Please Don't Tell My Parents I Have A Nemesis

by Richard Roberts

  My heart hurt with relief when Remmy gave in to hunger, grabbing the bags. I passed her a giant sized cup of cola, making sure to set it on the floor so she didn’t have to touch me.

  The tiny, super powered twelve-year-old stuffed her mouth full of fries, took a swallow of cola after she downed those, and barked, “Don’t you dare think that Mr. Gobbledonk isn’t trying to take care of me. I don’t let him.”

  Wow. ‘Gobbledonk’. With a name like that, ‘Air Conditioner Man’ must have seemed like an improvement. He would never hear a teasing word from me, in person or professionally. His kindness to Remmy earned that.

  I didn’t comment on the name, or how he took care of her. I didn’t comment on anything. I sat as still as I could, letting Remmy eat. If everything else tonight came crashing down around me, I had this to hold onto.

  After she finished the first order―I’d bought four, just in case―Remmy stopped, giving me another abrupt and accusing stare. “You stole this.”

  Despite the seriousness of the situation, I let out a little snort. “No, I paid for it. The expression on the guy’s face at the drive-through window was pretty funny, serving me in costume, with a ghost and Vera behind me. Besides, what kind of supervillain would be so petty as to steal fast food? Although I guess somebody would. I’ve met every kind of person imaginable in this job.”

  Remmy ripped off a chunk of fish, chewed it ferociously, and swallowed with obviously ecstatic satisfaction. She sounded a little faint. “This is the best-tasting thing I’ve eaten since I came to Earth.”

  “I remembered Jupiter food. Fish and potatoes seemed like the closest thing to what you’re used to.”

  “Stop pretending you care how I feel!” she screamed, rolling to her knees.

  My mouth opened to argue, but… no. Don’t argue, Penny. Don’t disrespect her feelings that way. She’s hurting too much. Only a bad friend would try to diminish it.

  So I looked down at the floor, and said quietly, “How did I hurt you so badly?”

  Remmy crawled a couple of steps closer, waving one skinny arm. “How? You went through my home like a wrecking ball. First you said you were a supervillain, then you claimed it was a joke, then you hurt everyone and destroyed everything you touched, like a villain does!”

  Bite down, Penny. No excuses. This isn’t about defending yourself. Besides…

  “This is more than what Remmy the hero is mad about. How did I hurt Remmy the person?”

  She sat back down. Her eyes got really wide. Bare fingers gripped the floor until they bent in funny directions and turned white. The words came out haltingly, in bursts and increasingly hoarse. “You were―the first person to ever respect me. Calvin and Thompson patted me on the head like a baby. The automatons gave me bad grades and the other kids made fun of me because my power doesn’t work like theirs. You treated me like an equal. You gave me a chance to do great things…”

  Her lips curled back, baring her teeth. Elbows bent as she hunched forward, snarling in pain and anger, “―and then every time I did something amazing, you did something bigger. Every. Single. Time. You got all the praise, all the respect, and I was still the kid who could only kludge stuff together.”

  What? No. Sure, Claire had said Remmy was jealous, but Remmy had as much to do with fixing Europa station as I did, or more. She’d made the puppeteer destroying crystal actually useful. She’d rewired the walker I used to do my whole supervillain parade. Her power was amazing. Yes, the kids with the ‘mechanic’ power had flocked to me. The best part of being a supervillain was showing off―

  Oh, no.

  It was my turn to stare, big-eyed. “You’re right. I was having so much fun being the center of attention, I let everyone snub you. I didn’t even notice, and that makes it worse. I’m sorry, Remmy. I’m so sorry.”

  Tears shone in Remmy’s eyes, then ran down her cheeks. Her grimace of fury turned into misery. She sniffed, then sobbed. “I thought you were going to be the best friend I ever had, Penny. Then you kicked me into the corner like everyone else does.”

  My cheeks stung. Drops fell on my hands. Remmy wasn’t the only one crying, and my voice rasped in my ears. “Meeting you was like finding out I have a sister who lives in space. I like you so much, Remmy, but I treated you horribly.”

  We hugged. I didn’t know who started it. We both fell forward and grabbed each other, holding on tight. She was strong, crazy strong for someone so tiny, but the pain made me want to hug her longer.

  Between sobs, she whispered into my ear, “Calvin was sick and confused for months after you abandoned me. I had to take care of him, and scare people into making Europa and Io livable, and now Thompson treats me like he does Calvin.”

  She coughed. This time she did hack, jerking out of my grasp as the cough went on and on.

  When it let up, she said, “My lungs are a little weak on Earth. The air isn’t the same.”

  I took her hand in both of mine, and squeezed it. “You’re sick. I could get away with visiting you, because the Jupiter colonies are a closed community. Earth is full of diseases your body’s never heard of.”

  “It’s not a big deal.”

  Letting go of her hand, I grabbed her shoulders instead, pulling her into another tight hug. “It probably isn’t, but I care, Remmy. I couldn’t get along on Jupiter without a local to take care of me. Trying to go it alone on Earth must be tearing you apart.”

  She sniffled. “An Earth hero works here. He’s retired from that, and now he uses his powers to take care of exhibits. His name is Gobbledonk. He keeps trying to help me, but I’m a hero too, and a hero has to stand up to her fears, and this planet terrifies me.”

  She broke down sobbing again, and I held her, rocking gently. When Remmy’s whimpers got quiet, I said, “Please let us help you more, Remmy. This is too much for any hero. I’ll help any way I can. There’s no way I can ever make up for how I betrayed you, but I’d like to try.”

  Remmy shook her head, burrowing her nose into my shoulder. “I don’t know. Maybe this talk is what I wanted. Maybe I should go home.”

  “I bet they could use a real hero, who has power and cares about everyone.”

  Her fists squeezed the back of my coat, bunching the fabric up. Her voice came out thin and timid, barely above a whisper. “I was scared when you left. You ran off and made me take care of Jupiter and all the colonies by myself, but I did it.”

  “It doesn’t excuse anything, but I knew you could. When I left Kalyke, I remember thinking about how with you as a hero, everyone was in good hands,” I whispered back.

  Something changed. Remmy stopped crying, and clung to me in silence.

  After too short a time, a wolf-whistle sounded outside. My ring tone for Ray. I’d left my phone in one of my belt pouches.

  Remmy caught me looking back, and let go. When I turned around, she gave me a weak smile. “It’s fine. I want to eat. Thank you for the food.”

  If there was something I was not going to argue against, it was Remmy eating. I lumbered back through the entrance tunnel, and pulled my phone out of my belongings. It was still ringing. Ray must really want my attention.

  Clicking the button, I pinned the phone between my head and shoulder so I could also put my Machine back on. “I’m okay. I got to apologize. If my parents freak, I’ll just have to handle it.”

  Bravo, Penny. That sounded so steady even Ray wouldn’t be able to spot the shock of fear that ran through me when I said it.

  “I’m glad you fixed things up, but it’s not that. Claire’s mom got the case open, and Claire and I took the soul sucker back to your lair. Someone broke in.”

  That made me jerk. “They what? Although… I guess… if we can do it, other people can. It’s not like we put up any defenses. I hope they didn’t steal my new building machines, but if they did, I guess we’ll sort it out later.”

  “They stole the jade statue.”

  Tesla’s Incandescent Accident. “That thing is dangerous.”
r />   Ray understood that all too well, and his answer came flat and even. “There’s a body left behind. Not a person, more like a puppet, but dead. And burn marks. Whoever it was stole the statue, the book, and the candle.”

  I sat back on my butt, hard. “Two of those are deadly, and the third―”

  “―is probably deadly, but we don’t know how,” finished Ray.

  “There’s no telling what could happen if we even wait until tomorrow. Do you think we can follow the thief?”

  “Whoever did this was so clumsy Claire and I traced their trail through our base. They came in by the front door, but escaped into the Undercity.”

  My lips pursed. “Easier than following them on the surface. No conflicting trails.”

  “That’s what I thought,” said Ray.

  “We follow this now. I’ll be there as soon as I can,” I said, and hung up. At least I could take the train back up to Union Station, and then the subway to Hollywood.

  From the back of the room, Remmy swallowed a mouthful of cola and said, “I’ll come with you.”

  Scooping up my teleport rings, I began rearming myself. Summoning as much authority as I could, I said, “No. You are going to finish eating. Then you’ll see if Mr. Gobbledonk will help you get a bath and a real bed to sleep in. Then you’re going home. I want to spend time with you as a sister, and show you how great Earth can be, but being here is killing you.”

  The team leader voice must have worked. Remmy didn’t argue, she just went back to eating.

  Brace yourself, Penny. That statue has to be reclaimed before it hurts someone. You won’t get home until well after dark, and Mom and Dad are going to have twelve fits.

  …but Remmy doesn’t hate you anymore.

  he Mystic Elevator deposited me in the lobby of my base and I let out a sigh of relief. Okay, first item on the checklist: The entrance hadn’t been busted open, which would have rendered the whole place useless to me.

  As for the main room itself…

  “AAA! You poor baby, are you alright?” I yelled, running over and scooping up my mannequin, where it had been knocked against the wall.

  Behind me, Claire said, “Yes, I’m fine.”

  Ray matched Claire’s dry tone. “New theory: She’s hidden her soul in the dummy so she can never die.”

  Oh, please. I ran past them because they hadn’t been here during the break-in to begin with. Besides… “I have plans for this darling. You don’t even know.” I’d stripped my plastic (or ceramic?) double bare to go adventuring, so a quick look-over revealed no cracks, chips, or dents. Another disaster averted!

  Claire let out a squeal. “Vera! Apparition! You came, too!”

  Immune to elevator magic gravity distortion transport fields, my guests had taken a bit longer to follow me down the shaft.

  “How did things go with Remmy?” Ray asked, exhibiting the finer priorities that made me choose him as my romantic conquest.

  “We made up. I didn’t realize how left out and dismissed she is, and how I made that worse. I should have. It was all there in front of me.” Talking about it exhausted me, and I had a long way to go tonight.

  “I told you. Jealous,” said Claire, suddenly neutral.

  My hands waved feebly. “Yes, but… nuclear level, and a lot of it my fault.”

  “You said that’s taken care of, so we’d better show you the damage.” Ray stepped into one of the main hall’s exits.

  I grimaced. Then I took the gas mask part of my helmet off and grimaced again. “You make that sound bad.”

  Claire chimed in, “I’m taking his strategy. You can decide for yourself.”

  Only one thing to say to that. “Lead on, my hounds of darkness.”

  We headed for the fake prison of my fake mystical dungeon base. Along the way, I looked into some of my workrooms, where I’d stored the manufacturing machines other villains gave me.

  Everything had been trashed, turned over and scattered about. Nothing looked obviously broken, at least.

  “Were we invaded by an army?” I peered at scratch marks on the walls. And I hadn’t realized how much my friends and I stuck to the center of corridors until I saw scuff marks scattered all around the floor.

  “Hold onto that question,” said Ray. A minute later, he stepped out of the way and let me examine what was left of my prison.

  The fundamental damage wasn’t bad. The cell doors and brick walls remained stable. The pedestal where I’d kept my cursed jade statue lay knocked over on the floor, but that meant nothing. The worst damage by far was just what had been stolen―the statue, the cursed book, and eternal candle.

  Where in Nikola Tesla’s Missing Middle Name did all these stains come from? Burn marks and wet discolorations marked the walls, floor, and even ceiling. Many of them had an elongated, ‘body part’ look.

  What really had a ‘body part’ look was the dead body lying in the corner where I’d originally found a fake skeleton.

  Even at a glance, I knew that thing had never been a living human being.

  What a mess. The gray, lumpy, mannequin-like body had partly collapsed into itself. Thin smoke seeped around the base where it slumped on the floor. As I watched, an already crudely detailed head deflated, releasing a damp patch and some more smoke.

  I’d seen one of these before. Several of these before. Granted, they’d been intact, but this is how I would have imagined them in ‘death.’

  “Mammon did this.”

  Claire and Ray gaped. They goggled. They boggled. Their jaws hung open, and they stared at me like I’d detached my head.

  Hee hee hee. Score one for the girl who doesn’t spend her spare time reading supervillain compendiums.

  Defying the wounded stares of my friends who expected to have to tell me all this, I rattled on, “Retired supervillain. Makes these clunky minion things. Retired to become a televangelist, but can’t get over every little disappointment that ever happened to him. Kind of a weenie.”

  That summed up everything I knew about Mammon besides the obvious ‘Dreamed of getting his hands on a source of Horrible Outer Darkness power.’ Stated with nonchalant confidence, maybe Ray and Claire wouldn’t catch on.

  I sold it. Ray pointed down the hall. “They left this way.”

  Hmmm? A twist. Mammon and his mass produced goons didn’t exit the way they came in. The trail of clumsy feet kept going instead of ending at the plundered prison.

  Said trail got a lot easier to follow from here, as well. I felt rather cross at all the divots in the floor and scrapes on the walls, like someone kept dropping heavy things. That would be exactly what happened, thanks to the corrupting influence of my jade statue. Mammon’s pack of shambling morons must have turned into a clown show as they tried to handle it. Would he even have figured out why?

  Naah. He was too big a weenie to do more than complain.

  The new trail led steadily down, farther from any of the entrances I knew about. Criminy, was Mammon holed up down here somewhere?

  When we reached the spiral stair, I knew he hadn’t. No, his trail led all the way to the lowest point of my base. The cistern room.

  The grating on the floor sat propped against the water basin, ripped free from the hole it used to block. A lot of scrapes around the edge of the hole suggested his clown brigade had trouble fitting large pieces of equipment through.

  They’d really made a mess of the room at the bottom of the stairs. Plastic bones lay in heaps around the meandering paths taken by different feet, instead of piled up sort-of-convincingly at the center. Vera picked up a fake femur, her crystal ball head shining with light so that she and Apparition could examine it.

  Wistfully, quietly, Apparition giggled. “What a flamboyant lair. Did you build it?”

  I left out a pffft sound. “I wish. How could I tunnel out all this dirt and rock?”

  “The Machine,” answered Ray.

  I rolled my eyes. “I still couldn’t come up with stuff like the elevator and magic lights.”<
br />
  “With your power? I bet you could,” said Claire.

  Raising my voice to ‘put upon’ volume, I growled, “Okay, fine. Someone found it for us, but I’ll keep all that in mind for next time.”

  Everyone else giggled, while I struggled to look aggrieved.

  We got back to business. The bricked up doorway, to no one’s surprise, had been busted open. It opened onto a crude stone tunnel, about the size of a normal hallway, but with jagged and uneven… everything, really. Walls, floors, twisty shape, you name it. Also, tons of dust, which made for an even more clear and convenient trail to follow than in my base. Of course, right now the trail had only one direction to go―forward.

  “Looks like a salt mine,” Ray mused.

  “By the ocean?” Claire tilted her head sharply to give him a skeptical stare.

  “That’s where you get the most salt.”

  I gave him that look. “But you don’t have to dig for it.”

  He grinned.

  Claire, closer to the door than me, pointed through it. “I guess that was one way to get through.”

  Trudging over the bones, I followed her gaze, and trudged a little more to examine the body.

  It was a body, another fallen minion. Unlike the last one, it didn’t look like a mannequin, more like a totem pole, rigid and straight, arms tucked in, the whole thing fused into one shape. A shape with a flattened, even crumpled head.

  Ray nudged the feet with his shoe. Come to think of it, the minion’s feet curved weirdly, coming to points like a crowbar.

  His smile curled up wryly on one side. “Mammon made his own battering ram. That’s a villain who’s had time to learn how to exploit his power.”

  Stopping beyond the doorway, Ray turned around to face us. “Before we go farther, how are we on light sources?”

  Vera dinged, and glowed brighter. She did make a great light bulb, and much more decorative.

  Ray nodded approval. “If she gets turned off, I can offer this―” He slapped his hands together, activating the energy blast gloves I’d made for him. As he pulled his palms apart, a little orange ball of flame formed in the gap. He was right; it did give off useful amounts of light.