Wearing the Cape 6: Team-Ups and Crossovers

by Marion G. Harmon

  Ewww…

  Ignoring the evaporating mess, Dabbler kicked the staff away from him. It lay inert, dark and smoldering, but she pulled her sword out of a fiery pocket in mid-air and chopped it in half anyway.

  Hope landed by the pile of Arc-SWAT agents, crushing the costume helmet dramatically as she touched down. It felt good, but she didn’t; the thorns in the wind must have been illusory—her arms and sleeves were intact—but there was still a hole in her boot and her hand throbbed hotly.

  “Well,” Sydney chirped, covered in papercuts and small bruises from the debris but still grinning like an idiot. “That’s the first time I ever saved the world by pantsing the villain.”

  Hope thought through her own internal scorecard. “Yeah, me, too.”

  “Freeze frame high five!” Halo yelled and jumped into the air, keeping herself airborne with the flight orb in her other hand. She hung there motionless for a second, looked down at Hope. “Come on, freeze frame!” Hope looked around the room. Most of the team was already doing after-action stuff; securing the unconscious prisoner, coordinating with authorities, etc. (only convention security so far, but she heard sirens). Goth-Harem took out her camera phone to give the moment its proper due. “Might as well.”

  Hope laughed. She couldn’t help it. But she still bobbed up for the high-five while Harem snapped the shot.

  Sydney needn’t have worried about Maxima and Casey; their fearless leader had taken the transformed girl far out over Lake Michigan to fight it out away from any breakables (like the rest of the city). The need to fly Casey back more slowly once she changed back explained why Maxima hadn’t dropped in on the Final Boss Fight.

  Both had taken a beating—which translated into serious bruising and wrenching for Casey, who didn’t have Maxima’s superhuman recovery powers anymore. When the EMTs checked her out, her skeevy boyfriend made a comment about having to miss out on Maxima-action in their hotel room before realizing that Maxima was standing behind him. His wet fear-response was priceless. (And given his priorities in the face of his girlfriend’s traumatic experience, Sydney figured Casey would be kicking him to the curb before they left the convention.)

  Astra gave Maxima an informal after-action report like a pro—which Sydney guessed she was—while handling the first aid Harem applied to her hand with a been there, done that, no big deal attitude about her injuries. (How many Sentinels seasons ahead was the girl? Maybe Sydney would have to rethink her opposition to spoilers.)

  The cleanup took most of the rest of the day, but it was all good to Arianna—she practically salivated at the PR opportunity for the team to be seen helping out with their powers instead of just blowing stuff up. Plus, doing cleanup kept Hiro from going and getting another uniform shirt (why he didn’t just slip on something from one of the seller’s booths was beyond Sydney—she was starting to think he liked flashing the beefcake).

  And Sydney finally got her wish. “Varia! You’ve got to check your Astra-power! It could be something useful for all this!”

  The bronze giantess looked over where Astra was stacking fallen security doors out of the way. “Come on, Syd—you think she’d be happy holding onto me while we work?”

  “But it could help us finish fast. Don’t know until you try!” Sydney turned to appeal to Maxima, who shook her head with a chuckle.

  “Go ahead, Varia. Even if it’s nothing useful, Halo will get back to cleanup.”

  “Okay. Sure, why not? Astra?”

  The girl put down her doors, dusted her hands and smiled sunnily. She’d confessed to Sydney that her jumps had been consistently dropping her into “interesting times,” and being done with this one had turned her practically bouncy.

  “Sure, why not? New experiences can be fun!” Astra’s deliberately cheeky children’s-show voice made even Maxima smile. Sydney moved to make it happen before their fearless leader thought better of it.

  “Okay! Just to be safe, I’ll provide security.” She quickstepped to meet Varia and Hope halfway, and grabbed her shield orb to enclose all three of them in a sphere that covered the center of the hall. The rest of the team gathered outside the shield to watch.

  “Um,” Astra hesitated. “Doesn’t that mean you’re vulnerable to whatever?”

  “Relax! Varia’s never manifested anything omni-directional and explody yet, and I’ll give you guys room.” Just in case, she stood behind Astra and called her lighthook orb, stretching the energy-tentacle into a woven shield between her and the other two. Astra eyed it dubiously.

  “Well, okay. Varia?”

  “Like she said, relax. And put ‘er there, partner.” She held out her hand and Astra took it gingerly.

  Varia didn’t explode. She also didn’t transform, start glowing, or otherwise do anything remarkable except blink. Several times in rapid succession.

  “Holy shit! You really met Santa Claus?”

  “Varia?” Maxima watched with arms folded. “What’s happening?”

  “Ya’ got me, boss. I’m kinda seeing an array of Astras, like a trail of her. I think I’m looking back at the places she’s been. And I think I can give her a push.”

  “You can affect her with your power?” Sydney gaped. “Doesn’t that violate your rules?”

  “Nah—what I should have said is, I think I can sorta…fold? Fold the space where we’re standing. Then if I just let go…”

  “She’ll drop through before it unfolds! Got it!”

  “Can—can you see my home?” Astra’s voice was tight, all her easy humor gone.

  “I don’t think so, unless your home is a blown up glass factory.”

  The girl slumped. “No, that’s the first place I jumped to.”

  Varia let go. “Don’t know why I can’t see further. Maybe because of the way you got there?”

  “Maybe.” She laughed unhappily. “I certainly got there a different way.”

  “Dabbler?” Maxima looked at their resident alien mad scientist.

  She shrugged. “That’s as good a guess as any—different modes of travel carve different paths. And you know what? This might be the best solution we’ve got. Interdimensional magic’s outside my area of expertise so I can’t help her recharge her own jump device. I’ve been querying my catalogue of goodies for something to adapt, but any jump I can give her will be pretty random.”

  “You can’t match her tick to the tick of her dimension?”

  “It doesn’t work like that. I can break her loose of her alignment from our reality, and there’s a chance that if I just toss her out there, she’ll be attracted to her home reality, but I can’t promise anything. Sorry, kiddo.”

  “No,” Astra protested. “You’ve all been great.” The girl gathered herself, straightening with a look of determination. “And Varia, I’ll take your solution.”

  “But it won’t get ya home!”

  “No, but now I have friends looking for me and I know they’ve gotten that far. If I go back prepared, then I can just wait there for them or maybe even send a message. Besides, I’m getting sick of magic snow globe travel—it’s got some kind of karma element that keeps popping me into places where I think I’m supposed to ‘learn something’. It’s like being caught in Dickens’ Christmas Carol, and I’m a little tired of it.”

  “It brought you here!” Sydney interjected, realizing. “To meet Varia, obviously!”

  She considered that. “Probably. Amazing coincidence that the reality I run out of juice in just happens to have someone I meet who can send me back to the start. Right?”

  “Drat! You’re right. So she’s obviously your ticket to wherever you need to go next.”

  “I think so. But if I’m going back to the Super Patriots’ reality to wait for rescue, then I need to stock up on a few things. I’ve got some cash, but I don’t know if it’s valid here?”

  Sydney cackled. “Are you kidding? The dealer’s room wasn’t totally trashed—The Sentinels booth is fine. And everyone saw you fighting right beside us—I’ll be
t a couple dozen attendees recorded you on their cell phones!”

  “Okay. So?”

  “So the TV studio will pay huge just to get the real Astra’s signature on a bunch of their merchandizing! I’ll bet they pay even more for a few posed pics. A couple of hours for their convention rep to get approval, and you’ll be able to buy anything you need and still have big bucks left if you ever drop back here again. We could keep an Archon account for her, right Max?”

  “Don’t forget, we need our own pics for you with Arc-SWAT!” Arianna broke in. “Please?”

  The studio proved more eager than even Sydney would have guessed. With Maxima glowering at their tele-conferenced legal representative and marketing exec, not only did they drop a six-figure ton of cash into an Arc-SWAT account in Astra’s name, they dragooned their convention staff into becoming Astra’s personal shoppers so she didn’t have to go civilian and hit Macey’s herself.

  By the time the team had finished the cleanup Astra had done her turn with a hired photographer, who also got shots supervised by Arianna (Hiro found a replacement shirt), and her shopping list had been filled: complete vacationer’s luggage set, several sets of clothes, prescriptionless glasses and a fitted wig, more rolls of cash, everything she needed to pass herself off as a tourist for a while.

  “I’m not going to hang around in the states,” she explained. “Even Oregon is too hot for me now, with the Super Patriots looking for me. I’m headed to Toronto, and I can call friends from there to keep their eyes open in case my guys come back through looking for me in Portland.”

  Of course then she had to explain about the Super Patriots; by the time she was through Sydney wanted to invade their reality to Set Things Right. Superheroes shouldn’t act villainously, dammit!

  The wheeled luggage set, with the bag Astra had brought with her, nearly outweighed the girl. Dressed in high-class civvies (pink shorts, white and glittering t-shirt), she looked like a teenager who shouldn’t be on the road or checking into hotels herself—half the reason for the new and expensive luggage; Sydney had argued that the best way to not look like a runaway or fugitive was to look like someone who obviously paid her way wherever she went without even thinking about it.

  To contribute to that, Dabbler, who had restored her sexy tan and blond glamour that hid her true four armed officially-not-a-demon form, produced a card holder in a flash of blue light from one of her now invisible hands.

  “Here, kid. I don’t use it around here, but I’ve preset it for you. You’re Sydney Ellis now—check your new Connecticut driver’s license—and any card reader will recognize your shiny new credit card because it will take over the system and make you an open Visa account wherever you go.”

  “Really?” Hope handled the card like it was unexploded ordnance. “What’s its credit limit?”

  Dabbler shrugged. “It’s better to ask how big a purchase you can get away with without looking conspicuous. Buy a plane ticket, not a plane. Right?”

  Max choked, scowled. “Dabbler…”

  “Relax, hot-stuff. I said I’d never use it around here—it’s not like I’d need to, with my own fabricator arrays and my Arc-SWAT paycheck. Speaking of fabbers…”

  She nudged Goth-Harem, who handed Astra an Arc-SWAT com choker. This one was blue and white with a silver six-pointed star in front; Astra’s crest.

  She turned it over in her hands. “Thanks?”

  “If you do pop back here for any reason, this will link you right up to the Archon communications net,” Harem explained. “Yell and we’ll come get you. If you don’t come back, it’s a souvenir.”

  The girl actually sort of misted up. “Guys… Thank you. All of you.”

  “Anytime, Astra,” Maxima said. “You did good work today.”

  “So, ya ready?” Varia held out her hand. Astra took a breath and looked around, nodded.

  “Yeah. Sydney? One spoiler. Artemis becomes a BF.”

  “Really? Coooool!”

  Astra took Varia’s hand and the Bostonian’s eyes unfocused. “All the way back to the beginning, right?”

  “Right.” Astra, making sure of her grip on her luggage stack. “No, wait! The North Pole, I think. Do it.”

  What happened next made Sydney’s eyes water—one second Astra was there, smiling bravely and ready to go, and the next second she wasn’t. And between those seconds, Sydney’s brain told her that the girl had taken forever to recede to a horizon a lot further away than the wall of the dealer’s room.

  “Wow. That was—”

  “Totally weird?” Harem shrugged. “Welcome to Archon. If it’s weird, it’s Wednesday.”

  “I know, I just keep forget— Shit! Shit shit double donkey pâté fart cannon Rorschach splatter!"

  “Halo?” Maxima scowled, concerned.

  “I forgot to get my Maxima Pony back! Oops.” Sydney slapped a hand over her evil, traitorous mouth. Too late.

  “Your what?”

  DSA Field Report: Agent Smith.

  See attached incident report. Boss, I don’t know what to make of it either—the thing that showed up on our end is freaky as shit and that’s my professional opinion. Yeah boss, those pics of the thing are the real deal. It has no face. Agents Todd and Royce and one of the Platoons are in stable condition, and we’ve flooded the site with proximity-sensors and suppression systems. Anything coming through now that doesn’t look familiar is going to go down hard; we’re shooting first and asking questions later.

  We got lucky. I recommend again we call the Young Sentinels back and seal the site. Now.

  Odysseus Case File 1-G168 C.

  Everybody vs. The Team-Up

  by Marion G. Harmon (with permission of Seanan McGuire).

  “It is a law of the universe that if a new superhero comes to town, no matter how big the town, he will run into its current protector and there is going to be a misunderstanding ending in a fight. Then they’re going to team up to deal with a situation that neither could have handled alone. It’s one of those karmic laws of superheroing.”

  Yelena “Polychrome” Batzdorf.

  Jacqueline was halfway between the workshop and the reindeer stables when the girl came out of nowhere to face-plant into a snowdrift. It was the least elegant North Pole arrival she’d ever seen—it was like the girl had been shot from a cannon. She dropped the trim she’d been carrying and hurried over.

  “Christmas! Are you alright?”

  “The snow tastes like peppermint, so yeah, I think so.” The girl rolled over, blinked up at Jacqueline. “Do you have a sister?” A young, fresh-faced blonde, she wore a skirted sparkly blue ice-skater’s costume over white tights and had a sprig of holly in her hair. Who knew what she’d been wearing before being outfitted on arrival?

  The girl panicked for a moment before finding the stacked wheeled luggage set that had arrived with her, heaving a huge sigh upon finding it buried beside her.

  Jacqueline gave her a hand up and watched her brush snow out of her skirt. “A sister?”

  “Well you’re not blue and glowing and you don’t look like you’re in training for the Winter Olympics, but other than that you could pretty much be her twin.”

  Her mouth dropped open and she stared, eyes wide. “You remember?”

  “Remember Jackie Frost? Hard not to, the girl makes an impression. I’m sorry.” She held out her hand. “I’m Astra—Hope—it’s hard to know, should I use my codename here when I’m not in uniform?”

  They shook, Jacqueline holding on longer than was probably polite. “Are you a personification?”

  “Of what?”

  “Of hope.” The girl wasn’t quite a child, so if she was mortal how had she gotten here?

  She blinked. “I don’t think so, although it’s kind of hard for me to tell these days. I’ve been on the road for a bit and not always myself. But I’m back here, anyway. Is Jackie around?”

  Jacqueline closed her lips on what could have been a hysterical scream. “Jackie— Come with me!�
� She grabbed her hand and pulled the girl, luggage and all, away from the workshop and around to the family door. Mama wasn’t in the kitchen, thank Winter, and she got the girl—Hope—to her room unseen. Closing the door, she started to lock it when a hand settled on hers. It was a small hand, but it might as well have been made of bronze for all the give it had. “I didn’t get this part of the tour last time,” Hope said softly. “And I went in the front door. Also, why am I dressed for the Ice Capades? That didn’t happen last time.”

  Oh. The strength in the girl’s hand sparked a memory. “It happens sometimes when you cross the boundary, especially if Christmas doesn’t consider you appropriately dressed. Your outfit fit pretty well, before.”

  Hope let go. “You know about that?”

  She nodded. “I remember now. Sort of.” A wave lit the logs in her fireplace and she pulled out the chair for her guest. Hope looked at the master-crafted wood chair and shrugged, taking it as Jacqueline sat on her bed, sinking into the eiderdown cover. “I’m Jacqueline Claus, the adopted daughter of Santa and Mrs. Claus. But I was Jackie Frost, the daughter of the Ice Queen and Jack Frost. And nobody remembers her at all except you.”

  She spilled it all out, or as much as she could. She couldn’t tell the bewildered girl everything—too much was Winter business and not for someone from the Calendar Lands—but it felt overwhelmingly good to be able to talk to someone who remembered what she’d been.

  And isn’t that pathetic—I only met her once.

  The tiny blonde didn’t say anything when she finished, and Jacqueline could see her trying to organize it all in her mind.

  “Okay, to make sure I understand this you were Jackie Frost, but you did something against your nature as a spirit of Winter. So now you’re not the sexy selfish smurfette, you’re Jacqueline Claus, wholesome selfless spirit of giving. And now that you’re you you’ve always been you, but you remember being her and you. And even though you are all anyone else remembers, you’re not supposed to be you, here. I guess I remember because I wasn’t here when things got ret-conned? Do you still go by Jackie?”