Girl Power Omnibus (Gender Swap Superhero Fiction)

by P. T. Dilloway

  His body was still dripping with water as he entered the command center. “Would you like a towel?” she asked. She hoped he accepted in large part because he wore only a loincloth at the moment.

  “I’m fine,” Paul said. “Unless you’re afraid I’ll fry your equipment.”

  “It’s all shielded.”

  He sat down on a chair across from her. Her face warmed as she thought of how close he was, that loincloth the only thing separating her from it. “So what’s going on?” he asked.

  “It’s Robin. They say she murdered a friend—a police captain. She’s disappeared in a submarine. I was hoping—”

  “You need someone of noble blood to talk to the fishes,” Paul said.

  “Can’t Elise—”

  “I can ask, but she probably won’t do it.”

  Melanie nodded. She had expected that answer. Elise and Robin had never gotten along; she couldn’t expect Elise to return to help find her old rival. “I didn’t think so.” Despite her concern about Paul’s attire, she didn’t mind when he hugged her as she cried.

  “It’s all right, sweetie. I’ll help you however I can.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You don’t have any idea where she’d have gone?”

  “No. I’ve tried to activate the transponder, but she must have torn it out. There’s nothing else I can do. She could be anywhere.”

  “She can’t be down there forever. She’ll have to come up eventually.”

  “I hope so.”

  An alarm sounded on the console. “What’s that?”

  “Seismic alarm. There’s something big in the water nearby.” Melanie tapped a few buttons on the console. Her heart sank as she said, “It’s organic. Probably a whale.” Paul had helped them to install a fence around the oil platform to keep the sea life away. If it were a whale, it would get a snootful of electricity if it tried to break through the fence.

  Another alert sounded, followed by another and another. It wasn’t just a whale; it was a whole pod of them! They weren’t only whales either; there appeared to be squids, sharks, and other creatures as well. She turned to Paul. “Do you think Elise is doing this?”

  “I don’t think so. I’d better go and find out.”

  “Be careful.”

  “You too.”

  Once Paul was gone, Melanie punched up the buttons to call the Velocity Gals. Allison was the closer of them in Madagascar. “I’ll be there in a couple minutes,” she said.

  Melanie hoped so, though she wasn’t sure what the speedsters could do against sea creatures. As she considered this, another alarm sounded to indicate a hull breach. Maybe she would need Velocity Kid’s help after all.

  ***

  Once again Hitter and Ion Man were stuck in the rubber raft. Only this time Hitter waited for it to sink at any moment under the weight of Ion Man’s three hundred pounds of armor. “Don’t you have some rocket boots on there?”

  “The boss said we’re supposed to sneak in there, remember?”

  “It’ll be hard to sneak in anywhere when you’re at the bottom of the ocean.”

  “Maybe for you. This thing is watertight.” He rapped one gauntleted hand on his metal chest.

  Hitter rolled his eyes and then stabbed his oar into the water. The converted oil platform loomed ahead of them. At the moment it was besieged by various aquatic creatures: whales, sharks, and squid among others. So far none had actually reached the platform, but from what Midnight Spectre had said they were just a distraction.

  Their real ticket in clung to a great white shark behind them. The shark had actually tried to take a bite out of Neanderthal, but a couple of good smacks to its nose had taught it a valuable lesson. If the shark were lucky it would escape before Neanderthal decided to break it in half.

  “We’re over the fence now,” Ion Man said. Those fancy gadgets inside his helmet could pick up the power readings from the underwater fence that surrounded the platform. Hitter waited for a surge of electricity to fry them, but nothing happened.

  Ion Man picked up a cube wrapped in green cellophane. He pulled a cord and then tossed the cube behind him. It began to inflate into a second raft. As soon as the raft’s transformation was complete, Ion Man shouted, “Hop on, big stuff!”

  Neanderthal growled but then jumped onto the raft. He gave the shark a swift kick to the side before it could think of trying to take another bite of him. Hitter was relieved to watch the shark’s fin fade away from them.

  So far Midnight Spectre’s plan was working. The sea creatures had anyone inside occupied while Hitter, Ion Man, and Neanderthal floated past the security fence on their rafts. He still couldn’t help but wait for the proverbial hammer to drop on them. As he’d seen often enough in his time, a job that started out smoothly meant something would go terribly wrong later.

  Still nothing had gone wrong as they reached the side of the platform. Hitter and Ion Man let Neanderthal go first up the ladder that ran along the side of the platform. Hitter was content to bring up the rear; let the other two get vaporized by any of the booby-traps protecting the place.

  Neanderthal stepped onto a narrow ledge and then set to work on tearing a large panel of metal away from the platform’s hull. Even with his size and strength it took a considerable amount of effort, until Hitter thought the veins in the caveman’s arms and neck might burst. The panel couldn’t hold out forever; it finally tore away with a shriek.

  The caveman darted inside. “Hold on, chief,” Ion Man shouted. “We got to stick to the plan.”

  “No care about plan! Want to bash!”

  Before Ion Man could say anything else, Hitter put a hand on his shoulder. “Let him go. It’ll be a good distraction, yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  Then Hitter took his 9mm from the duffel bag and screwed on the silencer. The sniper rifle wouldn’t be much good in these tight quarters. The garrote he still had in his pocket if he needed it. The thought of wringing that little girl’s neck did have some appeal. First he had to find her.

  The most likely spot would be the control room. Midnight Spectre had given them a map of the place. Ion Man had it in that helmet of his. Hitter had to rely on his good old-fashioned noggin.

  That noggin also told him to duck a millisecond before a shuriken would have torn open his throat. The brat he’d been recruited to terminate stood in a doorway, dressed in a gray hooded MIT sweatshirt and pink sweatpants instead of her usual tight black catsuit. She had hastily put her black mask on to cover part of her face.

  “Backup is on the way,” the girl said. “You three should get lost now before you end up in the brig.”

  “I’ve got plenty of time for you, love,” he said. He aimed the pistol not at her but the door panel to her right. Sparks flew as the bullet tore through the panel.

  A second later she did as he anticipated by diving through the door. Thanks to his bullet, the door didn’t close behind her. Before he could go after her, he found himself tripping forward. The gun flew from his hand, a bullet harmlessly burying itself into the ceiling.

  Another girl stood over him, this one even younger and dressed in a tight silver-and-pink bodysuit, her platinum hair childishly tied into pigtails with white ribbons. This was the sidekick, the one they called Velocity Kid. Her punches didn’t hurt much, but there were enough of them in rapid sequence to put him on his back.

  Before she could make a smart quip, the wall to her left exploded. Neanderthal roared as he foolishly charged the girl. His primitive brain couldn’t grasp that she could move at nearly the speed of light and thus would not be there by the time he reached her.

  It made no difference to Hitter. The brute had distracted Velocity Kid, which paved the way for him to continue his job. He snatched his gun from off the floor and then ran into the control room.

  He was already ducking again before the Outcast could kick him in the face. As her leg went over, he spun her down to the ground. She landed with a whimper that brought a smile to his fac
e. “Looks like you’re in a fine mess now, love.” He pressed the gun to her forehead. “Any last requests?”

  He knew he shouldn’t give her so much time, but he savored the fear in her eyes. While he might have made a truce with Midnight Spectre, it would still feel good to kill her partner. He only wished he had more time to enjoy it.

  Time ran out as he heard an aerosol hiss. His vision clouded and pain ripped through him. “You little bitch!” he shouted. He pulled the trigger even though he knew she was already gone.

  The gun flew from his hand; with his eyes still watering he couldn’t be sure where it landed. A kick to the midsection doubled him over. He spat a wad of blood onto the floor. Another kick put him down on his back.

  His eyes cleared enough that he could see the girl standing over him. She held another shuriken in one hand. “This one is tipped with enough poison to put you in a coma for a week,” she said. “Unless you want to come quietly.”

  Before Hitter could answer, a window in the control room exploded. He thought it would be Neanderthal again; this time it was Killer Whale riding to his rescue. He held a blood-tipped spear in one hand and a blood-tipped harpoon in the other. The Outcast threw her shuriken, but she aimed it too quickly; it went over Killer Whale’s head to embed itself in the wall.

  It didn’t matter as she’d only thrown it as a distraction. Before Hitter could get to his feet, the girl had dashed across the room, into an airlock. There was a red light followed by an alarm klaxon. A few seconds later he heard the rumble of a rocket engine. Hitter knew the girl had escaped, but he checked the airlock anyway.

  “Damn it all,” he muttered.

  ***

  Like Hitter, Ion Man hadn’t seen why they needed to bring Neanderthal along. The caveman had been a liability pretty much this whole time. Even ripping open the hull of the oil platform could have been done with a couple of well-placed charges.

  He began to see the wisdom of bringing him along once the Velocity Gals showed up on the scene. The older one in blue—the actual Velocity Gal—had appeared seemingly from nowhere to kick Ion Man to the floor. Rolling over was a tricky process in three hundred pounds of Kevlar-titanium composite armor; she was able to give him a couple more kicks before he could manage it.

  His suit protected him from any real damage. If she kept it up, all she’d get was a busted foot. She had something else in mind. The woman grabbed a piece of torn metal from the hull. The metal disappeared in her hand only to reappear in Ion Man’s right shoulder. He screamed and shouted, “What the hell was that?”

  “You’ll get a few more of those if you don’t take off that armor and go down to the brig,” she said. In other circumstances he would have loved to go down to a secluded room with a blond woman who had the shape of a Barbie doll and was even more stacked. Right now he had a job to do.

  He fired off a couple of flares on his left gauntlet to distract her. When she moved, he fired the ion blaster in his right hand. He missed. She came back around to kick the piece of metal in his shoulder, driving it in deeper. “Holy shit!” he shouted through clenched teeth.

  Then Neanderthal saved his sorry butt by hurling a support beam at where Velocity Gal had been. She was of course much too fast and too smart to let it hit her. Ion Man was a bit more sluggish in rolling away before he could be crushed.

  The Velocity Gals came after the caveman, raining down a series of blows Ion Man could barely see. Neanderthal might have the mental capacity of a golden retriever, but he wasn’t completely stupid. He windmilled his arms, hoping to hit one or both of the girls attacking him.

  While Neanderthal handled the Velocity Gals, Ion Man took a moment to make an adjustment to his targeting computer. He couldn’t get an accurate measure of how fast the girls could move, so he had to ballpark it. He would need to give his sights a little lead time to make up for the difference.

  By the time he’d finished his calculations, the Velocity Gals had Neanderthal tied up with a fire hose. Ion Man doubted that would hold the caveman for long. As the girls continued to work, he let his newly programmed sights fix on them. When the sight turned red, he fired.

  The blast missed to the right of Velocity Kid, not even singeing one of her pigtails. He swore to himself as he tried to make an adjustment. The Velocity Gals turned to him. As they raced towards him at superspeed, he fired.

  This time the computation got it right. A ball of blue energy hit Velocity Gal squarely between those luscious melons of hers. Her body crackled with lightning that quickly spread to her sidekick. There was a flash of light that overloaded every sensor in Ion Man’s helmet.

  He took off the helmet to find himself alone with Neanderthal. The Velocity Gals had vanished. “Well, that was some fancy shooting,” he said to himself.

  ***

  Killer Whale did not find his part of the operation to be much of a challenge so far. He only had to tread water near the platform and direct the creatures he had recruited to hurl themselves futilely at the fence. He supposed in time they might succeed in breaking through, if the shock didn’t kill them first.

  Throughout this, he waited for some sign of his sister or members of her guard. While in prison he had heard what little there was about his sister. She had declared herself Queen Neptune and taken control of Pacifica after dispatching an impostor Lord Neptune. Little else was known because she refused to go up to the surface.

  If she wouldn’t go to the surface or help her former friends on the oil platform, then Killer Whale would have to go to her. As soon as his business here was finished, he would have to swim down there to begin assessing the situation. He didn’t imagine it would be difficult to find enough disaffected Pacificans to raise an army to oppose the “queen.”

  Just the thought of the word made Killer Whale’s fists clench. Pacifica had always been ruled by a king. That was the way it should be. No woman was strong enough to rule the oceans. In her former guise as a commoner, his sister had bested him, but that was only because she held the royal trident. Without it she was as weak as a sea urchin.

  A ripple of thought from one of the sharks snapped him out of his reverie. Someone was in the water nearby. A Pacifican. Killer Whale tightened his grip on the spear and harpoon and smiled. At last, something for him to do.

  He dove underwater, using the shark’s senses to guide him. As he closed in, he saw a Pacifican man dressed in the traditional style of only a loincloth. What was unusual was that the man’s face was clean-shaven. With no shaving cream or safety razors, shaving in Pacifica was a painful proposition, thus Pacifican men didn’t bother with it.

  He was a little surprised to find out the man already knew him. “Give it up, Killer Whale. The Super Squad will be here soon to take care of you.”

  “Who are you? One of my sister’s minions?”

  “I’m her friend. As a friend I’m warning you that if she finds you before the Super Squad does, your head is going to end up on a pike at the front gates.”

  “That weak-willed fool wouldn’t dare.”

  “You’d be surprised.”

  “Enough.” Killer Whale swam forward. He elected to use the harpoon first. The man avoided that, but left himself open for the spear to lance through his right arm. The man cried out in pain. It was clear he was not a warrior. “She should not have sent one of her scullery maids to fight me.”

  “She didn’t.” The man yanked the harpoon out of his arm. He brought it around to deflect the spear before Killer Whale could run him through. They parried and thrust with their weapons for a few minutes, neither gaining the advantage. Perhaps he was more of a warrior than his initial appearance suggested.

  “We don’t have to fight,” Killer Whale said. “My sister’s reign is nearing its end. Join with me and it will be over that much faster.”

  “I’d never help you kill Elise.” The man whirled the harpoon around faster. This provided an opening for Killer Whale to stick him in the right shoulder with the spear. As Killer Whale yanked t
he spear free, he saw the man’s eyes close.

  “Finish with him,” he commanded the sharks. They would be more than happy for a free meal.

  His weapons still coated with blood, Killer Whale surfaced. He climbed up the side of the platform and then dropped through a window to find a young girl standing over the assassin, a weapon in her hand. Though he had no interest in saving the assassin, he did have an interest in killing a member of the Super Squad, no matter how puny she might be.

  Before he could harpoon her through the throat, she turned and hurled her weapon at him. He easily stepped aside. He was disappointed to see the coward had already taken off. Before Killer Whale or the assassin could reach her, the girl had escaped.

  The scientist and the caveman joined them in the room. “Looks like you guys had a fun little party,” the scientist quipped. “Where’s the body?”

  “The girl escaped,” Killer Whale said.

  “So Big Bad Assassin couldn’t kill one little girl?”

  “Shut up,” the assassin snapped. “I’ll catch up to her. She couldn’t have got too far.”

  “Yeah, well, meanwhile me and big stuff bagged our targets.”

  “Then where are they?”

  The scientist shrugged. “They disappeared. Vaporized. Guess it saves on funeral costs.”

  “What do we do now?” Killer Whale asked. His question was answered by a shrill alarm. The room became bathed in red light.

  “What the bloody hell is that? Self-destruct?”

  The scientist hurried over to one of the computers. “No. There’s something going on downstairs. Power readings are off the scales but it’s not the generators.” Killer Whale could only watch the scientist furiously tap at keys. “Oh shit. That bitch double-crossed us.”

  “What do you mean?” the assassin asked.

  “Midnight Spectre. She didn’t come here to kill the Super Squad. She came here for that weird ray gun of Dr. Roboto’s.”