The Good Fight 3: Sidekicks

by Pen

  The Pen and Cape Society Presents:

  THE GOOD FIGHT 3

  SIDEKICKS

  An Anthology of Superhero Tales with stories by:

  Marion George Harmon

  Samantha Bryant

  Stephen T. Brophy

  Ian Thomas Healy

  Landon Porter

  Michael Ivan Lowell

  Jim Zoetewey

  Nicholas Ahlhelm

  T. Mike McCurley

  Caine Dorr

  Published by Local Hero Press

  All stories Copyright 2017 to their respective authors

  Kindle Edition

  Kindle Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of these authors.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the authors’ imaginations or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  This book, its contents, and its characters are the sole property of each story’s respective author. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without written, express permission from the author. To do so without permission is punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the authors’ rights is appreciated.

  “Dating Games” Copyright © 2017 Marion George Harmon

  “Underestimated” Copyright © 2017 Samantha Bryant

  “The Henchman’s Apprentice” Copyright © 2017 Stephen T. Brophy

  “Sun-Kissed” Copyright © 2017 Ian Thomas Healy

  “Smoke Shadow and Shade” Copyright © 2017 Landon Porter

  “Secrets in the Sands” Copyright © 2017 Michael Ivan Lowell

  “Minor League” Copyright © 2017 Jim Zoetewey

  “Heroes Don’t Retire” Copyright © 2017 Nicholas Ahlhelm

  “Unmasked” Copyright © 2017 T. Mike McCurley

  “Gemini Rescue” Copyright © 2017 Caine Dorr

  Cover art by Scott A. Story

  Book design by Local Hero Press, LLC

  Books From Local Hero Press

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  Jackrabbit: Big in Japan

  Arena (Fall 2017)

  Just Cause Universe Omnibus, Vol. 1

  Just Cause Universe Omnibus, Vol. 2

  The Bulletproof Badge

  The Pariah of Verigo Novels

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  Making the Cut

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  Space Sharks

  Starf*cker

  Strings

  The Guitarist

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  Troubleshooters

  Collections

  The Good Fight

  The Good Fight 2: Villains

  The Good Fight 3: Sidekicks

  Caped

  High Contrast

  Muddy Creek Tales

  Nonfiction

  Action! Writing Better Action Using Cinematic Techniques

  All titles and more available wherever books and ebooks are sold.

  Table of Contents

  “Dating Games” Marion George Harmon

  “Underestimated” Samantha Bryant

  “The Henchman’s Apprentice” Stephen T. Brophy

  “Sun-Kissed” Ian Thomas Healy

  “Smoke Shadow and Shade” Landon Porter

  “Secrets in the Sands” Michael Ivan Lowell

  “Minor League” Jim Zoetewey

  “Heroes Don’t Retire” Nicholas Ahlhelm

  “Unmasked” T. Mike McCurley

  “Gemini Rescue” Caine Dorr

  About the Authors

  DATING GAMES

  Marion George Harmon

  “In Hollywood everything is about the image. But how is that different than life as a celebrity cape? Answer: it’s not, and there are good people there, too—you’ve just got to remember that the pretty wrapping is never the package.”

  —The Hope Corrigan Interviews.

  * * *

  Kitsune was stalking me. Actually he was stalking my dates, which was worse. Tonight “she” was our beautiful Asian waitress, Mei. I almost tucked my hands beneath me in an effort not to jump up and go find our real one, who was almost certainly peacefully sleeping in a closet somewhere. She’d wake up later to find she’d made the most amazing tips tonight, but—

  I blinked. “Sorry?” My date had just asked . . . what? Had I seen his latest movie? Had I been to the movies lately? What did I think of movies? Super-duper hearing did no good if I wasn’t paying attention.

  But it was my super-duper nose that had distracted me. I wasn’t quite a bloodhound, but ever since the Thing in Tokyo We Never Ever Mention I’d been able to recognize Kitsune by his smell; it was the same undertone of musky, furry something no matter what form he wore.

  I’d learned to dread it, and with “Mei” standing by our table, I’d lost the tenuous thread of our limping conversation again.

  Tony kept his smile up—probably second nature in public where there might be paparazzi or anyone willing to sell a tidbit of observation to a tabloid.

  “I said, ‘how’s the mushu?’”

  “Oh.” I looked down at my plate. LA’s Silk Road served the authentic mu xu: sliced pork tenderloin, cucumber, and scrambled eggs together with thinly sliced wood ear and velvet foot mushrooms, all stir fried in peanut oil and seasoned with minced ginger and garlic. I could taste the bite of the rice wine under the flavors.

  I bit my tongue before I said all that; being reduced to talking about the food was a Bad Sign.

  And this was going to end epically badly.

  It was all Quin’s fault. After Jacky, Ozma, and I had arrived back from That Place We Do Not Speak Of I’d been benched for physical therapy. And after everything we’d been doing lately to give poor Quin public-relations fits, I’d felt I’d owed her and made the mistake of telling her so.

  She’d collected.

  Tony was date number five, latest in my string of “celebrity dates” and the highest on the scale of celebrity stardom so far. He did action movies and had the kind of long face that didn’t look handsome until he smiled and then your breath would catch. Quin wanted me to be seen doing “adult socializing” while I was in LA to re-train and work back up with Rook. It was all part of her campaign against my Wholesome Teen Sweetheart brand, which had never completely died despite my rumored “romantic relationship” wit
h Atlas during my sidekick tour. It didn’t help that I still looked like a wholesome teen sweetheart despite being just a couple months shy of twenty-one, and that these dates were the most I’d agreed to do to “mature” my image.

  Quin’s other suggestion had been a costume makeover that would have made me look like a Victoria’s Secret model in a catwalk costume, so here I was out on a date with Tony.

  Looking at his handsome-homely face as he took another bite of his fish, I wondered if he was regretting me.

  His agent had agreed because Tony’s next movie was a superhero flick; Tony was playing a “super-normal” vigilante out after the supervillains who killed his family. There were rumors that the script was vaguely anti-cape, so the idea was that being seen with me would buff his pro-cape credentials. Celebrity actors shaped their public images even more carefully than capes did. Tony had agreed because the singer he’d been dating had dumped him after a drunken fight the tabloids were still telling conflicting stories about. I was beginning to think she should have maimed him on her way out. Sure the guy had come off a long day on a sound stage, but he was putting as much energy into our conversation as a flat battery.

  Now he blinked slowly at me and I realized I should be talking. Even Kitsune was looking at me a little funny.

  “The mu xu’s good.” I smiled at Mei because if she’d been her I would have. “And your fish?” Tony had ordered the Sichuan fish, poached in hot chili oil.

  “I’ve had better.” His face said from the food-truck on the set.

  I barely kept from rolling my eyes; my nose told me the oil was pure and fresh, the fish practically teleported from its salt-water tank into the poaching pan before it had known it was dead—my father the foodie would have had nothing to complain about except maybe the dish’s “mouthfeel.”

  I bit my lip and didn’t suggest he change his micro-brew beer. The original Mei hadn’t recommended it with the fish, and it was probably swamping his taste buds. Kitsune didn’t twitch even though it had been her question—And how is everything?—that had sparked Tony’s question to me (and obviously the word “movie” had come out of his mouth enough times before he’d gone quiet for me to swap it for “mu xu”).

  She smiled widely instead. “Is there anything else I can get you, perhaps?”

  I didn’t close my eyes, groan, drop my head onto the table, or run screaming, although all of that sounded good.

  Because Tony was a Dead Man Walking.

  Mei departed with a smile when neither of us said we wanted anything, but it was only a matter of time; Tony was probably safer when she was standing right here.

  It had started with Date Number Three. One and Two hadn’t been teeth-achingly bad although my opinion of actors as Dateable Human Beings had suffered a little. Hopefully I wasn’t getting top-draw in the Hollywood dating circuit. Possibly the fact that I still looked like a before-the-makeover Disney Princess scared them off. Regardless, numbers Three and Four had been . . . bad. So bad I’d hoped that a supervillain attack would end the date since I couldn’t stick a fork in my own eye.

  The dates had ended, and technically Kitsune was a supervillain . . .

  Number Three had taken a bathroom break and then suddenly and urgently had to leave—face-planting into another couple’s table on the way out; I’d carried him out to the town car while our driver held the door, and the paparazzi had of course caught it. The opinion of the emergency room doctor (leaked to the tabloids, of course) had been too much coke during the bathroom break, and Number Three was now in rehab.

  Number Four had caught on fire. Kitsune had attended the Hollywood house party as a minor celebrity (I no idea where the real one had been), but he’d been standing nowhere near when it happened. The spilled alcohol fire hadn’t hurt Four but it had destroyed his suit and his dignity; he’d absolutely panicked instead of doing anything constructive, and I’d had to toss him in the mansion’s pool. Again caught on camera, this time another party guest’s phone, and I still didn’t know how Kitsune had done it.

  So part of me was waiting in sick fascination to see what doom would befall Tony and wondering if I could keep it out of the tabloids—who had realized something was happening and started placing bets. The other part of me was determined to grab Kitsune and make him explain how he was finding out about my dates—which were hardly publicized beforehand—and why he was destroying the bad ones.

  I picked at my mu xu without tasting it.

  After all, in a weird sort of way we were betrothed. (And didn’t that word just make me giggle half-hysterically.) I’d agreed to marry him at some unspecified future date—the same day that he carried out his promise to swear himself to the service of my family like an old-style samurai retainer, so that was never going to happen. So why the stalking? And if he was staking some kind of sneaky claim, why end the bad dates?

  You’d think he’d shut down the good ones. Not that any of them had been exactly great— “Sorry?”

  I’d ignored Tony again.

  And he was just watching me, looking for what I didn’t know. Then a half-smile crept across his face.

  “This is terrible, isn’t it?” His lips twitched and his eyes, which really were tired, invited me to share the joke.

  My face went hot. I hadn’t been the most conversationally engaged date either, not since sniffing Kitsune. “A little? I’m sor—”

  He snorted and leaned in, elbows on the table and hands clasped under his chin. “Don’t say it. This is my fault. I never should have agreed to a night when I’m not firing on all cylinders. And this can’t be you—I talked to Seven before telling my agent to go ahead and set it up. So both of us are failing to prop up this thing, though you gave it a great shot in the beginning. Yeah?”

  I deflated. “Okay, yeah. This is pretty bad.”

  “Then how about this. We doggy-bag our dinner.”

  “We— Really?”

  “They know me here and I’m usually much better than this, trust me. They’ll box our entrees, slip some tasty dessert into the bag, even include the linen and silver—they know I’m good for it.”

  His half-smile went full bore, much more real than the earlier photo-op one. “I know a nice little park in the Hills not far away, it’s a warm night, I can take off this hangman’s tie and jacket. And if we can’t start a better conversation in five minutes out there, you can ditch your excuse of a date. What do you say? There are ducks.”

  “Well, if there are ducks.” That twisty grin had talked a lot of girls into bigger things than ducks, I was sure of it. But—it sounded fun. And away from our audience. I was suddenly hyper-aware of the clink of cutlery on china, the low rumble and susurration of a dozen dinner conversations around us.

  Everybody at the Silk Road, guests and staff, had been super-great about ignoring us. It was one of the high end establishment’s best selling points I supposed, but it wouldn’t continue when doom befell.

  If I could get Tony out of here intact, away from Kitsune . . .

  I nodded hard, a matching grin splitting my face. “I’m in. Let me tell Mei.” An un-doomed date. The thought made me almost giddy.

  “TIME TO PAY YOUR DUES, OPPRESSORS!”

  You have got to be kidding me.

  The guys in the black bandanas and hoodies fanning out from the kitchen weren’t staff and the guns and bags they carried weren’t aperitifs. The dinner conversations turned into dismayed shouts and screams, but nobody got stupid as the intruders pushed through the dining room. They wore black armbands decorated with broken red “A”s—the anarchists’ favored symbol—on their right arms.

  Eight of them. All armed. How was I supposed to stop them without someone getting hurt?

  “Shell?” I whispered, and got nothing. She stayed out of my head on these dates (her commentary was monumentally distracting), but a shout through our quantum-neural link should have gotten her attention. So either one of the wannabe anarchist redistributors was a superhuman somehow jamming me, or t
hey’d bought a universal blocker off of a black-lab Verne and it was working even better than they knew. And if they had Verne tech jammers, what else did they have?

  Moving very slowly, I slipped fingers into my purse and withdrew the pair of Anonymity Specs Ozma had let me bring to LA. With her sense of humor, she’d made these look exactly like the kinds of big, dark shades Hollywood stars tended to wear with baseball caps when trying to avoid notice. Mine worked.

  “Thanks for giving!” The hooded thug looming by our table grabbed my bag and the specs in one big gloved fist, stuffed them into his sack. Then he shoved the gun in my face, eyes on Tony. “And calm down, action-hero—there’s no retakes on this scene, hate to end it with your little slut’s brains spread over your entrée. Phone. Watch. Ring. Wallet. Money-clip. Now.” He raised his gun like he was going to pistol-whip me with it.

  “Okay! Okay!” Tony held up both hands. “Don’t do anything!” He carefully reached into his jacket and pulled out his wallet, phone, and cash, pulled off his ring and unlatched his watch, dropping everything in the sack.

  His hands were steady and his breathing deep, like he was gathering oxygen for extra energy. His heart was racing but not with the tripping speed of panic; he was ready to do something. “Please, nobody needs to get hurt,” I whispered, keeping my eyes on him.

  “Effing-right, girl.” Our robber purred at me, looking me over.

  I’d raided Beverly Hills’ Rodeo Drive shops for tonight, and was wearing a bustier-dress with glittery top and a skirt almost short and poofy enough for a ballerina. With tights, of course. The miracle had been that it was in my elfin size, but I’d picked it mostly because back-crossing straps supported the bustier—if I got in a fight wearing this confection there would be zero wardrobe accidents. Now I felt like I was wearing too little. His pistol dropped and I shivered as he used its tip to push the ends of my bobbed hair off my shoulders.