I shook my head quickly. “Oh, no, I’m fine with that. I didn’t want to put you in danger of your powers anyway.”
“More evidence this is the real Penelope,” commented Jacky dryly.
Blushing again, Barbara tucked a lock of wet black hair back under the bathing cap. “Maybe I can’t help you in combat, but I’m happy to be your friend, and put together a normal life while you work this out.”
“Huh,” I said to that. This was all a lot to put together.
Life didn’t have to consist of revenge. I could take breaks. People wanted to see me. Buying a computer would be a good idea. If seeing people was an option, maybe spending time alone playing computer games was, too. Maybe this robot body had improved reflexes?
As I watched Gerty dispense sheep-shaped cookies to a confused family, I mentally prepared a letter to write when I got back to my base.
Dear Mom and Dad,
I miss you, but camp gets easier once you start making friends…
ull villainous disclosure: I was no expert with computer technology. Competent, sure, but with Ampexia, the difference between ‘competent’ and ‘expert’ became clear. She didn’t have a super power, but my new gaming computer and the monitors and machines already in Miss A’s base were turning into a rat’s nest of wires.
“You won’t get much use out of these, but you’ll have all the monitors any girl could dream of, and access to the bug transmissions. Heh. That’s so messed up.” She snorted in amusement.
“What, the trackers or the cameras?” I asked, watching her hook up another wire. How did she find a motherboard with so many USB ports? I mean, I was there at the store, but I still didn’t think they made them. Good thing I could actually spend my supervillain money now.
“All of it. I heard superheroes bugged people, but I didn’t expect to see it.”
I pursed my lips, and made wild guesses based on almost no experience. “I think only the weirdos do.” Miss Lutra, after all, was legendary for her shamelessness, and Mom for having the kind of inhumanly logical standards that wouldn’t mind. “From what I hear, the Original was a serious control freak.”
‘Was’ might be the operative word, there. Even with access to super-powered healing, having your skeleton shattered was the kind of thing it was hard to recover from enough to still fight crime.
She tinkered some more, then gave me a suspicious look through her mad scientist goggles. “How are you feeling?”
Locking my fingers together, I swung my arms up above my head, bent my back, and stretched. It felt a little janky without proper shoulders, but my robot arms swiveled better than the human versions. “Better. Less pressured. I still want to get straight to helping you with your problem.”
She sat back, turned the computer on, and stared at it until the monitors lit up in sequence, all with different startup screens. “Yeah. The longer it’s not fixed, the worse it will get.”
“So, what’s up?”
She watched the screens, not looking at me, voice neutral. “An object was stolen from me. It is dangerous and has personal importance, and I have to get it back. The thieves are dangerous, our goofy goat-bot is useless against them, and they keep the object on their person at all times. I can’t do this myself. I need a fighter, and not an adult, because they’re all freaks in this town. You’ll get opportunities to go full supervillain, and you love that.”
I ran my tongue along my lips, voice dropping to a purr. “I’ve had some small tastes lately, but yes, I miss it. Do I get any more details about this job?”
Ampexia shrugged, still focused on the computer screen, as if arranging icons was difficult. “No point until you’re equipped and ready.”
That could not be a less subtle hint she didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t want to make her uncomfortable by pushing, not until I had to. So, I changed the subject. “Despite my reputation, you steal tech way more often than I do. Any ideas on where I can find some mad science weapons without actually hurting anybody?”
Ampexia’s slender face split with a sly grin. “Yeah. I do.”
“This is the place?” I asked, staring across the parking lot in astonishment.
Look, I’d been around the evil block a time or two, but this was the first time that block contained an agricultural supply store. Yes, the store was huge, actually filling the block. Granted, it had a giant cardboard goat sign over the entrance, for no obvious reason since the name on that sign was ‘Oh, No! Beans!’
Goats were rapidly impressing me as symbols of mad science. The giant robot goat climbing out of Ampexia’s truck bed helped with that.
“Why would a store for farmers have mad science?” I asked, making sure to raise one eyebrow for that lopsided bewildered look.
“Because most super-powered weapons weren’t designed to be weapons,” my immaculately jaded blonde colleague answered.
Gerty provided her critical perspective. “Plants are food, and without food, you can’t make breakfast!”
It is quite hard to miss a fourteen-year-old in a steampunk scientist costume, a sixteen-year-old with a speaker as big as the rest of her strapped to her back, and a lurching, squeaking, seven-foot-tall anthropomorphic goat. Prospective customers got back into their cars and drove away. Employees around the entrance put on a competition for most nonchalant exit. A few people just saw us and went in to shop anyway.
Stepping through the glass double doors, I threw my arms wide and declared, “Farmers, salesmen, and children of all ages. You have been blessed, for today your humble store is the victim of the newly reformed Inscrutable Machine!”
Behind me, glass crashed and tinkled, and Gerty asked, “Golly gosh, did you feel that? Is it raining?”
Most of the store went quiet as we marched down to the customer service desk. Man, this place was big. Agricultural supply stores looked a lot like hardware stores, with towering racks of machines and parts and tools, but with added bags. Bags, stacked on groaning shelves, filling whole aisles. In the distance, I saw a seriously big, garishly purple tractor looming over the customers examining it. In the farther distance, something mooed. My numb robo-sinuses must be missing quite a stink.
An older man and woman regarded us with wide, anxious eyes as we reached the desk, and I gave the service bell a series of loud whacks.
“Nobody ever raids us,” said the terrified woman, in a low tone that clearly wasn’t meant for me.
“But we paid our supervillain insurance, right?” asked the man, his mouth equally frozen and words coming from behind a nervous grimace.
“Yes.”
“Oh, thank goodness.” His demeanor changed, slightly. Leaning forward, he raised a finger and asked more loudly, “What can I do for you girls?”
Ampexia slapped the counter with her gauntleted hand. “Where’s the high-tech department?”
His arm slowly rose, pointing a few rows over. “Power tools are in—”
Ampexia’s groan cut him off. “What a bunch of dinguses.” Twisting a dial on her wrist, she shouted into the gauntlet’s microphone and her voice echoed around the store. “You are all a bunch of dinguses!”
Suave and leaderly, I flourished my hand in a circle. “We’re shopping for something a bit higher-tech than that.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the man answered. Oh, what an obvious lie. He did such a good job of sounding sincere. If only the words himself weren’t so obviously defensive!
I bowed my head obligingly. “Then I suppose we must do our own browsing. Gerty! I have a gift for you.” Scooping up the counter bell, I tossed it back over my shoulder.
She caught it with a clunk. Her jaw hung open as she stared at it. Then her body tilted precariously to one side, and she chimed the little bell as she gleefully sang over it, “Ding ding ding! Listen to the pretty ring!”
Hopping happened. The floor thundered and cracked. Ampexia and I left Gerty to her song. She slid over the counter, and I vaulted it.
�
��Gotta be back here,” Ampexia said, knocking on the back wall.
I peeked into the office behind the counter. It had its own bathroom door. And the next door down opened into a workshop for shaping wood and metal, with tools that would have been great if I still had a super power. “Not somewhere exotic? Inside a storage bin, or under the floors?”
“That’s too fancy. These people aren’t smugglers, they just have special merchandise for special customers. Not that I have a clue what qualifies someone as an elite farmer.”
The older customer service woman scowled at us. “It’s not about wealth, if you’re wondering. I hate factory farms. The best farmers are the ones with skill and passion.”
Ampexia lifted her goggles to give the woman a sneer. “In California’s agricultural market? Yeah, right.”
They glared death at each other, but any incipient battle was preempted by the other incipient battle.
“AaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAH!” In the distance, a scream dopplered from faintly audible under Gerty’s lyrics to a mighty war cry. I turned around in time to see the superheroine arrive.
She had to be new to this. She was eighteen, tops; scrawny, with so many freckles that it looked more like she had brown skin spotted with white. Actually, that might be it, since her stiff, jutting hair was also brown with white spots. Brown-and-white vertical stripes on a skin-tight spandex bodysuit made her look tall, but Gerty still dwarfed her. This became apparent as the heroine zoomed down an aisle at high speed, vaulted over a pile of debris, and kicked my animatronic sidekick in the face. Repeatedly. This girl had seriously fast legs.
Paying attention to the back wall, I’d tuned out Gerty’s performance. I’d had to. Clapping along and dancing would have interfered with the theft. Now that I was paying attention again, I could see the destruction she’d wreaked, collapsing the shelves in our area and spilling bags everywhere. Cracks lined the floor, and displays farther off had fallen over. A whole lot of people were also standing back at a safe distance to watch her show.
Now we had a new act, with the young superheroine circling Gerty in a passable display of super-speed, dispensing kick after kick that produced thumps and clangs but didn’t budge the goat-bot in the slightest.
Gerty always grinned, but she looked particularly happy and excited as her head turned around and around to follow her attacker. About the fourth time the heroine came around to the front, Gerty’s arms swung up and then out, and she shouted, “Who’s a Gerty Girl?”
“AAAAA!” shouted the lanky heroine, stumbling backwards, falling over, staggering to her feet, weaving around dizzily, and then running away down an aisle. At the very end of it, she turned around and shouted, “I’m the Emu!”
“Emu eggs have blue or green shells, are as big as twenty-four chicken eggs together, and taste like chicken eggs too! Learning is fun! Stay in school!” Gerty announced to the lurking crowd.
“Ah ha! Death from above!” shouted the Emu. In the few seconds while Gerty talked, she’d managed to climb to the top of a row of shelving, and now she streaked down it and leaped from the end, landing on top of Gerty’s shoulders.
A series of furious kicks to Gerty’s face, neck, and jaw later, the novice heroine declared in despair, “Where do you have to kick this thing to hurt it?”
Gerty pondered this for about five seconds. “Let’s sing the Leg Song!” she cried, pumping her arms in and out, and bending her knees to bob up and down.
By now, it was pretty clear the Emu was not sophisticated enough to go after the brain if she couldn’t defeat the brawn. I got back to work. Ampexia had already abandoned the show, looking at a readout on one wrist while working her way down the wall, thumping it with her knuckles every couple of yards.
She was on her fourth thump, tops, when she pointed. “Reinforced wall. It’s a vault or something.”
Nodding, I stepped up to that spot, cupped my hands to my mouth, and shouted, “Gerty Gerty Goat! I hear you have the looooongest legs the farmyard ever did see!”
“I’m a tall drink of water!” she chanted back, not pausing her spasmodically rhythmic kicking. The foot lifted in my direction shot out on a telescoping rod, punched through the wall, and ripped a large section of it open before she pulled it back and returned to her kicking dance.
Myself, not wishing to take an animatronic boot to the head, I teleported onto Gerty’s shoulder to wait out the strike. Precariously balanced on the other shoulder, the Emu let out a shriek as I appeared, and fell off backwards.
That caught Gerty’s attention. As the heroine hit the floor and immediately rebounded to her feet, Gerty asked her, “Are you a tall drink of water, too?” Not content to wait for an answer, a hatch in the goat robot’s chest popped open, and out ratcheted what looked an awful lot like the barrel of a cannon.
“AAAAAA!” shrieked the Emu. Her legs flailed, but it took a second for them to line up to actually go anywhere. That was time enough for a blast of water to drench the young woman.
The Emu had had enough. Eyes whirling, fists pumping, back arched, she ran for it, whipping down the aisle towards the front door like an arrow.
A voice came from Gerty, much more buzzy and synthetic than her usual. “Unhappiness detected. Arming long-range frown-seeking love missile.” The fur carpet, blue smock fabric, and white apron string split on her right shoulder, opening up to reveal the crowded mechanisms inside. Out of that slid a rocket as long as my arm, covered in valentine’s hearts, smiley faces, and ‘I Love You!’ graffiti.
Wise to the better part of valor, I blinked over to the customer service counter to watch. The missile leveled, and Gerty’s uncharacteristic mechanical voice said, “Target locked. Fire.”
It did, the missile streaking off in a blast of smoke after the Emu. She had already reached the front door, but the missile flew faster. Her attempts to weave through the parking lot did her no good, either, as the projectile turned in flight, and… well, she was too far away for me to get a good look. I saw a pink, sparkly puff, heard another panicky shout, and a distant scratchy recorded voice sang, “Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do…”
Hopping off the desk, I joined Ampexia at the entrance to the secret room. “I was expecting more resistance than that.”
She smirked. “Yeah, it’s not like we didn’t stick out like a sore thumb on the drive here. The serious heroes must be busy.”
We stepped through the hole together, and examined the secret vault.
Which, I had to say, did not really deserve the term. Ampexia had been right. This was just a big closet with a reinforced hidden door. On the shelves, with labels hanging from them on strings, were scattered oddball pieces of mad science.
One immediately caught my eye: A metal stick around the length of my forearm, with twistable rings and covered in mysterious etched symbols. It was the telekinesis device Claudia’s mother Irene referred to as her Push Rod.
How had that gotten here? Last I saw it… Actually, I wasn’t sure when I’d last seen it, but it had been in my possession. Did someone steal it? What other of my creations had been taken by tech thieves, without me even noticing? I’d used the Push Rod with a remote controlled robot. Had the robot been taken, too? Or did I build it into something?
Whatever, I would leave it here. It was a wonderfully useful device, but mediocre as a weapon. Let someone with non-combat needs enjoy it. I would play with new toys.
Let’s see, the thing with multiple handles and saw blades on the front looked interesting. I heaved it off its shelf, only to discover it wasn’t as heavy as it looked. ‘Mega-Plow Hoe’, the label said, and it even came with instructions! Yes, I could sure use this. And what was this thing like a gun with a big glass bulb full of paper? ‘Kudzu-Eating Wasp Sprayer. Ship to Carolina Facility.’
Ah. No, that would be left here. There were depths of cruelty too evil for me.
The thing with the silvery, brick-sized sponge with wires sticking out of it, on the other hand, looked great. The label said it was
for highly localized weather control and irrigation. Oh, yes, this would be perfect.
Ampexia barked, “Yes!” and snatched up what looked like a little metal lamp made mostly of wire. More excited than I had seen her before, she held it up to me. “Subsonic insect repellent! I’ve always wanted this thing. Watch this.”
Either she had expected it to be here, or she really had always wanted it, because she had a place ready to fix it into the top of her stereo backpack. She punched some buttons on her gauntlet and crashing death metal boomed out of her backpack. Then she flipped a switch, and the music changed. It was still the same music, but now I could only hear it because it hummed faintly out of the walls and floor.
Clearly, other people could hear the music. The customer service reps we had terrorized yelped. The crowd in the distance let out a series of unhappy shouts. “My head… can’t… so dizzy! Take it away!” whimpered the old woman.
Ampexia, flinched and grimacing despite her cat-eared headphones, turned it off. “Okay, that’s going to take some work, but it will be awesome, especially with robot teammates.”
I’d already gone through most of the room’s inventory. It wasn’t exactly an armory. I did notice a little plastic disk.
“Huh. Is that the sonic liquefier?” I asked out loud.
Ampexia gave me what looked almost like a guilty grin. “That’s how I knew the mad science agricultural tools were getting routed through here. Leave it. I promised the builder it would be used for its actual intended purpose.”
Out in the store, Gerty said, “Who’s your little boy or girl? Is it their birthday?”
We had company.
A superhero strolled down the the bag-strewn corridor towards Gerty. He looked particularly harmless and unassuming, an old man with sagging wrinkles and thick white handlebar mustache that nearly hid his mouth. He wore a jacket too big for his skinny frame, made of something brown and fuzzy. Tweed? Was that tweed? Or mole hair? Fabrics were not exactly my specialty. Barbara would know. His slacks were made of the same stuff, and he walked with a folded umbrella as if it were a cane. His dress shirt was at least gray, but suspenders, tie, and leather shoes added more dull brown to the mix.
You Believe Her Page 14
