The Sidekicks Initiative

by Barry J. Hutchison

  Beside him, Kapitän Nazi’s finger hovered over the trigger of the tennis ball launcher, one eye squinting down the sights. With the other hand, he cranked the machine’s power all the way up to maximum and smirked as it hummed in his grip.

  “Come on, Sam. Don’t disappoint me,” he whispered.

  Down at the far end of the Peril Chamber, Sam sat with his back to another wooden crate, breathing slowly as he tried to compose himself.

  “This is ridiculous,” he muttered. “What’s the point?”

  “Go, Sam!” Anna cheered. “Sam, Sam, he’s our man, if he can’t do it—”

  “Randy can,” Randy concluded. “But, uh, chose not to on this occasion.”

  Sam took in another few breaths. “OK. Just run and dodge. You’ve done this before,” he told himself, trying not to dwell on the fact that the last time was twenty years ago, and he wasn’t as limber as he used to be.

  “Hurry the hell up!” Chuck shouted.

  Sam groaned. “Ah… shit,” he whispered, then he spun onto his knees and leaped out from cover. A tennis ball immediately whistled past his head, a blur of spinning yellow speed.

  Whoa. That would’ve hurt.

  He yelped and ducked as another ball rocketed toward him, then jumped in fright at the loud thwack it made as it slammed into the wall far behind him.

  Frantically, Sam began to zigzag, chanting, “Ohshitohshitohshit,” below his breath. There was another stack of cardboard boxes over on his left. He made for it, only for a spray of tennis balls to tear it to shreds before he got there.

  Sam gave a little cheep of panic that he hoped nobody else had heard, but knew in his heart that they had, then danced to his right as another of the fast-moving projectiles whooshed past him.

  The trash cans were just ahead, but they had been knocked over and scattered, so offered nothing useful in the way of protection.

  Or did they?

  Sam spotted one of the lids lying on the floor ahead, the handle pointing upward. Ducking, he raced for it and emitted a little sob of triumph as he snatched it up.

  He’d barely raised it in front of his face when a ball clanged against it. The impact almost wrenched the lid from his hand, but he kept his grip and pulled it in close to his chest, jamming his other forearm against it to give it some support.

  “Yes!” Anna cheered. “Captain America the shit out of this thing!”

  Sam raced on, only his eyes visible above the top of the trash can lid, only his lower abdomen, groins, legs, and both feet visible below it.

  Damn. Maybe he should’ve grabbed the second lid.

  Another ball hurtled toward him. He deflected it and felt a little flutter of excitement as he charged past Anna and Randy. Anna’s woo bolstered his nerve and he charged onward, barely even bothering to dodge.

  Clang! A ball slammed into the center of the shield. This close, the impact was jarring, and his knuckles went white as he tightened his grip.

  Wham! A shot came low, and Sam barely managed to bring the trash can lid down in time to protect himself.

  BANG! Another ball clipped the edge of the shield, spinning it out of his grip. He scrambled for it, then hissed in pain as another ball hit him in the ribs. A second followed to his thigh. He felt the skin sting and the muscle go dead.

  “Ow. Jesus!” Sam protested, turning his back to protect the parts he cared about most.

  Balls slammed into both kidneys, forcing him to reconsider this tactic. He bent for the shield, but another ball thundered into his ass, sending him stumbling, face-first, to the floor.

  “Stop it!” Sam pleaded, covering his head with his hands and curling into the fetal position. The shape in his brain twisted and screamed. His skin tingled, the hair on his arms standing on end.

  Another ball hit him. And another. And another. That bastard was doing this on purpose.

  Sam’s power surged. He should teach him a lesson. Not just for this, but for everything he’d ever done. It would be easy.

  Too easy.

  Sam raised his hands. The shape in his head fell still.

  “OK. I give up! I give up!” he said.

  A final ball bounced off the side of his head, and then the machine whirred into silence.

  “Well,” said Kapitän Nazi. “That was disappointing.”

  Anna stood up and dusted herself down. “You think you found it disappointing? You weren’t the one getting balls slammed into your face.”

  Randy sniggered.

  “Shut up, Randy. You know what I mean,” Anna sighed.

  Groaning, Sam heaved himself to his feet. Most parts of him stung and those that didn’t, ached. He tried not to show it as Kapitän Nazi and Chuck walked over to join them.

  “What did you learn?” Nazi asked.

  “That you’re an asshole,” said Anna.

  “Already knew that,” Sam added.

  “I learned that these two can’t dodge for shit,” Randy growled.

  Anna scowled at him. “What? You got hit, too!”

  “Or did I?” Randy whispered.

  “Yeah,” said Chuck. “Yeah, you did. A number of times.”

  Randy pulled his cape up over his face. “Or did I?”

  “What was even the point in this?” Sam demanded. “I mean, is there some new tennis-themed supervillain out there we don’t know about? Is that what we’re preparing for here?”

  Kapitän Nazi shook his head. “You know what my old training coach used to say, back in the day?”

  “‘Heil Hitler’?” Sam guessed.

  “Ha. Yes. Well, that, obviously,” Nazi admitted. “But he also told me, ‘If you can dodge a ball, you can dodge anything.’”

  “Oh!” said Anna. “So, he was an idiot or a crazy person? Is that the lesson we’ve learned here?”

  “I thought it was crazy at first, too,” Nazi admitted. “But he had a point. The principle is the same. If you can dodge a ball, you can dodge anything. A car. A knife. A bullet.”

  “A ball,” offered Randy, mostly because he felt like he hadn’t contributed anything in a while.

  Kapitän Nazi side-eyed him for a moment, then shrugged. “Sure. If you can dodge a ball, you can dodge a ball.”

  “Wise words, Randy,” said Anna. “I mean, that’s some Dalai Lama shit right there.”

  “The only difference between a ball and a bullet is how fast you move,” Nazi explained.

  “That’s a pretty big difference,” said Sam. “Such a big difference, in fact, that I’d say this whole exercise was completely pointless.”

  Kapitän Nazi raised an eyebrow. “You would, would you?” He crossed his arms over his broad chest. “Then perhaps you’d prefer something a little more… hands on?”

  Sam flew through the (mercifully open) door, landed heavily on the basketball court floor, then rolled, slid and tumbled all the way into the middle with a series of grunts and oofs.

  “Rule number one,” boomed Kapitän Nazi, stalking onto the court and closing the gap on the fallen sidekick. “Take out your most powerful opponent first. Hit them hard and hit them fast. The reason for this is two-fold.”

  Sam scrambled up onto his knees, only for Nazi to grab him by the hair. With the other hand, the Kapitän caught the front of Sam’s t-shirt. There was a grunt, a jerk, and a sudden sensation of weightlessness as Sam sailed several feet across the court, before smacking unceremoniously into a crash mat.

  “It removes the biggest threat from the battlefield,” said Nazi. “And it gives the less powerful opponents pause to consider if they might be in over their heads.”

  Randy threw himself at the Kapitän, both fists raised above his head, his cape fluttering out behind him.

  “The sensible ones, anyway,” Nazi continued.

  Spinning, he powered a hammer-strike into Randy’s damaged ribs. Randy’s face immediately paled. Whether this was due to the pain of the impact, or nausea brought on by the sudden change in trajectory was impossible to tell.

  His forwar
d leap became a sideways flip. He hit another crash mat as a ball of arms, legs, snot, and tears, then lay there for a moment as fire consumed his insides and the ceiling spiraled around and around above him.

  With Randy out of the way, Kapitän Nazi turned his attention back to Sam. “Rule number two…” he began, curling his fingers into fists as he advanced.

  “I got a rule for you, you Nazi bitch!” cried Anna. Her voice echoed around the court. “Duck!”

  An empty wine bottle whistled through the air and smashed on the ground a good eight or nine feet away on the Kapitän’s left.

  Anna’s arms flopped to her side. “Well… shit,” she said. “That didn’t go according to plan at all.”

  “Why did you get his attention?” Sam wheezed, unsteadily finding his feet. “Why didn’t you just hit him with it?”

  Anna shrugged. “Well, obviously in hindsight…”

  “And why shout ‘duck’?” Randy spat, untangling himself from his cape. “I mean, that’s literally the one thing you didn’t want him to do. Not that it mattered, because you throw like a girl.”

  “Yeah? Well maybe I wasn’t trying to hit him,” said Anna. “Maybe I was just trying to get his attention. Get him, Sam!”

  Sam’s face froze in a sort of wide-eyed rictus of confusion and fear. “What?”

  “Get him, Sam!” Anna repeated. “Use your powers. Take him out!”

  “No, but… I can’t. It’s not that…”

  Anna tutted. “Oh, come on!”

  “You heard her, Sam,” said Nazi, turning to face him. “Show us what you’ve got. Hit me with it.”

  Sam set his jaw and clenched his fists. He couldn’t. It was too dangerous. And yet…

  The Kapitän’s face twisted into a grotesque caricature of a sneer. “Vill zis make it easier?” he screeched, reverting to his old accent. His real accent, Sam was sure. “Vill zis draw you out, you pathetic, vhining American pig?”

  Sam flew at him, roaring, the thing in his head uncoiling. He clenched his jaw, focusing, concentrating hard as he closed the gap on that sneering Nazi bastard, then let fly with a series of punches.

  “Vot is this?” the Kapitän demanded, easily deflecting the flurry of blows. “Vot are you doing?”

  “Stand still, you piece of—”

  The back of an open-hand slap stung Sam’s cheek, staggering him and briefly breaking his concentration.

  “No, no, no,” he whispered, throwing out a leg and driving a kick at Nazi’s stomach.

  The foot missed the stomach, but found the Kapitän’s hip, instead. The villain looked surprised for a moment, but then that leer returned.

  Lunging, Nazi caught Sam by the throat. Sam started to raise his fists, but two quick fingertip strikes from the Kapitän hit the nerve clusters above his armpits, and both arms became the heaviest things in the world.

  “You cannot defeat me in hand to hand combat, Kid Random,” Nazi seethed. Flecks of foam formed at the corners of his mouth as he spoke and those eyes burned into Sam just as they’d done all those years ago. “So, do vot only you can do. Use your power. Unleash it.”

  “RAAAAAAAARGH!”

  Randy’s shoulder slammed into Kapitän Nazi’s lower back. The Kapitän, suffering no obvious ill-effects from this, swung a fist behind him. The blow found Randy’s broken ribs and he dropped to the floor again.

  Randy coughed a few times, gasped like a fish out of water, then noisily introduced Kapitän Nazi’s shoes to the contents of his stomach.

  “Ha!” Randy wheezed, wiping vomit from around his mouth with the edge of his cape. “Check and mate, you villainous fiend!”

  The Kapitän took a couple of steps forward, distancing himself from both Randy and the puddle of puke. Sam’s arms were still too heavy to lift, so he kicked and stomped at Nazi’s shins and feet, but the Kapitän either didn’t feel it or didn’t care.

  “Vot are you vaiting for, Kid Random? Vhy are you holding back?” Nazi hissed. “You alone have ze power to take me out. You alone can stop me!”

  “Wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Anna announced. She thrust both hands toward him. “Anaphylactic Shockwave!”

  The air rippled between them. Kapitän Nazi turned sharply, using the limp Sam as a shield. Sam’s body vibrated as the invisible energy blast hit him.

  “Oh, thor thuck sake,” he spat through his rapidly-fattening lips. “Not thith again.”

  “Sorry, sorry, sorry!” said Anna. “I was trying to hit him!”

  “I guethed,” Sam slurred.

  “To what end?” Nazi sneered. “I vos created to be resistant to illness. I have no allergies.”

  “Oh, well, that’s… disappointing,” said Anna. “Not even to this?”

  She kicked him between the legs with all her might, driving the toe of her trainer right up there. Nazi didn’t flinch.

  “No. Not even to that.”

  “Ah, shit,” Anna sighed. She looked to the door, where Chuck and Mari both stood watching, and made a T shape with her hands. “Can we get a timeout? I feel like he’s just going to kill us otherwise.”

  “Speak for yourself,” wheezed Randy from down at floor level. “I could keep this up all day.”

  Anna peered down at him. “You know you puked blood, right?”

  “Of course I know,” said Randy. He tried to laugh, but it came out as a pained grimace. “It’s all part of the plan. Lull him into a false sense of security, then—BAM!”

  “Hit him with the butterflies?” Anna guessed. “And how do we think that would’ve worked out for you?”

  “Thanks to you, we’ll never know,” Randy growled.

  “Meh. Reckon we can take a fairly educated guess,” Anna replied.

  “Alright, alright,” said Chuck, coming over to join them. His broad shoulders were stooped by the disappointment he was making absolutely no effort to hide. It was painted on his face, as well as in his body language, and his choice of words—“Well, that was a big fucking disappointment!”—really helped hammer it home.

  Kapitän Nazi’s face softened. He released his grip on Sam, then smoothed the front of his t-shirt. “You OK, son?” he asked, his German screech becoming that Mid-Western lilt again. “Sorry if I went a little hard on you there.”

  “Get oth me,” Sam hissed, pulling away. He very deliberately turned away and addressed Chuck. “What wath that? That wathn’t thair. We weren’t ready. You thould have given uth thome thort of warning.”

  Chuck was studying his mouth, trying to decipher what Sam had said. “Jesus. Mari, can you…?”

  “Of course, dear,” said Mari, rumbling over to Sam’s side. He yelped as a needle pricked his skin.

  “Ow! What the hell?”

  “Antihistamine injection,” Chuck explained. “It’ll counter the effects of Allergy Girl’s powers. Although it won’t counter the ass-kicking you all just took.”

  “Just ‘Anna’ is fine,” said Anna. “We don’t need to go the whole superhero name route. Also, I’d like to point out that my ass is completely unkicked. No kicking of my ass has taken place.”

  “Only because you called a timeout,” said Chuck. He rubbed a hand across his sandpaper hair. “This isn’t working.”

  “They’re just getting started,” said Nazi. “It’ll take time.”

  “We don’t have time,” Chuck replied. “People are already asking questions. They’re starting to notice the Justice Platoon isn’t around. Pretty soon, every scumbag with a superpower is going to come crawling out of the woodwork, and we need to be ready for them.”

  “What about the suits you mentioned?” asked Sam. His mouth still tingled, but everything was shrinking back to regular size, and the act of breathing no longer involved forcing air out using all his stomach muscles.

  Chuck made a clicking sound at the side of his mouth, considering this. “The suits were supposed to be a reward. You were supposed to prove yourselves without them first. The plan was that you’d become a team, show your potential, an
d earn them.”

  There was a loud rwaaaarrk noise as Randy threw up again.

  “On the other hand…” Chuck sighed. “Mari, let’s show them the suits.”

  Sam, Anna, and Randy stood before three mannequins, studying the outfits the dummies wore.

  None of them had been sure what to expect, exactly, although Sam had been quietly fearing some dayglo abomination with knee-high boots and underwear that doubled as overwear.

  He was pleasantly surprised to find the outfit was an almost sensible-looking one-piece, with few of the frills and gimmicks he’d been bracing himself for. Even the utility belts around the suits’ waists were borderline discreet.

  Unlike his previous costume, this one looked as if it had been designed for practicality, rather than as a vehicle for ridicule and shame. The garb he’d worn as Kid Random had been a blend of circus clown and Spanish bull-fighter, with just a suggestion of moving target added to help draw both attention and gunfire away from any of the more important hero types.

  There was no cape. He was happy with that. Capes only made sense if you could fly, and even then only if you hadn’t fully mastered turning at high speed. Some people thought they looked cool, despite—Sam looked along the line to Randy—all evidence to the contrary.

  The outfits were all different colors. Sam’s was blue, Anna’s green, and Randy’s a brooding shade of red. They all had a sculpted look to them, suggesting muscles Sam was pretty sure none of them actually had. The closer he looked at his costume’s defined six-pack, the larger he could feel his inferiority complex becoming.

  Anna gave her outfit a poke. “What’s it made of?” she asked. “Is it rubber?”

  “It’s a lab-grown organic biopolymer,” said Chuck. He was standing behind them with Mari, arms folded like he begrudged them every last one of the outfits’ stitches.

  “It feels like rubber,” Anna insisted.

  “Well, it isn’t,” Chuck snapped. “It’s an organic biopolymer.”

  Anna looked back over her shoulder at him, frowning. “Is that better or worse than rubber? I’m worried about thigh rash from chafing. That’s my main concern at the moment. Rubber isn’t breathable, and if we get sweaty…”