Superhero Universe: Tesseracts Nineteen

by Claude Lalumiere

  With our powers, we did a quick sweep of the hole, in the hope that we could declare the place null and void, seal it up, and leave. That was what appeared to be the case. There was just solid rock, with no traps or hidden passages. We prepared to fly out of the hole and out of there, when…

  “Holy…!” PB exclaimed, as she saw it first. “The hole’s being CLOSED UP!”

  “Then what are we waiting for?” asked Muscle Girl, rhetorically.

  We rushed to the exit as fast as we could, but we were a hair too late. And, whatever the hell was blocking the hole, not even our combined powers could help us break through it. Instead, we crashed into it and collapsed onto the ground together.

  We were trapped. That much we knew. But who — or what — was responsible?

  CANDY GIRL

  My first thought when I recovered and discovered our joint predicament was: Run away!

  Now, I know that is not your average superhero behavior, but anyone with Asperger’s syndrome, superhero or not, is gonna panic like hell if they’re in a strange and difficult situation with absolutely no way out (or so it seemed to me at the time). Especially if they haven’t taken their anti-anxiety medication. Which I hadn’t.

  So, when I woke up from being knocked out and saw we were trapped, I got to my feet, screamed, and ran down the nearest passageway.

  Fortunately, Cerberus, with her enhanced dog senses, heard my screaming and rapidly moving feet. She ran in front of me. “And just where do you think you’re going?” she demanded.

  In my anxiety-induced state, I babbled out some incoherent stuff about how scared I was and how I needed to get out of there, and how I needed to get my meds and stuff like that, until she cut me off with a pre-emptive growl. “GET BACK THERE!” she ordered. “We all need to be on guard to get out of here— so WOMAN UP!”

  “Yes, Ma’am,” I said, wilting under her fury, and we returned to the entrance, where the others had regained their senses. Thankfully, ‘cause mine were nowhere to be seen.

  That was when the giant screen came out of the wall in front of us, out of nowhere…

  POWER BUNNY

  Candy’s only half-right about that screen. It was a screen, all right, but it wasn’t a giant one— only about the size of the monoliths they use for TV screens nowadays. She’s got a tendency to exaggerate things, but I guess everybody in this business does.

  Once the screen revealed itself, a transmission came on without any of us touching it, so it was obviously something coming from outside of the cave. Those responsible soon made themselves known…

  Our most vicious and bloodthirsty enemies, who had apparently teamed up to trap and destroy us.

  Natch!

  What made it even worse was that they were throwing a party to celebrate our imminent demise in the cave— or so I gathered from the images on the screen. A party! The nerve! Sure, we’d collectively and individually caused them a lot of heartbreak and pain, but we’re supposed to! No need to turn our potential erasure from the Earth into some sort of celebration!

  Anyhow…

  The first of the crowd to address us were Scylla and Charybdis, the sister-and-brother delinquent-cum-magician duo who attend high school with Candy and have been a major pain in our rears in the past.

  “Howdy, buttfaces!” said Scylla, diplomatically. “Like that tomb we set up for you?”

  “You…!” Candy snapped at her. She might have smashed into the screen after her, but we held her back.

  “Why don’t you save some of that energy for escaping, Candy?” Charybdis sneered at Candy, disdainfully. “That is, if you can get that Aspie mind of yours to think straight!”

  Candy swore viciously. She made for the screen, and we stopped her again, while they laughed at us from afar. “Let me go!” Candy snapped. “I’m gonna kill them…”

  ”Calm down!” Muscle Girl ordered Candy, who relaxed, and then she turned to the screen. “Okay!” Muscle Girl demanded. “What the hell’s going on here?”

  “Perhaps I can explain!”

  To the visible annoyance of Scylla and Charybdis, Petra O’Leum, the villainous supergirl who’s Muscle Girl’s biggest foe, stepped in front of the camera.

  “I should have known that you had a hand in this, Petra!” Muscle Girl said, softly but angrily.

  “Not just a hand, MG!” Petra retorted. “This whole thing was my idea! I located the site for the hole, and then I recruited S and C over here to blast it into shape with their magic. Had to pay them for it, of course, but a small price to get rid of you all forever!”

  “What!” In outrage, Scylla stood up from the divan she and Charybdis were reclining on. “This wouldn’t have happened at all if it weren’t for us!”

  With an extreme level of forceful strength, Petra angrily pushed her back onto the divan. As for Charybdis, he stayed where he was, unperturbed as usual.

  “CRAM IT!” Petra shouted at Scylla, her face turning nearly as red as her chestnut hair. “I am trying to outline my plan to these idiots here [meaning us], and I’d appreciate it if…”

  “Someone say idiots?”

  At this point, as if on cue, the other members of the party converged around the camera: Machine Gun Steinberg, the nebbish businessman who’s often at odds with the Brat; Dumbell, the second most powerful puppy in the world (and perpetually scheming to take out our gal Cerberus so she can be No. 1— always unsuccessfully), along with her human “master,” Bad Dan McGoon; and, most annoying to me, the dimwitted boy Rabindranath Jhabvala and his pet snake, Crack, who together create a lot of trouble for me in spite of their lack of brains.

  Petra obviously didn’t want them there. Her eyes flashed in anger, and she cracked her ever-present whip in the air, driving them away. “BACK, PEONS!” she growled. “I can’t believe I’m even in the same profession as you!”

  “Who are you calling A PEON?” shouted a livid Scylla. Furious, she shot a blast of magical energy at Petra, who ducked it. However, it must have damaged the equipment, as the transmission ended as abruptly as it had begun.

  We were silent for a few moments, as we tried to burn off some of the shock and rage that had been building up inside of us since our capture. It didn’t work, because we turned it on each other.

  Candy finally broke the silence, throwing a blast of emerald light from her power ring at the now-blank screen.

  “DAMN IT!” she shouted. “I knew it! They want to kill us! If we hadn’t gone down into this damn hole, this never would have happened! You guys are always so impulsive…”

  “We have to be impulsive, you big SNOT!” snapped the Brat. “How would we survive otherwise if we were faced by them— or any other type of evil, for that matter?”

  “I’m just saying…” Candy began.

  “Well, there’s your problem, right there!” The Brat pounced on those words like a cat. “You always talk about these things, but you never do anything…”

  “So I’m a just a fifth wheel to you!” Candy shouted back at her. “Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you for being just a human being and not an all-mighty DEITY, but that was how I was born, okay?”

  “Knock it off!” Muscle Girl interjected. “This is getting us nowhere!”

  “Who are you to decide that?” snapped the Brat. “Were you democratically elected to decide what gets us anywhere and what doesn’t?”

  “I don’t have to be democratically elected to decide when somebody’s being a JERK!” Muscle Girl snapped, pointing at the Brat.

  “How DARE you!” the Brat snarled back. “I am trying to consider our common welfare here…”

  “Even though you don’t actually consult others when you do it!” I said, feeling a bit sore.

  “You stay out of this, carrot breath!” the Brat snapped. “I can take you!”

  “TAKE THIS!” I snarled.

  I rushed at the Brat and punched her into the wall, to the astonishment of the others. She bounced back right away and swung at me. I swung back— I’m not pro
ud of it, but I was fed up with the Brat and wanted to cut her down to size. Muscle Girl tried to stop the Brat, and Candy did the same to me. This went on for a couple of minutes, until Cerberus, bless her heart, got us back to our senses.

  CERBERUS

  “SILENCE!”

  I shouted with such force that everyone except me dove to the floor, while I stood hind-legged to address them.

  “Jesus, Cerb!” Candy said, as she rubbed her ears in pain. “What did we do to…?”

  “You forgot!” I retorted. “All of you!”

  “Forgot what?” snapped the Brat.

  “That we, whether you like it or not,” I snapped back, pointing directly at her with my paw, “are a TEAM! And, if we ever want to get out of here, we better start acting like a team— instead of like a bunch of sissy prima donnas who each think we’re better than the others!”

  By that time, they had all gotten to their feet, and the Brat seemed chastened by my words. They all did, in fact, but she more than the others.

  “I’m sorry, guys,” the Brat said. “I got a bit hot under the collar, there. Shouldn’t have taken it out on you, but I was pretty damn mad about being duped.”

  “Don’t take it out on yourself, Brat,” said Candy. “I’m the one who went nuts, being off my meds and everything. You never would have gotten pissy if I hadn’t lost my temper.”

  “Same with me,” said PB, sheepishly. “I got such a short fuse that any little thing can set me off.”

  “Never mind the apologizing!” I interjected. “That’s in the past. What matters now is the future.”

  “You’re right, Cerb!” Muscle Girl said. “We need to bounce ideas off each other and figure out how to get out of here. And we can’t be too long about it, either— even our bodies are gonna give out soon if we don’t get some decent oxygen soon. Huddle up, everybody!”

  MUSCLE GIRL

  Once we got our heads screwed on again and concentrated on what we needed to do, it was easy. You get five female superheroes inside a hole in the ground, each of them stronger than a whole army of men, and the solution is obvious: punch our way out…

  CANDY GIRL

  Hey, I’m not that strong, all right? At best, I can only lift my own weight, let alone the kind of numbers you guys can bench-press…

  MUSCLE GIRL

  We’re getting to that, Candy.

  CANDY GIRL

  Sorry.

  MUSCLE GIRL

  As I was saying, each of us was going to fly on her own and punch out her own personal tunnel…

  THE BRAT

  We needed some alone time, especially me. The exception was Candy, owing to the fact that she’s more earthbound than the rest of us, so she went back to the entrance and tried to cut her way through.

  CANDY GIRL

  No problem. I focused the laser from my power ring on one spot of the rock wall, and it gave, easy. Duh! Why didn’t I think of that before?

  MUSCLE GIRL

  Who’s telling this story, here? I thought it was my turn.

  CERBERUS

  We each had a turn already, MG. Now we’re telling the last part of it together.

  MUSCLE GIRL

  Okay. Just wanted to be clear…

  CERBERUS

  Good. So then we emerged from the ground at around the same time, a little battered and bruised, but safe and healthy, like we wanted to be.

  POWER BUNNY

  Easy for you to say. You can move faster than us ‘cause you’re smaller, and you were already out and done when the rest of us—

  CERBERUS

  No bitching, please, PB. That was what got us in trouble before. Remember?

  POWER BUNNY

  Oh, yeah. Forgot that.

  CANDY GIRL

  Anyway, when we got out, there was one thing we all had on our mind. Revenge.

  MUSCLE GIRL

  Fortunately, we came out from the hole near the spot where Petra had parked her spaceship for the villains’ shindig, almost within walking distance of it. But we didn’t walk. We flew.

  CANDY GIRL

  Again, you’re overgeneralizing. I ran. I needed to save my superpowers for the fight ahead. My ring was running low on power.

  MUSCLE GIRL

  The point is, we were able to approach them unobserved. But, as soon as we entered with our fists clenched and our teeth bared, they took notice.

  CANDY GIRL

  It wasn’t a fair fight, by any means. Scylla and Charybdis spotted me and tried to summon up some spells to stop me, but I blasted them into another dimension with the rays from my ring. Won’t hear from them for a long time, I hope.

  MUSCLE GIRL

  Petra blazed some curses at me and tried to wrestle me down, but a left hook and a right cross and one more in the belly from me, and she was out for good.

  THE BRAT

  All I needed to do was lock eyes at Steinberg, and, if he wasn’t out cold before I saw him, he sure was after. I have that kind of effect on my enemies. After the fight, I called the cops and they took him back to jail. Simple as that.

  POWER BUNNY

  Rabindranath and Crack did the same “You goin’ down, bitch!” kung fu schtick they try to use against me every time. Ho hum. I swept in and bound the two of them up in each other so they couldn’t do anything else.

  CERBERUS

  Dumbell ran in front of me as soon as she spotted me, and we locked noses. Her shaggy yellow fur looked like it hadn’t been groomed in quite a while, and her black T-shirt with the white “D” on it (is she a copycat or what?) looked like it hadn’t been cleaned for the same amount of time. Naturally, we weren’t pleased to see each other.

  “Get out of here,” I ordered, “and take your servant with you!”

  I pointed to McGoon at this point. Despite his nickname, he isn’t “bad” in the least, just easily dominated. He quickly fled before I could do any damage to him.

  Dumbell, however, did nothing. I returned my attention to her.

  “I told you to…”

  “I heard you!” she snapped, in her deceptively mild working-class Southern accent. “You want me out of your sight ‘cause you’re afraid I’ll beat ya! And I will!”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” I retorted, holding my temper in check with a powerful effort. “My strength and speed are greater than yours…”

  “Not by as much as you think they are, hotshot!”

  “…and, as you know, my intelligence is considerably greater!”

  She called me a very dirty name, but I ignored her.

  “Face it, Dumbell,” I responded. “You may outweigh me by a few pounds, but that’s the only category in which you’re better than me. You’ll always be number two.”

  “I may be number two,” she snarled, “but I TRY HARDER!”

  With that, she took a vicious swipe at me, which I ducked. Then she started chasing me around the ship. This continued for a couple of minutes, until she cornered me, and forced me to fight her by encasing my small forepaws in her larger ones. We stood upright, wrestling with such force than the ground shook. I was at a disadvantage, as she was larger than me and had obviously — and lazily — conserved much more of her strength and energy than I had that day. Nevertheless, I prevailed. With a Herculean effort, I broke free of her grip, and before she could go any further, I snatched her by her shirt by my right forepaw and held her aloft.

  “Let me put you in the driver’s seat!” I said, as I cocked my left forepaw back.

  Then I punched her so hard that she flew out the ship’s wall and extremely far away.

  Haven’t heard from her since.

  MUSCLE GIRL

  So, that was it.

  THE BRAT

  No, it wasn’t. We went back to seal up the hole, which was a bitch of a job, even for us.

  CANDY GIRL

  You’re exaggerating. You guys just cut up some rocks with your powers and stuffed up the hole with ‘em. Typical show-off stuff.

  POWER BUNNY


  Somebody’s jealous.

  CANDY GIRL

  Yeah, I guess I am. I’ll admit that. I don’t want to seem useless.

  CERBERUS

  Which you are not, Candy. We all have things we can’t do, and things we can. Doesn’t mean you’re any less valuable to us.

  CANDY GIRL

  Thanks.

  MUSCLE GIRL

  I think we all learned a valuable lesson. Being able to do stuff on your own is all well and good, but sometimes you need to be part of a team to understand how valuable you can be. And who your real friends are when your back is against the wall. Am I right on that, girls?

  THE OTHERS

  Right!

  * * *

  Winnipeg writer David Perlmutter is the author of America Toons In: A History of Television Animation (McFarland and Co.).

  The Rise and Fall of Captain Stupendous

  P. E. Bolivar

  Greetings, avid readers! This is Myra Moon reporting from her prison cell, in an attempt to set the record straight.

  You’ve heard how I was kidnapped by the villainess Jaguar while on assignment in Brazil, gassed by a mysterious Amazonian plant she’d left in my hotel room, and how Captain Stupendous and his Canadian Super League rescued me, but you haven’t heard my side of the story. The story of my life, and how it all came crashing down.

  Ever since my first interview with Captain Stupendous, with that accompanying photo of me flying through the air in his muscular arms, I was assumed to be his girlfriend. Love at first sight, it was said, but it was never love. I was dating my photographer, Mikey Bell, and at the time we were happy together.

  The roof of my condo complex was freezing cold the night of the interview. For months I’d been writing article after glowing article about the Captain’s many exploits in the hopes of catching his attention. How he’d flown in to save those people trapped on the sinking ferry off the coast of Vancouver Island; how he’d foiled the Scandalbug’s attempt to blackmail Parliament; how he saved his fellow superhero Sufferjet, prevented her from marrying the villain Pherognome, who’d put a spell on her with his magical perfume.

  It was that article that made the Captain finally agree to speak with me. Mikey was the one who captured the famous image that accompanied it. Captain Stupendous in his tights and knee-high boots, his red cape fluttering behind him as he hoisted that ugly little man into the air. Pherognome was outfitted in black tuxedo and top hat and trying to hit the lantern-jawed hero with a cane held in his comically too-short arms.