When Wendy looks at me, I smile and hold up the Gabster. “Can’t watch her, get dressed and help Larry at the same time. Booties and coveralls are in the utility closet. Yell, if you need anything. You’re really good at that. If he’s up for it, he’ll be able to put it on with his powers.”
“You blow chunks, Stringel. You know that?”
Smiling at my daughter I say, “Mommy doesn’t like to lose arguments. That’s right! No, she doesn’t.”
“Get over yourself,” she retorts.
I point at the speaker and say, “They were just saying what a decent guy I am.”
The brunette baby mama gives a derisive snort and says, “You keep saving Andy’s life, and as for Aphrodite, it’s a known fact that gorgeous women have questionable choices in men. If she’s the most gorgeous in the world, that makes you the biggest questionable choice in history! Compared to her last boyfriend, you might actually be a decent guy, but I know better.”
At least she admits I’m an upgrade over Lazarus Patterson, may he never rest in peace.
As Wendy vacates my suite and my girlfriend openly cackles across the radio link, I grab a fresh towel and carry my daughter out to her playpen. She fusses when I set her in it, but I give her Mr. Quackers and hope the plushy duck buys me enough time to get changed. The way she is yanking at him makes me wonder if this will be the stuffed animal’s last stand. This isn’t a playpen! This is Sparta!
“I hope you don’t get your mom’s temper,” I say to my daughter as I note the gleeful look of destruction on her otherwise angelic face. “Then again, my temper usually ends up with people dead, so here’s hoping you get your disposition from someone else in the family.”
Pulling on a fresh set of undies, I grab a pair of shorts and one of my many Biz Markie concert shirts. To the speaker I say, “Where’d we leave off before I was so rudely interrupted by a washed up TV starlet?”
Wendy chimes in from downstairs, “The speaker is on down here, I heard that!”
Of course, I knew that already. “You just washed up, you were a TV starlet, and were pretty rude about interrupting us. Tell me what part of that is untrue?”
Her angry growl is so worth it. If Shakespeare wrote a play about us, it would be The Taunting of the Shrew. I would probably be killed at the end of the play, but I’ve learned that death is what you make of, or perhaps fake of, it.
“Larry was yakking all over your armor,” Stacy says. “I’m guessing that irritated you.”
“I can’t help it if I don’t like to fly!” Larry says defensively.
“No harm done,” I reply to him. “Anyway, Larry came here, started mastering his powers, got season tickets to the Panther’s games, met Bobby and learned the high art of watching porn on one screen while playing video games on the other—and the judge at Bobby’s sentencing hearing said he’d never have anything to offer society!”
“Hey, that’s harsh,” Larry protests.
“In defense of Mr. Hitt,” Andydroid states. “He is also taking college level courses from me and is a very capable student.”
“He also cleans up after himself, and his cooking is worlds beyond what you are capable of!” Wendy fires back.
I start to teasingly ask how many times Larry took home economics and stop myself. That’s a low blow that I’m not willing to throw.
Instead I go with, “I build robots to clean up after me and give me time to raise a beautiful little butt kicker. And you’re not one to point fingers, Ms. Laguardia or should I say Ms. ‘Where’s the catering truck?’ Your cooking isn’t much better than mine.”
“Many of our culinary problems would be solved if you would prioritize building a new body for me,” Andy comments. “I am able to emulate master chefs when properly outfitted.”
“You know how busy I’ve been, Andy,” I protest. It’s kind of a hollow one. I’ve been keeping my friend on the back burner for way too long, and if I’m being honest, Andy is more like a sculpture than a robot. I’m afraid that nothing I build will be up to the genius of his creator. Albright is a DaVinci, and I’m a guy who makes stuff go boom.
“I can give you a detailed breakdown on the amount of time you’ve spent in the past week fornicating, if you would like?” Andy deadpans. Clearly, he thinks working on the new chassis is more important than sleeping with Stacy. He’s very wrong in this instance.
“Well, this just proves you all are as dysfunctional as any team I’ve been around. Say, Andy?” Stacy interrupts our banter. “Why can’t you build your own body?”
“I can repair an existing body, but my programing prohibits creation of a brand new body. Doctor Albright specifically encoded this in his robots to prevent them from self-replication.”
“That might be a problem,” she says.
“What are you thinking, Stacy?” I say.
“Well, I know Robin will go to Doctor A. and find out if there are any things our team can do, if we are forced to fight the Megasuit. If you know of any other backdoors in your code Andy, you might want to consider how to defend against them.”
“The lady has a point,” Wendy says. “Since Cal is the best qualified to help you, and it’s his fault to begin with, he’s going to check your code for any Easter eggs after he finishes your new body.”
By the end of that, Wendy sounds rather smug. “Sometimes I regret asking you to be the leader, La Guardia.”
“Not as often as I do,” Wendy says in a sing-song voice. “Go ahead and tell her, Cal. You’re pretty much up to that part anyway.”
• • •
It was a miserable day for a reunion. All the credit in the world goes to those folks who fly out into hurricanes to take measurements, but gusts of wind up to one hundred and twenty miles per hour kicked the suit around as I approached the eyewall of Hurricane Ishmael.
Sixty miles north, the southeastern part of Cuba was already taking a pounding from the storm, and a certain pregnant superheroine was out in the middle of it all, trying to weaken it. This was the chance I’d been waiting for to get her alone. Her mother had hired Paper Tiger to be her bodyguard and he rarely left Wendy’s side. There was even a rumor of a budding romance between the two of them. I wouldn’t say I was jealous, but she could do better.
She’s done worse!
Using logic, I was able to narrow my search area. She had to be on the northern side of the storm, near the center. I tapped into weather buoys to try to find any area where the barometric pressure was significantly higher than the rest, but that came up empty. There were bursts of radio transmissions from her, garbled in static, which I used in a “getting warmer/getting colder fashion.”
Essentially, she was a five foot three inch needle in the haystack of a dark and angry sky. It took me exactly one hundred and twenty-seven minutes of searching before I finally located her, or more appropriately, the six hundred foot tall waterspout, rotating counter to the direction of the hurricane, which was what caught my eye. She was chipping away at it, and had been for hours—all in the name of improving relations between the US and it’s considerably smaller neighbor.
I don’t think it really does a damn bit of good for international relations, but Wendy is the most popular hero in Cuba who isn’t a national, so bully for her. Even if she’d clearly like to be somewhere else.
My baby mama was seven months along, and past the point where doctors would advise against a normal human flying in airplanes. Several people were questioning whether even a superhero should be out in this, given how far along she was. I happened to be one of them. Her leadership of the Gulf Coast Guardians was spotty at best, because her condition somewhat limited her ability to fight crime. I was certain that very much annoyed her, because I knew she wanted to lead a team, and not simply bankroll it. Sheila didn’t seem to mind, because it left her in charge most of the time.
Approaching the waterspout, I had Andy begin jamming the Guardian’s frequencies and hoped it would be seen as just a random atmospheric disruption occurri
ng in a monstrous Category Five hurricane.
The windspeed picked up as I approached Wendy’s funnel cloud. If Larry was here, he’d be spewing vomit everywhere. As it was, I wasn’t doing so hot when I broke through the outer rim.
My worries about how much longer it would take to find her were pushed aside in a near fit of hysterical laughter. She had this neon orange vest thing on. I didn’t know whether to take a picture, or mindwipe the image from my brain before it became trapped in there.
She didn’t notice me because she was fiddling with her headset and looking angry, so, I drew to within twenty feet of her and activated the floodlights attached to my armor’s shoulders.
Startled, the headset fell from her hands and was swept away by the currents of air swirling around us. Guess I didn’t have to worry about her calling for backup.
Her mouth was moving, but it’s not exactly like we could carry on a conversation in the middle of her smaller storm, which sat in the middle of a much larger storm. So, I held my hands up in what I hoped to be a peaceful gesture and beckoned her to come closer. I would have moved toward her, but I was having a hard enough time staying level.
Wendy waited for a few seconds; no doubt evaluating how much of a threat I was, before drifting to within five feet.
“What do you want?” she screamed.
“Sorry for the scare, but I wanted to come talk to you in private,” I used my external microphones to let the suit answer for me.
“I don’t recognize you!”
“I’m still working on a name, how does the new Ultraweapon sound?”
“Retarded!” she replies. “Well, you went to all the trouble to find me, what’s so fucking important?”
“I hope you can rein in that mouth of yours when you’re raising our daughter!”
“What did you say?”
“I said our daughter! Or am I that easy to forget? I’d open the helmet to prove it, but there’s no way I’m letting that much moisture into the suit.”
“Cal Stringel is dead! And trying to make me think he’s alive is only going to make me kick your ass even harder!”
“Here I didn’t think you cared, Wendy. It’s good to see you, too! What’s with the stupid vest? I know it’s not your idea.”
“If you really are Cal Stringel, you could tell me something that wasn’t in the book. Something only the two of us would know.”
“I sanitized most of your dialogue in the book to cut out the foul language.”
“Not good enough! Anyone who knows me knows that I have a New York City mouth.”
“Okay,” I say going over my mental list of things I could tell her that I didn’t choose to publish. “After I’d asked if you wanted me to get down on one knee, and you shot me down, I joked with you in private the next day that we should at least sleep with each other again and see if we liked it. You kicked me in the shin, hard. I asked why you couldn’t just slap me across the face like a normal woman, and then you kicked me in the other shin—just as hard.”
Small wonder that incident didn’t make it to publication, isn’t it?
The waterspout began collapsing, as a cocoon of air enveloped us. It was dead calm inside, no driving rain or anything else.
“All right, open up! If you’re really Cal, I want to see it, and then I want to hear what you have to say for yourself.”
I pop open the helmet, which spreads on a vertical line and look at her large, vest covered stomach. “How’s little Gabby doing?”
“You look like Cal and sound like him, but shape changers do exist, so how about you tell me how in the fuck you managed to survive a nuclear explosion?”
“Remotely operated armor, Wendy. Those pieces of that dinosaur’s magic mirror are a functioning two way portal. After I got it finished, I went back to my little hideout in Alabama and ran it from there. When that armor was destroyed, it took me awhile to build this new set. I was just going to stay retired, but I was visiting the site of my old base that I blew up to flee from the Olympians, when I got a postcard from Prophiseer. I could have it passed through one of the portals in my armor if you want to see it, or I can just show you a hologram of it, your choice.”
She opted for the hologram and I projected it. “That’s in four months! If this is legit, you should have fucking come to me earlier!”
“Didn’t want to blow my secret, and didn’t have a suit ready. My team needs a leader, and you’re the best one I know.”
“Your team? You have a fucking team! Who else is on it? I’m barely leading my team as it is!”
“I broke the spell on Andydroid, so there’s him, but he needs a complete body. From the villain side, I’ve got my old pal, Hillbilly Bobby...”
“That’s all? You’d be hard pressed to fight a Guardian team!”
“You haven’t seen this armor yet. My railgun is almost finished. But, you cut me off before I got to the best part.”
“Fine!” the ill-tempered tornado queen growls. “Impress me.”
“Imaginary Larry, your bitchiness. Fully aware and working to control his powers, Imaginary Larry! What’ve you got to say about that?”
That did the trick, and she closed her slack jaw and asked, “How?”
“The Logger’s necklace,” I answered. “Remember that? His power is cut in half, but he can think clearly. So what if he can only move half a mountain instead of the whole damned thing?”
“You’re the insane, son of a bitch who kidnapped Larry?”
“I prefer the term liberated,” I said.
“I’ve got a few terms I’d like to use right now,” she said, menacingly.
“Just save the name calling,” I stated.
“What makes you think I want to lead another team? Much less one with you on it?”
That actually stung. “Because I know you’re not happy, even with the Gulf Coasters. Jin was arguably the most effective person on your roster besides you and he just went back out on his own. Who’re you going to replace him with? All the best go to the East and West Coast teams leaving you and the idiots in Montreal fighting over the sloppy seconds.”
“I’ve talked Paper Tiger into coming onboard,” she said defensively.
“Your bodyguard? Yeah, he seems okay and maybe a notch below Chain Charmer, but dammit Wendy, you’re a powerhouse! You deserve a team of people in your league; a team that takes no shit from anyone, even the Olympians!”
“And you’re suddenly in my league? Did your death come with those delusions of grandeur or did they come after the fact?”
“In this armor,” I said. “Yeah, I am. I’ve got a nearly unlimited power supply and the firepower of an entire base at my disposal. Did I just mention that I’m building a damn railgun? Besides, Larry didn’t just up and come with me. We had ourselves a little fight first and wrecked the side of a mountain in the process. I won. He didn’t. Andy’s done the simulations and has me beating Patterson’s last suit or even his nuclear robot nine times out of ten.”
Of course, that was with the not yet completed railgun, but she didn’t need to know that at the moment.
She’s still not convinced, I could tell.
“Look at it this way,” I said. “You hate the bureaucracy. I know you do! Your dad is even using my book to try and clamp down on people with super powers. I just…”
Wendy cut me off. “Yeah let’s talk about the book, you miserable fucking bastard! Do you have the slightest idea of how much damage you caused? Do you?”
“It’s only going to cause problems for the people who let it! The question is – are you letting it cause problems for you and what’re you going to do about it? The truth hurts, Wendy! And that book was pretty damn close to the truth. You told me you went to the Gulf Coast team because you were going to walk and fund your own squad if they didn’t let you. Is New Orleans everything you dreamed it would be? My team has no plans of getting Uncle Sam’s or the UN’s stamp of approval. Everyone seems to think the only time I’m worth a damn is when the w
orld needs saving, so that’s what Larry and I are going to do. We’re going into the kick ass and take names business with no government oversight, no public relations people, no mission reports and patrols. I’ve had my share of the limelight and it sucked donkey balls.”
“So if your suit is all that,” Wendy challenged. “How come you haven’t broken into Patterson’s cell and do what you did to Mather?”
“I figure the best revenge is letting him rot in prison while he tries to figure out how my suit works. Since magic won’t occur to him, it’s going to drive him insane. Of course, if he somehow walks free, I’ll make sure he doesn’t get very far.”
“You’re serious about this team,” Wendy said. It was half a question and half a statement.
“You bet! But I’m not the person to be in charge. That’s where I need you. C’mon Wendy, if anyone can keep me and Larry on the straight and narrow, it’s you.”
“Let me think this over,” she said. I took it as a good sign.
“So, what’s with the stupid orange vest? Thinking of finishing the day off with some deer hunting?”
“They made me put it on in order to come out here. If I faint, this thing is supposed to inflate and become some kind of survival bubble to protect me.”
“That must annoy you to no end,” I said. “Do you want to slip through the portal piece in my armor and take a look at my base, meet Larry for yourself, or get a cup of coffee?”
“Had to give up coffee, for a few more months. About the only substitute I can stomach is peppermint tea, but I could really go for some pizza right about now. Got any of that?”
“It’s frozen, does that matter?”
“Normally, I would say yes, but right now, no. So, this teleportal thing? Is it safe?”
“Andy doesn’t believe it will harm the baby, but I’ll understand if you don’t want to go through it. It’s a shortcut through another dimension, not some dematerialization process, just like walking through a door to the next room.”
“Okay. I’m in. How do I get to your portal?”
Secrets of a D-List Supervillain Page 23
