Broke and Famous

by Elizabeth Gannon

  ****

  “Well, I don’t know what to tell you. I sent the kids to get it, but they got nabbed by the cops.” Artie Klein explained into his phone, feeling like he was repeating himself. “It took me forever to swipe it from the evidence locker, you know how paranoid the cops in this town are getting, thanks to those psycho Consortium of Chaos freaks running wild playing Cape and fucking it up for the rest of us.”

  That wasn’t a lie. He had had a very difficult time with this particular job.

  He walked down the hallway towards his apartment, listening to the person on the other end of the phone. “Yes, I got it, I got it, don’t worry.” He paused. “But it’s going to cost you something extra now, ‘cause this is causing me a lot of trouble, understand? I got overheads here. Can’t just plug people and dump’em in the Hudson like I could when the Freedom Squad was around, those Consortium freaks don’t play ball with that. These days I gotta do things more subtle-like, and time is money.” He swallowed, unsure of what to even ask for something which was so incredibly unimportant, but which was suddenly extremely desirable for some reason. “Montgomery Welles told me he’d pay double the price for it, if I sold it to him instead of you.” Artie lied smoothly.

  In actuality, Welles knew nothing about the item, but he was the perfect name to drop in situations like this, because he was the most obvious suspect for everything.

  “If you still want it, the price is now triple.” Artie demanded, already preparing to be refused.

  He listened to the person on the other end and was surprised as they immediately agreed to the price. There hadn’t even been an attempt to bargain.

  Artie smiled, already planning on hiking up the price again before he made delivery, perhaps even actually giving Welles a heads-up on the sale, to see if his bid would be competitive. The man was the single worst person Artie had ever met, but he was usually willing to pay handsomely for the right information. And Artie had somehow stumbled onto a goldmine, apparently.

  “Nice doin’ business with you, as always.” He opened the door to his apartment and walked inside. “Your item is at Billy-Ray’s, let him know of our agreement and he’ll make delivery. I will be…” He trailed off, recognizing that something was wrong.

  He always left his apartment light on.

  He’d been in this business long enough to never trust a dark room. Particularly since his apartment was located in the shadiest part of Reichelt Park, an area which already wasn’t renown for being especially aboveboard. There were mad scientists all over this part of the neighborhood. Since the Freedom Squad’s collapse, times were tough and even smart people got desperate. You left your door open here, you were likely to find someone had dematerialized all of your shit and left behind an open portal to Saturn in your bedroom, just to mess with you.

  Artie didn’t let the beautiful park, the high-born respectable citizens, or the historic buildings fool him. He knew you didn’t fuck around in Reichelt Park.

  Ordinarily, he never would have walked into the dark apartment at all, but he’d been so distracted by his new windfall that he hadn’t been paying any attention.

  And to make his situation worse… he wasn’t alone.

  “I’ll… I’ll call you back…” He mumbled into the phone, fumbling with the disconnect button. The phone slipped from his hand and fell to the floor, unnoticed.

  The apartment was silent for a moment, as Artie stared at his uninvited guest.

  A woman sat in the darkness.

  A very tall woman, more muscular than Artie Klein could ever hope of being.

  A woman with scarlet red skin and backswept faun-like horns, which were the same metallic color as the golden armor she wore, and followed the curve of her skull, poking through her shock of night black hair.

  Her horns and her breastplate gleamed menacingly in the dim light, casting shadows on her face which shifted with each breath.

  Artie had seen his share of superheroes in his criminal life. Seen his share of villains too.

  This woman was something else entirely.

  Something… monstrous.

  And not from around here.

  “Warmest hello, human.” The warrior woman purred, standing up on her impossibly long and powerful legs, and gliding through the darkness like it was part of her. “Gratitude for not making me wait long inside your human burrow, human.”

  Artie mentally calculated the distance he’d traveled into the apartment and the distance to the 12-gage he kept in his closet, trying to decide whether to go for the door or the weapon...

  The woman seemed to guess what he was thinking, her perfect wine-colored lips curving slightly. She absently pulled out the shotgun from beside her, the movement causing the bright blue sash tied around her hips to sway. “If it would ease your mind to have this, human, then I am pleased to allow that.” She grabbed the twin barrels of the weapon, wrenched them apart with her bare hands, then effortlessly twisted them together into a knot. She tossed the ruined shotgun onto the floor, where it skidded along until it came to rest against his boot.

  Artie stared at it silently, recognizing that he was in serious trouble.

  He looked back up to meet the woman’s gaze. Her eyes were yellow and soulless, like a cat’s. There wasn’t any pity or weakness in them. Just rage. Also… like a cat’s.

  She was here to kill him.

  He knew it.

  She didn’t need to say or do anything, her entire presence screamed it at him with every fluid movement of her deadly body.

  Every single thing about this woman warned you to keep clear of her.

  This woman was a fighter, from somewhere where that meant even more than it meant here.

  Silently, majestically, the proud figure of the woman reached to the small of her back, and a meteor hammer fell at her booted feet. The weapon was a long chain with a heavy spiked ball on one end.

  Artie knew what it was and what it was called because he’d lived in this neighborhood his entire life, and he’d seen some weird shit.

  She absently spun the heavy ball around and around by its chain, the other end wrapped around her forearm, where it finished off with a sharp throwing blade.

  He made a desperate run for the door, but she tossed the weapon at it, expertly hitting the door with the weight of the ball, so that it shut closed in his face.

  He slammed into the now closed door, staggering him.

  She yanked back on the chain, propelling the heavy ball back towards her hand, knocking Artie down with a large piece of his door which had gotten stuck in the spike and dragged backward into him.

  He hit the ground in a roll, coming up next to his end table, where he pulled out a pistol. He spun to point it at her, but the woman kicked the ball of her metal whip-mace as it was still making its way back to her, changing its direction instantly and sending it ricocheting towards Artie.

  The ball of unknown metal impacted his gun and shattered it to pieces, breaking his hand in the process and cutting off one of his fingers.

  He let out a shrill scream of pain and shock, picking up his severed digit and trying to crawl towards the broken remains of the door…

  The woman yanked back on the chain, dodged to the side and lifted her leg so that the chain wrapped around and around her thigh, then she kicked her foot again, redirecting the ball’s deadly arc towards him. The whole thing was like a dance…

  The weapon smashed the bone in his leg, and the spike pierced his flesh, pinning him in place.

  He hadn’t even gotten near the door.

  He started whimpering in pain and turned over, blinking up towards his dirty ceiling and trying not to sob.

  The woman yanked on the long chain, dislodging the meteor hammer from his leg and sending it flying back towards her. She swung her forearm out and let the chain wrap around and around it until the weapon was at the length she wanted, then slammed the spiked ball down again by its chain, so that it impacted the floor between his legs, millimeters from his
own balls.

  He let out a cry of sheer terror, wanting to scamper away but being unable to move much because of his broken leg and the blood causing his feet to lose traction on the slick floor.

  The she-devil stood over him like a victorious alien gladiatrix, looking down on him like something she’d scrape off her shoe. Then, as if to demonstrate, she placed her boot on the center of his chest, pinning him to the ground and crushing his ribcage until it became difficult to breathe.

  She stared at him silently for a long moment, as if idly curious about humanity and the funny noises they made when you tortured them. She dangled the ball weapon inches above him like a pendulum, where it slowly dripped his own hot blood onto his face in long, lazy crescent shapes.

  Around and around…

  “What do you want!?!” He finally cried, feeling wetness spreading from his pants as he lost control of his bladder. “Anything! Anything you want, it’s yours!”

  The red alien woman seemed amused by his abject terror, baring her sharp white teeth in a cruel and inhuman smile. “Human, I’d like to talk with you about… wire.”

  Chapter 9

  “Jefferson Westgate. Died 1985. Killed trapping the soul of an Old God inside a Laserdisc, which now sits with the other movies next to the TV in the Westgate’s family room, with a pink sticky note attached to it which reads: ‘DO NOT WATCH THIS!’ Honestly… that whole situation is liable to lead to more problems, if you want my opinion. I caught Kurtz tryin’ to pop it into the player to drunkenly watch it twice last month alone. Idiot.”

  – Thraex, Damn Fool Ways Westgates Ended Up Graveyard Dead: Vol. 1

  Years ago

  Officially, Thraex was enrolled here. Miss Sasha had insisted that he attend the school, for some damn reason. He wasn’t entirely sure why she went through all of that trouble, but he didn’t object to being able to spend more time with her.

  Once a Westgate got an idea, there was little you could do to escape it.

  Professor Westgate had made a big deal of Thraex’s newfound enrollment here, saying that Sasha had really gone out of her way for him. He said that it would do Thraex good to learn more about the super-powered business, since he wasn’t “equipped by nature with the ability to do good science.”

  Thraex was pretty sure it had been meant as a compliment, but it had stung anyway.

  Professor Westgate was always pretty oblivious about anything outside a laboratory, so Thraex didn’t hold a grudge.

  Being sent out here to learn nonsense from Capes was a waste of Thraex’s time though. None of the teachers liked him, not even Miss Sasha most of the time, so he preferred to be alone.

  He was beginning to suspect that the school mainly kept him enrolled so that they didn’t have to pay for someone else to do the maintenance. Miss Sasha kept trying to get him to take classes other than hers, but he didn’t want to do that. He simply skipped them or slept through them.

  Thraex was damn sure not the hero in any story worth telling, so it made no sense to pretend to be.

  He wasn’t competitive or self-sacrificing. He had no interest in killing himself to get ahead in the Westgate’s social set, or waking up each morning to go out there to show the world how much he cared.

  Because, truth told, he didn’t.

  Thraex was a betrayer. Anything else was a waste of time.

  He cared about the Westgates and their building, the rest of the world could go get stuffed for all he cared.

  If this didn’t seem to mean so much to Miss Sasha, Thraex would have walked away from this school a long time ago. But if she wanted him here, then he could stick. At least for a little while.

  But Thraex wasn’t cut out to be a superhero or a scientist. No way, no how. He didn’t seem to fit into anything too cleanly, in fact.

  He wasn’t too much worried about that though. It would work out.

  When you came right down to it, Thraex was a pretty optimistic person. Even “hell on Earth” would still be some kind of wet dream compared to his home dimension, so it wasn’t something to get all riled up about. He could deal with it.

  He wasn’t lazy, he just did what made him happy. And if it didn’t make him happy, he’d be a damn fool to keep doin’ it.

  Generally, Thraex kept his mind on his business, and his business was the Westgates and their home. For smart people, they did some mighty stupid things sometimes, and he needed to keep an eye on them.

  He leaned against the wall of the hallway which led to the gymnasium, wiping his brow with his handkerchief. Before chopping up those fallen trees with the chainsaw, he’d spent the better part of the morning crawling through the air ducts in the building, trying to fix the school’s air conditioning. Some damn fool here had let rats chew through the wiring, so now the whole thing was shot. He’d been unable to repair the system in time for today’s lesson, which meant that the gym was blisteringly hot.

  The administrators of the Academy would not be happy with that, but they were idiots, so he didn’t care. He found that the more idiotic someone was, the more upset they got about every little thing. And it wasn’t like they could fire him. He did it because it was work that needed doin’, not out of any sense of duty towards the school.

  Besides, the event scheduled today was a visit from the Freedom Squad, which meant that between them, the Westgates, and the other super-scientists, there were at least four dozen mechanical geniuses in attendance, all of whom could do a better job than Thraex of fixing the AC. If you added up their damn IQs, it would prolly be larger than the national debt.

  But none of them even attempted to repair the issue, they all just sat uncomfortably still in their seats, cursing the heat rather than trying to find the solution.

  Their whole damn community was like that now.

  They wanted quick-fixes and easy answers, they didn’t like to get their hands dirty by actually doin’ things anymore.

  Thraex found it so irritating. He had no patience for sittin’ still and whining.

  Professor Westgate and Kurtz walked by, making their way to their seats. “…at all, I don’t even know where you were yesterday.” Richard Westgate chastised his son, pipe customarily clenched in his teeth.

  A larger than life, domineering figure, Richard Westgate was moving down the hall with the swaggering self-satisfaction which most people accused the entire Westgate clan of possessing.

  It was a fair criticism.

  They were a proud family, despite their many problems and tendency to get themselves put on the wrong side of the sod.

  “It wasn’t my fault!” Kurtz protested, unbuttoning his colorful blue, purple and grey plaid varsity sweater, which featured the Westgate logo embroidered on its breast. “I got mugged by radioactive thugs in a dystopian alternate present, but I managed to fix the timeline in the past and now I’m back.”

  “That is the coolest lie I’ve ever heard, Kurtz.” Thraex told the boy after a beat, genuinely impressed. With the Westgates, that preposterous lie might very well be the truth though, you could never tell. Adventure had a way of finding them.

  They were a weird bunch, the lot of them.

  Kurtz beamed at him as he walked by. “Thanks!”

  “…You spent almost a million dollars in an attempt to retrofit poor Sparko with a recreation of the ‘Magna Beam Transporter’ from an old episode of the He-Man cartoon, Kurtz!” Professor Westgate continued, listing the boy’s failures this week and ignoring Thraex entirely.

  “She-Ra.” Kurtz corrected weakly.

  The boy’s father glared at him, pushing his thick rimmed glasses back up his nose. “I’m sorry, what?”

  Kurtz looked down at the floor. “Nothing.”

  One day, that boy would have to grow up and Thraex hoped it was sooner rather than later. As it was, he seemed to do little besides try to get on his parent’s good sides, beat up weaker kids at school, invent silly machines that did weird things, and ogle the colorful slave girls in old Star Trek reruns.

&nb
sp; “And it still doesn’t work!” Richard Westgate continued, puffing angrily on his pipe like a locomotive getting up a full head of steam. “It’s bad enough that you get a stupid idea, but then to fail at even that, is…” The rest of his rant was lost to the noise of the crowd.

  Down the hallway behind them came a variety of Capes from the Freedom Squad, the city’s go-to protectors. The man in the lead was wearing a white and orange sequined robe over a white spandex bodysuit which left nothing to the imagination. It was so tight you could tell the fella’s religion.

  Thraex unwillingly noticed that the man had very little to be so damn proud of, though. But some folks liked to present their shortcomings as assets, it seemed.

  Behind the man, a bevy of female admirers followed, all dressed in his matching colors, fawningly listening to his every word.

  Thraex hoped that he never did anything in his life which would justify having an entourage. Must be plum tirin’ to be dealin’ with that many people walking behind. This fella was liable to trip and get crushed in the damn crowd.

  The man saw Thraex and brightened. “Ah, just the man I wanted to see.” He walked over to him and held out an empty cup in his hand. “Take care of that for me, little friend. Can’t have my public seeing me throw things away, it might spoil their dreams of me.”

  Thraex looked down at the cup, then back at the man, without saying anything or bothering to take the cup.

  The man held it out to him for one beat.

  Then two.

  “Do you speak English?” The man finally asked.

  “A mite bit, yeah.” Thraex nodded his head, scratching his cheek. “Good thing too, ‘cause I’m havin’ trouble rememberin’ how to say: ‘I ain’t your butler, mister, so throw your own damn trash away’ in French.”

  The man didn’t seem happy about that. “What is your problem? I ask you to do one simple thing, something that everyone else would be honored to do for me, but you try to make it a big deal. You try to make it about you.” He simply dropped the cup on the ground and continued down the hall. “What is wrong with the world?” The man wondered aloud. “I try to save it, but there are so many toxic people who can’t get with the program, am I right?”