by Alex Gabriel
Pat shouldered open the City Hall’s front door to a rush of air burnt and bitter with laser residue, strident shouts of command, and a wave of minions rushing across the market square from the right. Oh, right, the fight between the superheroes and Hell and her troops. It hadn’t slipped Pat’s mind or anything, at least not exactly. He’d just… lost track of this aspect of things a little in all the excitement, that was all, and so hadn’t thought to plan for it. Whatever, he’d never claimed to be a tactical genius.
He couldn’t pass as a civilian in these clothes, but everyone was really busy, and nobody appeared to be paying him any particular attention. Maybe, if he hurried down the left side of the elegantly swung staircase leading up to City Hall’s entrance, and then simply slipped unobtrusively around the building’s corner and legged it away from the market square…
Oh fuck, there was Nexus, swooping in like the wrath of a vengeful god with her aircycle’s laser guns glowing. Pat squeaked embarrassingly as he stumbled down the last few steps, hastily ducking out of sight around the corner as planned. Tense seconds passed as he racked his brains trying to come up with a promising course of action if she came after him — but, thank the gods, she didn’t. She’d probably been heading for someone else entirely.
He heaved a sigh of relief and turned, to find himself face to visor with Silver Paladin.
“Uh,” Pat said, weakly.
“You!” hissed Silver Paladin. He sounded stunned, and shocked, and personally betrayed in a way that made no sense unless — but no, Pat was still wearing his minion mask. No way. “What, did you think I wouldn’t recognize you?”
Well, yeah. As a matter of fact, Pat had rather expected that covering his face would go a long way towards disguising his identity. It worked for a bunch of superheroes, didn’t it? Besides which minions were more or less faceless entities, anyway. They weren’t like lieutenants or right hands. They were just bit players, part of the expected landscape, and not generally perceived or treated as individuals.
But of course Silver Paladin didn’t play by the same rules the rest of the world followed. Of course not. Pat would have rolled his eyes, if he hadn’t been so preoccupied. “Kind of, I guess, but that’s not —”
Silver Paladin’s snort was a wonder of derision and contempt. Most of his face was covered by the visor, but the way his mouth thinned into a white, bloodless line made it clear that his initial shock was retreating before rising anger. Fuck it, Pat would have hated this at any time, but now he also quite simply didn’t have the time for it. With every second that passed, Bitterfly was getting further and further away.
“What are you doing, Patrick?” It was an accusation rather than a question, spat out flat and heavy with no give at all, and suddenly, Pat had had enough.
“What does it look like I’m doing?” he snapped, taking an aggressive step forward. Silver Paladin didn’t retreat a centimeter, but Pat wasn’t in the state of mind to be intimidated. “I’m Sir Toby’s minion, obviously. What’s it to you?”
Silver Paladin’s harsh, gasping inhale sounded like someone had shot him in the gut. “I should have known. You were evil all along. All along, you were —”
Wow, seriously? “Will you quit it with the melodrama? I’m not evil, for fuck’s sake. The minion gig is just a part-time thing, even. Honestly, you hoagies.”
But Silver Paladin wasn’t even listening. “Is this — you’re trying to break me, aren’t you. Of course, you’re trying to humiliate and —”
”For the love of everlasting fuck! Not everything is about you, okay!” If Silver Paladin kept this up, Pat was going to be seriously pissed off. “Me being a minion has nothing to do with you, and I don’t have time to discuss my life choices with you right now. I’m on a super-urgent mission, and that mission has nothing to do with you either, for the record!”
There was a low, humming whine behind them, from the direction of the fighting.
”Fuck me,” said Silver Paladin. Then, he picked Pat up bodily and launched into the air just as a violent explosion went off somewhere in front of City Hall, roaring around the building’s corner in the form of rolling tongues of blue fire, hurtling chunks of masonry and a wave of sheer concussive force that outright flattened several near-by trees, as well as the bicycles chained to them.
Pat caught no more than a glimpse of this, however. By the time the explosion hit, he was already airborne and accelerating, hanging over Silver Paladin’s shoulder like a slab of beef. His belly was folded over the hard and bony part of the man’s shoulder right where Bitterfly had elbowed him in the gut. Fuck, but that hurt. He couldn’t even appreciate the sight of Silver Paladin’s silver-clad ass the way it deserved, which was sad. But, wait a minute, where were they going? And where was —
Pat struggled to force breath into his lungs. “Bitterfly,” he shouted into the wind and the hum of Silver Paladin’s force fields, as loudly as he could. “Where’s Bitterfly! You must have seen her leave, which way did she go? We have to follow her!”
Half a minute later, Silver Paladin had plopped Pat down on the nearest rooftop instead. He didn’t even bother to land properly, just unslung Pat and tossed him down like a sack of grain, clearly planning to head right back to the fight.
What was it with him being dropped on rooftops? But Pat didn’t have time to really notice how high up he was this time. He just lunged forward to entirely fail to grab Silver Paladin (fuck those force fields, seriously). “We have to stop Bitterfly!” he shouted into the man’s face. He was sliding a bit on the tiles now, threatening to lose his balance, but Silver Paladin grabbed him before it could become an issue. “She stole the Crystal of Power, and it’s gonna liquefy her brain if she tries to use it. Sir Toby and the others are trapped inside and Hell has her hands full with Nexus, so it’s up to us! You hoagies are all about saving people, right? Well, do your thing! Help me save Bitterfly!”
Somehow, some way, Pat had said or done the right thing. Nick didn’t fly away, but instead listened to a slightly longer version of this explanation. And then, he curled his upper lip in supreme disgust and hoisted Pat over his shoulder without a word before stepping off the roof.
Chapter Ten
Choose your battles wisely. Cheat whenever necessary.
There had to be a better way of transporting people, seriously. The ‘sack of potatoes’ method got old real quick.What about the bridal carry? Superheroes always used that in the movies, and it looked rather comfy. Or Nick could design some kind of tractor beam to scoop people up in, like a giant soup ladle made of energy. Either would be vastly preferable to Nick’s shoulder digging into Pat’s tender gut while he got a view composed mostly of hazy force fields and silver-booted feet, interspersed with vertiginous flashes of the distant ground, rooftops, and the flashing of laser fire.
Things got slightly more pleasant once Nick had levelled out in the air, which left Pat more or less lying along his back, secured by the warm weight of his arm just below Pat’s butt. Under different circumstances, this might actually have been kind of a turn-on. It was a little bit hot even now, truth be told, even if the close contact with Silver Paladin’s force fields made his eyeballs vibrate.
Pat gasped when Nick banked sharply in the air, losing velocity with a brutal speed that left Pat’s stomach dangling in the vicinity of his toes. For an endless panicked moment, he truly thought he was going to fall. Then, there was a jarring jolt and the blessed sight of pale gray pavement underneath silver boots, and Pat slid inexorably down Nick’s back as the man’s grip on his legs loosened.
He ended up awkwardly crumpled on his back, feeling vaguely like he ought to be indignant about basically being dumped on his head. He couldn’t find the energy for it, though. Dangling head-down in mid-air was not going to become his preferred mode of travel any time soon.
Nick flipped up his visor, frowning at him suspiciously. “You look…”
“Yeah, I’m gorgeous, I know.” Pat sat up carefully, rescuing his m
ask from where it hung limply about his neck and drawing it back up into position. He had an image to uphold here. “Where’s Bitterfly?”
They were in a residential street on the other side of the river; Pat recognized the angle of the low, rolling foothills rising in the background. Nice houses, large well-tended front yards, several gawking kids who’d evidently been playing ball before Silver Paladin landed in their midst…
No Bitterfly.
Pat’s heart sank, and he swallowed against the bile in his throat. “But — no. We have to find her. You saw her fly off in this direction, right? She has to be around somewhere! Think, where can she be going? What’s around here that she might be using as her lair? Come on, we don’t have time, she’s going to try using the Crystal any second and then her brain will, like, trickle out of her ears and —”
“Calm down.” The firm, assured steel of command, the authority sitting so naturally on Nick’s shoulders… Pat calmed down. There was no way not to, with Nick — or rather, Silver Paladin — radiating such absolute confidence. “What manner of artifact is this Crystal of Power?”
“Sir Toby was using it to power his Mind Control Ray.” And okay, Pat probably shouldn’t have said that. He barreled on quickly, hoping to bury his faux pas in an avalanche of other words. “It’s not power as in electricity or magnetic fields or whatever, and not radiation either or Sir Toby would have handled it differently. It is glowy, though, in an eldritch kind of way. I guess it’s an eldritch kind of power.”
“Eldritch,” said Silver Paladin, speaking the word as though it tasted bad in his mouth. “Wonderful.” He pulled out some kind of miniature scanner-type thingie and tapped at it for a minute or so.
One of the kids across the street had just decided she was courageous enough to head over when the scanner beeped. There was a bright, blinking red arrow on the screen, pointing steadily in one direction even when Silver Paladin turned the device.
“Come here, Patrick,” Silver Paladin said impatiently.
Pat came here, making a mental note to tell Sir Toby he definitely needed to find a way to shield the Crystal of Power from Silver Paladin’s pocket tracking device. That had been way too easy.
When they landed this time, Silver Paladin took the trouble to set Pat on his feet. They’d ended up on a broad curved driveway, just inside a lovely set of historical wrought iron gates. Pat recognized the place instantly. No kidding, Bitterfly had taken the Crystal to the Nymph Hotel?
The Nymph was an exclusive riverside resort that had been around for centuries. Pretty much every historical figure ever had dined on its river terrace at one point or another. There was a famous painting of Miracle Woman looking heroically out over the river from the terrace, the wind in her hair; even today, the Nymph was always on the news because Mayor Freeman liked to dine here with important official guests.
It was a gorgeous house — a villa in the millennial style, all stately columns and elegant facade, the typical bowfronts and single castle-like half-tower integrated perfectly to make for an overall impression of airy, light and luxurious elegance that belied the size of the building. Lovely, and well-maintained too, the name of the hotel and the decorative stucco nymphs framing it shining golden and green and blue in the bright winter sun.
Pat would have thought the place was too chintzy for Bitterfly’s taste, but hey, maybe this choice of venue was her idea of conducting a covert undercover operation. He wouldn’t have thought to look for her here, that much was for sure.
“Wait here,” Silver Paladin said tightly, looking up, jaw set and eyes narrowed. The hum of the force fields changed subtly as they prepared to lift him into the air again, and what, no, what the fuck, no way —
Pat reacted quickly, darting around to get up in Silver Paladin’s face before his feet could leave the ground. “Hey, hey! Where are you going? The entrance is right there!”
Silver Paladin’s visor was still up, giving Pat a prime view of the horizontal crease that developed between his brows as he gave Pat a flat stare. “According to my readings, Bitterfly has taken the Crystal of Power to the top floor. The entire top floor is taken up by the penthouse suite, so there’s no risk of bystanders or —”
“So what, you’ll pulverize a wall and burst in force fields blazing, like a one-man hoagie wrecking commando?” Raw anger was beginning to awaken in Pat’s gut. He could just picture it — Silver Paladin blasting in, shedding glass and brick and steel everywhere. But no, no way, Pat would not allow it. Not this time. Not the Nymph. “Do you know how old this villa is? The Nymph is a godsdamned cultural heritage. Not to mention that it’s beautiful. Look at it, for fuck’s sake!”
“Patrick,” said Silver Paladin, coldly. He was using his hoagie command voice again, but Pat wasn’t having that nonsense right now. If anything, it just made him angrier.
“And you’re going to be an asshole and turn this lovely and important building into a pile of rubble because you can’t be asked to use the fucking door like a normal human being? Just because you wear a fancy quantum suit, you think it’s okay — after three hundred years, you think you have the right to casually destroy something wonderful, inestimably valuable and full of history —”
“Patrick!”
Pat stopped, but only briefly, and only because he was out of breath. “Collateral damage my ass, if you hoagies even tried —”
“I will ask hotel management for a key card to Bitterfly’s suite,” Silver Paladin said, very coldly. He looked angry.
Yeah, well. Pat was angry too.
~~~~~
It took Silver Paladin about a minute to have every hotel employee falling over themselves to do the bidding of the great Hero Corps superstar. It was rather disgusting, really, even if in this instance, it was also useful. But still. Did they even know how close they’d come to working in a hotel with no top floor?
Whatever. While the receptionist and the manager were having spontaneous orgasms over the presence of a real live hoagie in their humble hotel, Pat took the stairs up to the top floor, rang the executive suite’s doorbell several dozen times, and then proceeded to pound angrily on Bitterfly’s door.
“Bitterfly,” he shouted through the heavy oak. “Hey, Bitterfly, I know you’re in there! I have to talk to you!”
It was probably just his imagination, because the door was too thick to allow any sound from inside to escape. Even so, Pat thought he could hear something move inside the suite. Another moment, and the intercom crackled to life.
“Who is it?” came Bitterfly’s suspicious voice.
“It’s Patrick — Sir Toby’s minion from earlier. You shoved your elbow in my gut and called me names, remember? Anyway, listen, you can’t use the Crystal! It’s extremely dangerous, it has to be specifically contained or it kills its wielder. You have to return it —”
“As if!” Pat didn’t think it was the intercom that made her laughter sound so deranged. He was impressed despite himself; not every challenger mastered cackling with this kind of skill. “I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to do. Not anymore! Now that the Crystal is in my possession, I finally have the power to do what must be done. I will rise up like a phoenix and throw down everyone who stands in my way! I will save this world from the horrors that indifference and bad taste have wrought. I will —”
Uh-oh, she was going off into a challenger rant. Another moment and she would be completely unstoppable. Pat didn’t have time for a grandiose half-hour speech. Honestly, sometimes challengers were just as annoying and predictable as hoagies. “You will die, that’s what you’ll do! And when you’re dead you’ll do exactly nothing. Nada, zilch! Listen to me, okay. The Crystal was kept in a special box before we put it into the MCR, which kept it safe. And Sir Toby designed a special unit for it inside the MCR, so that it was safe in there.” At least that’s what Pat surmised. “You don’t have anything like that, do you? Nothing to contain the Crystal’s eldritch vibes. You were just going to, I don’t know, pop it in you
r shield generator thingie as though it were a battery and hope for the best! Right?”
Silence — which was basically confirmation. Pat took it as a good sign. At least she was listening. “Sir Toby wasn’t even angry that you’d stolen the Crystal, he was just worried that you’d kill yourself with it. If you return it —”
“Of course he’s saying that!” she shrilled. Her voice stabbed painfully through Pat’s brain, and he backed away several steps from the door before he caught himself. “He wants his Crystal back. There is no lie he would not resort to —”
“Hey!” barked Pat angrily. Where did she get off, saying that kind of thing? “That is not okay. You know very well that Sir Toby is not a liar!”
Her answer was a moment in coming, and sounded almost sullen when it did. “How would I know that? I’ve never met Sir Toby before today. We don’t exactly move in the same circles.”
Not quite an apology, but good enough. The best she could do right now, anyway. Challengers couldn’t apologize in the middle of a scheme; it wasn’t appropriate.
And now Pat had an idea. Bitterfly had sounded bitter just then — more bitter than usual, rather. It must be frustrating to be relegated to the third or fourth tier of challengers, regarded as an unfortunate wannabe who was laughable rather than threatening. Nobody took challengers like her seriously… not their fellow challengers, and not hoagies and the general public, either. She wasn’t remotely in the same class as someone like Sir Toby. Not worthy of associating with him.
Except that that wasn’t actually true anymore, was it? “That energy shield thing you do now is pretty cool,” Pat said truthfully. “That’s new, right? Did you invent it yourself? Because, dude. Wicked.”
Another moment of silence, and then a sniff. “It didn’t work, though.” She sounded caught halfway between belligerence and hesitation.
