectly happy to ride on my shoulders again so we all made a pretty cool entrance touching down outside the club together. The line cheered and applauded and Quin dismounted with a backwards cartwheel while cameras flashed.

  "Chakra!"

  "Nimbus!"

  "You guys are so hot!"

  "Astra!"

  "I'm yours!"

  "I love you Harlequin!"

  The gatekeeper held the rope open and we waved to the line as we headed inside.

  The Fortress is the Hard Rock Café for cape-watchers. It's a shrine to capes as much as a club, and its walls are hung with news pictures and publicity posters, old equipment, and framed costumes. Display cases hold museum-quality wax figures of some of our most famous local heroes—Atlas, Caterwaul, and Bombshell. The place is a café and dance club; some come to eat and drink, some come to dance, but everyone comes to see or be seen. Mom took Shelly and me here for lunch a couple of times, but in the daytime the club part is closed and the crowd more mundane. Shelly and I tried to sneak in after dark, once—the occasion of Dad's last Young Lady lecture. Now the stuff on the walls was nothing compared to what was on the dance floor. I stared.

  Imagine a themed costume party where the invitation reads: Catsuits, jumpsuits, unitards, corsets, microskirts, or full-body tights are required. Masks and capes welcome. No earth-tones. Leather, spandex, and latex preferred. At least half of the crowd got the invitation.

  I saw Jack Frost, a seriously muscular cryokinetic, in metallic blue multi-pocketed cargo pants and a blue and white pec-hugging athletic shirt, talking to Hardlock, a man of living steel wearing a black leather jumpsuit. (Looking at Frost, I thought of last night and shivered.) And they were the conservatively dressed ones. Red Robin—a fellow flyer dressed in red and yellow spandex and a yellow cape—chatted up Blue Fire, who wore only her flaring blue aura and strategic white bits of tape over blue-dyed skin. Foxlight, wearing a fur-patterned catsuit with face paint and spiked hair that had to take her an hour to get right, schmoozed with The Cardinal, out tonight in a red jumpsuit-tuxedo with a white clerical collar.

  I even spotted Wisteria, her amazonian super-model figure displayed in a deeply purpl
e petal-patterned catsuit with a high neck that left her arms and shoulders bare. The token domino mask she wore did nothing to hide her sharp features, or her irritation as she tried to ignore Flashback. His black and white checker patterned full-body stocking covered everything, even his hands, feet, and, disconcertingly, his face. (How did he see? Or eat or drink?)

  Those were just the capes I recognized right away; there were lots more mixed in with flamboyantly costumed wannabees and cosplayers. Some of them dressed in self-consciously modish variations of the "classic" style, but lots of costumes bordered on fetish-wear if they didn't, like Blue Fire's, gleefully embrace it. Artfully airbrushed suggestions of masks covered faces all around me, and I felt overdressed.

  "How can you tell who the real capes are?" I asked Quin.

  "You can't always!" she yelled back over the music. "But mostly real heroes' costumes are better designed, more conservative, and less likely to fall off in a fight!"

  I laughed.

  "No, really!" she insisted. "The ones in costumes that look like flashy clubwear? Probably not real capes. Though I could be wrong; a legitimate hero might keep a club version of their costume in their closet!"

  "Why all the Atlas-girls?" I asked. I counted five in latex versions of Atlas' costume just from where I stood.

  Chakra laughed. "You're kidding, right?'

  "No!"

  "Wannabee sidekicks! Atlas groupies hoping to get lucky!"

  "You're—" I looked around, realizing they weren't the only people dressed as variants of popular capes. I even saw men dressed as male versions of well-known superheroines, including a male Wisteria. All that body-sculpted maleness in purple tights made my eyes water.

  My stomach sank. "You mean..."

  She nodded. "Like groupies chasing pop stars. The tribute costumes practically scream 'do me!'"

  "Do they? I mean..."

  "I know, and yes!"

  "Even the Atlas-girls?"

  "Especially—" She stopped, studying me seriously. "Atlas is in here at least once a week. He usually slips a penthouse key to one of them."

  Looking at them again I caught more than one fixing me with a hostile glare, and didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Or run. I like to think myself a sophisticate, a debutante at sixteen, raised in polite society and all that, but because of that I'd been absolutely stupid. I didn't have his 'A' on my chest, but every club-goer here probably thought I had a permanent pass to his bedroom and I'd had no idea.

  I wanted to go home. And that wasn't going to happen.

  Chakra read my expression and smiled sympathetically.

  "Chin up," she said under the music. "You're royalty and this is your court; who cares what they think?"

  She meant it, and now I wanted to run for a different reason. This was as much a debut as the press conference and my first flight.

  And me without my pearls.

  I raised my chin and she nodded approvingly.

  We headed for one of the high tables in the corner where the sound was lower. Perching on a high club chair, I realized the table had been engraved with the team's 'S.' In gold.

  Royalty. Got it.

  We ordered drinks (a virgin strawberry and melon iced cooler for me), and tapas and chorizo to snack on. The staff didn't dress up as superheroes—it would have made them invisible. Instead they all wore black pants and t-shirts. Nimbus couldn't drink, of course, but she seemed prepared to socialize and people-watch all night. I think the music did something for her.

  "You want to know, don't you?" Chakra leaned over once we'd ordered.

  "Know what?"

  "How Atlas has safe sex when he can powder stone?"

  I must have flushed beet red, because Quin scolded her. Fishing desperately for a distraction, I suddenly realized we had something truly special to watch; Michael was in town for a concert, and had arrived before we did.

  He and his entourage sat at another table where I hadn't spotted him through the crowd, but as the waitress walked away the club DJ segued into Starlight, his newest hit. When the low lead-in melody began every head turned his way. He looked up from his conversation, saw us watching, and gave us a smile.

  Then he glowed.

  As immaterial as Nimbus, he simply strolled through the table and the crowd as if they were phantoms, taking the rapidly clearing dance floor. And he danced.

  In a suit like a starry night, he stepped and spun and moved like a robot's dream of humanity, trailing streams of light and throwing stars from his gloved hands. He played his fedora like Buster Keaton, whirling through his own light show, as solid as a dream and as heartbreaking.

  Michael's breakthrough had come on the day of the Event, as if his whole soul had been longing for it. When I grew up I'd sometimes wondered if the transformation, which had forever traded his mortal flesh for photons, was worth it for him. Watching him I knew it was. Some blessings are pure, and as the song ended and the crowd erupted he threw back his head and laughed like a young god.

  The crowd gradually went back to its ignore-the-great-ones-among-us motion, but Nimbus couldn't stop staring and left us without a word to go to his table. Michael's entourage bristled, but he nodded and she joined them. Chakra and Quin turned away, Chakra with a grin on her face.

  "Can two flashlights mate?" she quipped, drawing a scold from Quin and, since she'd caught me with my glass to my lips, a sputter from me.

  "Girls," Quin declared. "We've been completely upstaged."

  Since I knew I'd be dreaming of Starlight that night I didn't care, but something else caught my attention.

  "When did Rush arrive?" I asked. "And who's he with?"

  Rush stood over by the bar, and not with Stacy.

  The woman with him wouldn't have looked out of place painted on the side of a World War Two bomber. She wore a retro pink romper with a wide white belt and domino mask, and a vaguely 40's hairstyle that made her look like she'd stepped out of a Vargas print. They were closer than the noise level required for conversation.

  Quin looked. "Oh shit," she said. "Shit shit shit shit shit."

  "What?"

  "That's Euphoria."

  "And?"

  She turned back to me. "Not all costumed superhumans are superheroes—or supervillains for that matter. Some are just superskanks."

  Chakra sipped her drink with studied unconcern.

  "Euphoria's an escort," Quin explained. "She has the power to light up your pleasure center, and she can give you a little thrill or knock you on your ass with brain-shorting ecstasy. If she's not touching you it takes a bit to dial it up, but she can flatten anybody who has a working nervous system."

  I looked back at the bar.

  "And she's not on a CAI team? It sounds like a great man-stopper."

  "It is, but she's got expensive tastes and CAI work doesn't pay her enough. So she's a member of the Lincoln Park Guardians but she rents herself out. An evening of fine food and wine and a big 'tip' and she's anybody's—but she doesn't touch them, she just buzzes them. And they always want more."

  "Oh. Oh!" The night had become far too educational.

  "Yes," Quin said. "And since nothing physical happens it's all legal."

  I worried about Stacy, but Chakra just shrugged.

  "Who cares if he's looking for something different? He bores easily."

  Quin glared at her.

  "It's not like when he tries to hijack your panties between wives. Stacy's from good family. She's connected to all the right people and everyone knows what Euphoria does. If the newsies catch a whiff of this it won't matter to the tabloids that she's 'no touchy.' They'll come after Rush and it'll splash all over us."

  Chakra picked up her drink.

  "Let's go then. If we make a group of it then it won't look so bad, and you can beat up on Rush back at the Dome. I'll talk with Stacy later. Hold down the fort, Astra." With that they decamped, leaving me to wonder what Chakra intended to talk to Stacy about. It would probably include explicit instructions. A
nd gestures.

  Time to think of something else.

  Something not my parents. Like my fight with Atlas.

  I sipped my virgin cooler and nibbled on a spicy tapa.

  I still couldn't get past it. He couldn't be right—but if we'd shut it down before it really started we'd have only busted up a fight. And if two gangs really wanted to hack at each other, did not stopping them make us responsible? Obviously Atlas would have preferred to let them keep fighting and arrest the survivors while the blood dried. Could he have been right?