“Stacy, be reasonable...”
“What’s this all about?” The Love Goddess cuts to the chase.
Ultraweapon points at me and says, “You’re serious about this clown?”
“Yes. I realize that you’re missing the last three months of memories, but I’m not. Here’s the short version. We broke up. It was mostly your fault. I’ve moved on. Deal with it. The person I’m really disappointed in here is you, Holly. Seriously, what are you thinking?”
I put a few things together and my mouth starts working before I have the full picture.
“It’s Patterson. He’s not going to play nice with the rebuild unless he gets the girl. That’s why I was sent on my merry way. You know what? I just thought of something, how long was it after you two broke up did billionaire boy and his wondersuit go after the Overlord’s base? I'll bet my pardon that Patterson was trying to prove something to Aphrodite.”
Suddenly, I feel like less of an obsessive dickweed. He’s way out of my league when it comes to that. His mask hides his expression, but I know the truth.
Athena says, “It’s nothing of the sort.”
“Sure it isn’t.” I fire back.
Several things happen in the next instant. Stacy turns on Athena and they both start shouting. Ares steps in carrying a pallet of freshly constructed Mindwipers. He sets them down to rubberneck at the blossoming catfight and Ultraweapon grabs one. Time freezes as I shout for Stacy to look out, but I’m too slow.
The aura hits her and fades. Ares grabs Patterson’s wrist, yanks the device out of it, and pins him to the wall.
Stacy looks all around. “What’s going on? Why am I in this getup? Holy shit! What happened to my hair?”
Athena immediately rounds on Ultraweapon. “Patterson! What the hell did you do that for?”
From inside his high-tech mask, he cackles, “If I can’t have her, I’m sure as hell not going to let some cheap knock-off have her! I never lose! Do you hear me?”
I barely hear him; I’m still staring at Aphrodite. She’s not Stacy anymore, or at least my Stacy. I start forward, but Athena, Zeus, and Apollo jump on me to hold me back.
“Let me go!” In close quarters, all his gadgets are practically worthless. I've already learned that lesson.
Ultraweapon taunts me even though he’s still firmly in the War God’s grasp, “Sure let him go. The chump thinks he can take me.”
Athena slaps her hand over my helmet force blaster. “Stringel, let it go! Stand down! Not in here, dammit! Ares, get that piece of shit out of my headquarters. Patterson, you get your slimy ass back to the west coast. You want to play power games with your company? We’ll make sure the press gets wind of your involvement in this whole mess.”
Patterson shakes off the Olympian’s hold and addresses us. “You don’t want to go there, Holly. There might be consequences. Enough! I’m going. I said, I’m going! Stringel, anytime you want to bring that sorry excuse for a suit out my way, I’ll be happy to kick your ass, punk.”
“You’ll never see me coming, bastard.” I hiss.
He walks away laughing. “In your dreams, knock-off.”
They keep holding me until he’s gone. Athena finally says, “We’re going to let you go now. No funny business. No flying off the handle, if you still want that pardon. You get me?”
“I get you, but I want an explanation, bitch.”
She starts to look angry, but then holds up her palms. “Okay, you deserve one. He begged me for another chance with her and we go back a ways.”
“And you didn’t approve of me.”
She doesn’t bother denying it, “That too, but I’d never have backed him if I knew he’d do that to Stacy.”
“Do what to me? Why do I have the feeling I’m missing out on something?” Aphrodite asks and looks at the pallet of high tech weaponry. “What’s with all the Mindwipers? Oh great! I just got wiped didn’t I?”
Athena looks at her and then at me. “Stringel, go get something to eat in the break room. Someone else will cover Richmond. Andy, can you reroute WhirlWendy? I’ll bring Stacy up to speed and then come get you. For what it’s worth, I am sorry.”
The bitter anger is replaced with an empty numbness. A few of them have the decency to look ashamed. I walk away with a simple, “Whatever.”
• • •
I eat mechanically, not even bothering to appreciate the pun. Not to anyone’s surprise, Ares, Zeus, Apollo, and Poseidon all seem to have decided to get something to eat at the same time. Isn’t there a world in chaos out there? Holly might be “sorry,” but she obviously doesn’t trust me. I don’t blame her.
Andy was nice enough to contact me via the dispatch system right as I entered the cafeteria. His message was one of simple encouragement, “Should you opt to disassociate yourself with the Olympians, I would be interested in a possible team-up in the future. You have proven to be a valuable ally and, given your current capabilities, I would be reluctant to face you as an enemy on the battlefield.”
Andy is a stand-up kind of ... guy, so I told him I’d be interested as well. We’re part of the ever-shrinking club that knows the whole story. Suddenly, that seems more important than ever.
Forty-five minutes pass and Aphrodite, not Athena, walks in. She dismisses the rest of the Olympians and approaches. “Hi. Mind if I sit down?”
“It’s your base. I’m just ... well I don’t know what I’m doing.”
She smiles saying, “They’ve got someone to do that thing with the chair for the next few hours, so I’ve got a little time. I hear we were an item?”
“Yeah.”
“How long?”
“Only a few days.”
“Really, but you were ready to go toe to toe with Ultraweapon over me? Must’ve been intense.”
Unable to meet her eyes, I turn away and say, “It was for me.”
“I believe you. You’re not the kind of guy that I usually go for, but maybe that’s the point. Holly says that you’re responsible for my haircut.”
Letting out a hollow laugh, I shrug and say, “While you were detoxing from these bugs, I kept you prisoner. You weren’t terribly thrilled about it. I ended up putting a helmet on you to keep you from firing your psi-bolts. Unfortunately, your braids wouldn’t fit. You salvaged it after you got clean, but were still kind of angry with me for a few weeks.”
“I’ll bet I was. I also heard that you’re the reason the world got saved in the first place.”
I shake my head, trying to look anywhere but at her. “Well, if you can call around-the-clock riots, looting, and civilization on the brink being saved. It’s a mess out there.”
“So, what do you want to do, Cal? Are you going to keep working to get your pardon, or are you going to hightail it out of here after we finish eating?”
“I promised you I’d hang around and try to make an honest go of it. You may not remember, but I do.”
“Odds are, I probably will remember,” she says and pats the hand I’d removed the gauntlet from.
“Come again?”
“I’ve been hit by a Mindwiper before. For someone who isn’t a powerful psychic, the memories would be gone for good, but fortunately, I am a powerful psychic.”
“What does that mean?” I ask getting my hopes up.
She wrinkles her nose and replies, “Last time, they started coming back first in my dreams … bits and pieces at first. Eventually, they reassembled themselves into memories.”
“How long did it take?”
“A few months. It might take less this time, especially since I’ve been exposed to it before.”
“You’ve got some footage in your armor’s hard drive. That might help you remember sooner,” I offer trying not to sound downtrodden.
“I saw that in my room. Your handiwork? I’d assumed it was Lazarus.”
“You assumed a lot of things about him. Even if you don’t remember anything about us, don’t trust him. He’s no good for you.”
She ope
ns her mouth and I expect to hear the Ultraweapon fangirl drivel she spouted when I first captured her. “From my recollection, we just broke up and I was pretty happy about it. It was getting to the point where I was just some kind of trophy to him. Plus, he just Mindwiped me. I’m unlikely to forget that anytime soon.”
“Unless he does it again,” I say.
“Nah, those things can’t go back any further than three months and the brain creates a resistance to them that gives an immunity for the next year or so.”
“Really?” I say, already trying to figure out how to make myself immune to it when I’m outside my armor. If I modify one to just whack a couple of hours, but still generate the immunity, that could work. I’d need to analyze the beams wavelength and frequency first and then see how it could be jammed.
“You still here, Mechani-Cal? You looked like you were drifting.”
Hearing her call me that is just wrong. “Just thinking of a way to prevent that from happening to me. Just call me Cal, please. So, you want me to give you the rundown on how to work your armor?”
“Did I really want to keep it?”
“You were able to fight Athena and Hera to a standstill in it.”
“Really?” she says with a gleam in her eye.
My helmet is sitting on the table. I flip the faceplate up, call up the archived video of the battle in Missouri, and turn it around so she can see. She watches with considerable interest and smiles at the end. “I’d never thought of getting my own set of armor. I guess I will need that refresher course.”
I reach out with my one bare hand and cover hers. She hesitates, but doesn’t pull away. “You told me once that you felt like one of the weaker Olympians. You’re not. Don’t ever sell yourself short, Stacy. I didn’t really save the world. I just put the pieces in place so you could.”
The heroine tilts her head and stares at me until I ask her, “What?”
“Outside of the Olympians, everyone always calls me Aphrodite, even Lazarus. You just called me Stacy.”
“You’ll probably remember why. It started because you were strung out and not behaving like a hero. I called you Aphrodite when you turned yourself around, but mostly in the field when we were on a mission. Around my hideout, you didn’t seem to mind Stacy. Do you want me to call you Aphrodite?”
“No, it doesn’t sound right coming from you, but that tells me how close we were.”
“I hope that’s a good thing,” I say.
“It is,” her tone is reassuring. “I have a small confession to make. Holly was going to come out here and let you down easy and send you down south. She told me that I shouldn’t bother and that you were just in it for the money.”
“Yeah, that sounds like her. So, why didn’t she?”
“Andydroid interrupted with an emergency that required her presence. After she left, Andy admitted it was a ruse and showed me the video of us in the trophy room during the big battle and then right before I got zapped by Ultraweapon. I got a few things out of it.”
“You did?” I ask and decide that my new best friend is Andydroid.
“Well, the first was I obviously wanted to be your girlfriend and the look on your face was priceless. I had a similar look on my face when I came back in from the President’s speech. I was really happy to see you.”
Swallowing hard, I say, “You’re pretty observant. What was the other?”
“If you were only in it for the money, you wouldn’t have run back outside and fought that berserk mob of heroes and villains … and by fighting, I mean you did some serious damage. I thought Holly, was just being silly when she told the others to come in here and make sure you didn’t throw a super-tantrum, but after seeing that video and the one you just showed me of the two of us fighting together, I can see why.”
“I guess I finally made it off the D-List,” I joke, feeling a bit self-conscious.
She gives me an “oh please” look and continues, “Andy said that I was more confident around you and based on what I’ve seen so far, I believe him. I may not know the first thing about you, but I know you were important to me.”
“I want to believe you,” I say.
She shakes her head and replies, “My movies bombed. I was never that good of an actress.”
“We actually joked about that and agreed that you weren’t all that bad. Everyone stopped going when they figured out that you were never going to show any skin.”
“Oh really?”
“Really. So, are you sure you want to keep me around? Other than Andy, you’re not going to find too many people that approve.”
“Yeah. It looks like I’m stuck here for the time being and you’re out in the field, but I don’t see why not. Besides, Holly meddles too damn much and she needs an Olympic-sized ass chewing. Remember in the video when I said you need to make more of an effort to get along with her? Well, she’s going to get the same speech. As for the rest of the world, it’s none of their damn business who I date!”
I’m stunned by the fierceness of her tone. No one has ever stuck up for me like that. Either she really is an incredible actress, or all this means something to her as well.
Seeing that I’m at a loss for words, she continues with a take charge tone to her voice, “So, here’s the bottom line. You’re going to stick around. We’ll take it slow while I get my memories back. Then, we’ll play it by ear and see what happens. Any problems with that?”
“None. Just get a recording of you putting Holly in her place. I’d pay to see that.” We both share a laugh before I continue, “What about Patterson? He’s one breakdown away from going over to the other side.”
“Holly and the others are going to keep a close eye on him. I’m washing my hands of it and he needs to get over me. Either way, he’s their problem and I’m going to use this to get him out of my life for good.”
She’s trading him for me? “Are you sure?” I’m trying not to get my hopes up, but it’s hard. This seems too good to be true.
“Positive. I should have never let him become more than just a friend.” She pauses. “Why do I suddenly have that song running around in my head?”
I can’t help but laugh. “Just a friend, you say? That’s our song.”
“No, I don’t think so. I never liked that song. If we do have a song, it’s definitely not that one.” Despite her protests, she’s relaxing and enjoying herself. It’s a good sign.
“It’s probably the ray affecting your memory. You love the awesomeness that is Biz Markie.”
As we sit there and engage in witty banter, I see where my life is headed, and for the first time I’m more hopeful than bitter. I always thought I was just one unlucky break from being the next Lazarus Patterson.
Well, screw him! He can keep his suit and the teams of engineers that built it. I like mine better. The money? I’ll have enough. Who cares if the rest of the world doesn’t know or even care that I’m the real hero? Stacy does and that’s all I need.
Chapter Six
Riot Duty is Like Going Back to High School
Naturally, by the end of the next week, I’m already rethinking my decision and reconsidering a life of crime. Once again, I’ve found a way to go against the grain. Here I am, trying to get on the “straight and narrow,” and everyone else has turned into a mass of strung out, petty criminals. Finally getting a paycheck is even more ironic because money doesn’t seem to be worth anything right now.
Shaking my head at the foolishness of it all, I turn my attention to the problem in front of me. Riots have turned a good portion of Charlotte, North Carolina into something resembling a third world country and three guesses who they want to lend a hand?
On approach, I notice that what little had been left in the superstore from when the insects had taken over, has been looted and the folks left around are enjoying a good old fashioned four alarm fire. A ring of overturned vehicles blocks the two fire engines that are trying to get close to the Wal-Mart and a ragged line of a hundred or so cops and Na
tional Guardsmen are making a half-assed effort to drive off about five hundred shouting delinquents.
I’m somewhat torn. Drive them off and they’ll simply reform elsewhere and burn some other place to the ground because it doesn’t have any food inside. It almost makes me miss the bugs … almost. When the hive mind was in charge, trucks just dumped grain and other food at places where the “drones” were working and that was that.
Take away the mind controlling part and people weren’t so inclined to put in a hard day’s work and the infrastructure of the country collapses like a house of cards. The mass of sheep out there want to be able to go to the drive thru or have that pizza delivered. Unfortunately, gas is being hoarded. Fuel is being hoarded. Hell, I’m sure toilet paper is being hoarded and as a result hardly anything is making it into the major cities. Anything that does usually is ambushed at the city limits by these “checkpoints” that are popping up.
To the survivalist whack jobs out there, this must seem like a wet dream come true. Then again, I have a secret base with a large freezer filled to the brim with frozen waffles, shelves stocked with toilet paper, and other things. So what exactly does that make me?
Hovering over the crowd, I toggle my external speakers and pull up an audio clip of the same spiel I’d given a hundred different mobs in a hundred different cities. “Please cease and desist. Return to your homes. Follow the instructions of your local authorities for the duration of the crisis.”
That gets the “boos” going and my threat assessment software begins tracking all the projectiles incoming. Mostly it’s just empty glass bottles and garbage, so I sit there and take it and let the pissed off mob expend a little energy.
I’m only carrying a twelve round magazine of tear gas grenades and the day just started. It’s going to be a long one. Resisting the urge to just “gas and go,” I catch one of the liquor bottles and toss it into the air. My helmet mounted force blaster tracks the target and I vaporize it just as the bottle reaches its apex.
I cut off the looping audio file and look back down at the crowd. “Alright! Now I have your attention, let’s try this again. Go home. Do you really think burning down a Wally World is going to make things better? When they finally do get the food moving across the highways again, how does this help?”
Confessions of a D-List Supervillain Page 8
