It doesn’t knock her loopy as I’d hoped. She hangs on to my neck and wraps her legs around my waist, then squeezes the air out of me. My ribs scream in pain. The woman could crush watermelons between her thighs.
My arms are free, so I throw a series of quick punches at her head. She gets sick of that real fast and rolls us over. She’s on top of me now, which means I am screwed. She drops fists on me like little Ralphie beating on Scut Farkus in A Christmas Story. All I can do is shield my head with my arms and wait it out.
When she stops, I think it’s because she’s gotten bored rather than tired. I peek through my arms to see her sitting on my stomach, huffing and puffing, lip curled in a sneer. She shakes her head and gets off me. I get up, my ribs groaning, and take a minute to get my breath back. Then I dash up to Natalie and lay her out with a massive haymaker.
“What the hell?!” she screeches from the floor.
“What? The fight isn’t over until someone taps out or calls time out,” I say. “That’s your rule.”
The anger drains out of her face. “No, you’re right,” she says, getting back up, “I didn’t call time out.”
Of course, neither did I.
Natalie nails me high in the chest with a big THIS! IS! SPARTA! kick that short-circuits my entire body and drops me on my butt. Unable to speak to call time out, I slap the mat, signaling my surrender.
“That was hot,” Astrid says, but Natalie isn’t listening. She stalks off to the corner of the training room, fists still clenched. “How’re you doing, slugger?”
“I’ll live,” I wheeze. I shake my fist at Natalie in mock outrage. “I’ll get you next time, He-Man.”
“No you won’t,” Natalie says, returning to give me a hand up.
“It could happen.”
“Don’t get me wrong; you’re a good fighter. You’re fast, agile, you hit like a sledgehammer, you’re not afraid to take your lumps, and you can be downright vicious when you want to be, but I have more training and more experience. Unless you dedicate a couple years of your life to studying with Pei Mei or some crap like that, you’re never going to beat me at my own game.”
Man, even her love is double tough. “So how do I beat you?”
“Like I said, you can’t beat me at my own game. That means you have to make it your game.”
“Oh, well, when you put it like that...how do I make it my game?”
Natalie rolls her eyes, which tells me I’m missing something that should be obvious — and I am. “Oh, gee, I don’t know,” she says, “if maybe you had, say, a pair of magic gloves that can pull anything you can think of our of thin air? Those babies are a game-changer. You should put them to use more often.”
“I use them a lot.”
“Really? I didn’t see you use them once when we were putting down that breakout at Byrne,” she says, poking me in the chest for emphasis. “All you did was throw hands. You had a huge advantage and you didn’t use it. You were stupid.”
Ouch. I’m used to Natalie being direct, but she’s never been mean to me before. Whatever’s bothering her, it’s serious.
The training room echoes with a soft but shrill beeping followed by an artificial voice announcing an “Incoming call on priority line. Caller identified as Deuce X. Machine.”
Astrid and Natalie groan, exchanging the sort of looks I see high school girls give each other when discussing boys they don’t like. My name often comes up in such conversations.
The beeping and the announcement repeat. “Shouldn’t you answer that?” I ask.
“I don’t want to answer it,” Natalie says.
“We should answer it,” Astrid says.
“But I don’t want to...” Natalie whines. “Fine, I’ll answer it. Pick up!” she says to the air. A chirping sound follows, and a speaker set into the ceiling crackles. “Speak.”
“That you, Nina?” a man says with a cocky dudebro swagger. I already don’t like this guy. “Hey, how’s it going?”
“It’s going fine, Deuce. What do you want?”
“Hey, I got me a situation out here and I’m looking for someone to watch my back.”
“I’m sure you can handle it yourself.”
“Well, yeah, but I tracked down a couple of escapees from Byrne. I thought maybe the Protectorate would want to get in on it?”
That gets Natalie’s attention. More than two months ago, the King of Pain engineered a mass jailbreak from Byrne Penitentiary, a supermax prison for superhumans, and forty-one prisoners made it past the defenses. Two of them are dead; Sara took out the King of Pain, and Manticore assassinated a heavyweight known as Doctor Skyfall on his way to court. Another dozen or so have been rounded up and thrown back in prison, but more than two dozen are still running around free. Natalie clearly hates this Deuce character, but she’s not going to pass on a chance to bring in two fugitives.
Natalie and Astrid do that thing women do where they talk to each other without saying anything, communicating through facial expressions, hand gestures, and body language.
“Hold on a sec,” Natalie says. She puts Deuce on hold and says to Astrid, “Come with me?”
“Ohhhhh, no,” Astrid laughs, “no way.”
“Come on, don’t do this to me. Sisters before misters.”
That gets a louder laugh. “If that’s your best sales pitch...”
“You’re really going to send me to deal with that idiot by myself?”
“Take Matt with you. Maybe a strong male presence will make him behave.”
Was that a dig? That felt like a dig.
“How about it?” Natalie says. “Up for a little road trip?”
“Only if you let me drive,” I say.
“Sold. Let’s go.”
“Don’t you want to shower first? We’re both pretty gross.”
“That’s the point.”
After Natalie sets up a rendezvous with Deuce, we strip out of our sparring gear. Natalie grabs some equipment we might need from the Protectorate’s armory, and then we head to my car.
“That’s your car?” Natalie says. I will never get tired of that reaction.
We get in. We both slip on sunglasses to guard against the late morning sun. “Hey,” I say. “It’s a hundred and six miles to Chicago, we’ve got a full tank of gas, a half a pack of cigarettes, it’s dark out, and we’re wearing sunglasses.”
She’s not amused. Tough, I’m not moving until she says it.
Natalie snorts and gives me a lopsided smile.
“Hit it,” she says.
3.
Our destination is Springfield, an hour and forty-five minutes west of Kingsport, traffic pending. If traffic on the Mass Turnpike sucks, we’ll get there by Wednesday. Maybe.
“This Deuce guy,” I say. “I kind of remember him from the big powwow we had when the King of Pain rolled into town. What’s his deal?”
“His deal is, he’s a colossal asshat,” Natalie says. “He’s a tank — not invulnerable but he is super-strong, and he can pump himself up to get stronger. The tradeoff is, his intelligence decreases as his physical power increases.”
“The stronger Deuce gets, the dumber he gets.”
“Exactly, and he’s no rocket scientist to begin with. On top of that, he’s a sexist, racist douche.” Natalie growls. “I swear, if he calls me his ‘spicy Mexicali’ one more time...”
“His spicy Mexicali?”
“Yep.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
“Wow. Umm...I assume you’ve informed him you’re Spanish and not Mexican?”
“Only a million times,” Natalie says, her temper simmering. “He refused to believe Barcelona wasn’t the capital city of Mexico until I showed him on Google Maps.”
Now I get why Natalie was so resistant to helping this guy. He sounds like ten pounds of loser crammed into a five-pound sack.
“It’s not too late to turn around and go home,” I say.
Natalie shakes her head. “Und
er any other circumstances I’d be all over that, but if he legitimately tracked down some Byrne escapees,” she says without finishing the thought. “Still smells like one of his suck-up jobs.”
“His what?”
“Oh, Deuce’s grand dream is to join the Protectorate, so every so often he tries to show us what a great team player he is,” Natalie explains. “He’ll call us to ask for a hand on a case, almost always something he’s perfectly capable of handling himself.” She shrugs. “Or not. He’s never actually had a solid solo takedown. All his grabs have been ordinary street criminals, a low-level superhuman here and there, but never anyone major.”
“He’s an opportunist and a wuss is what you’re saying.”
“Let me put it this way: he was the last person to respond to the Byrne riot, and guess who never made it to the big fight with Doctor Skyfall because he conveniently got caught in traffic?”
“I detect a note of skepticism.”
“You detect a whole symphony of skepticism.”
Natalie falls silent after that. She leans against the passenger’s side door, staring out the window at nothing in particular.
“What?” she says.
“What what?”
“You keep looking at me.”
Astrid told me not to say anything.
Hell with it. It’s not like Natalie can wail the crap out of me while I’m driving.
“Astrid said you had a fight with your boyfriend,” I say. Natalie goes back to staring out the window. “Actually, what she said was, you had another fight with your boyfriend.”
“Astrid talks too much.”
“I thought you guys were doing all right.”
“So did I,” she says after another lengthy silence. “We’ve always been solid. We just renewed the lease on our apartment for another year, and we’ve been talking a lot about what happens after college...”
“You mean, like, long-range plans?”
“Yeah,” Natalie says with a small smile that disappears as quickly as it appears.
“What did you fight about?”
She points at her black eye. “This. There was an MMA tournament on campus last night. I entered. I won,” she says as if stating the obvious. “I got a cheesy little trophy and some prize money. I went home, thought maybe I’d treat Derek to dinner out...he took one look at my eye and. He. Lost it. Why am I so obsessed with fighting? I’m going to get seriously hurt if I don’t stop it. Don’t I care about myself? Blah blah blah. Same song and dance.”
“You mean all the other arguments have been about the same thing?” Natalie grunts. “When did this start?”
“Right after that huge knockdown drag-out with Doctor Skyfall. I took a pretty serious pounding and it freaked Derek out big-time. Since then, every time I’ve come home with anything more serious than a paper cut, he blows up.”
She swallows hard before speaking again.
“We’d never fought before that night. Not once. The bruises and the injuries never bothered him before. Hell, when we first started dating, he thought it was awesome having such a badass girlfriend, and now...” Her head thunks against the window. “I’m worried it’s all falling apart.”
She says “worried,” but she sounds scared. It’s a word I’ve never associated with Natalie before.
“Look, I’ve never even been on a date, much less been in a relationship, so I could be way off here,” I say, “but have you ever thought that maybe your boyfriend is worried about you? I mean, you come home all the time looking like raw hamburger...”
“He knows where it’s coming from,” Natalie protests.
“No, he thinks he knows where it’s coming from,” I correct. As far as Derek knows, Natalie Guerrero is a student at a dozen different dojos in and around Boston and competes regularly in mixed martial arts tournaments. He doesn’t know jack about her life as Nina Nitro, the real source of ninety percent of her injuries. “That’s beside the point, which is you’re coming home hurt. That’s all he cares about.”
“Then why does he care so much all of a sudden?” Natalie says. “It never used to be a problem.”
“Yeah, but you weren’t talking about making a life together before.”
I see the light go on in her head. “But now we are, and maybe he’s scared something really bad is going to happen to me before we get a chance to make a life together.”
“Maybe. Probably wouldn’t hurt to talk to him about it. You know, let him know you’re not going anywhere.”
“Yeah.” Natalie turns away for a few minutes, lost in thought. When she turns back, she’s smiling. “Thanks.”
“Sure,” I say.
Then she takes the conversation down a radical new path. “What do you mean, you’ve never been on a date before?”
“I mean I’ve never been on a date before.”
“Never.”
“Nope.”
“Seriously.”
“Why is that so hard to believe?”
“Because you’re a good guy and any girl would be lucky to have you as a boyfriend.”
Scanning for sarcasm. None detected.
Huh. That’s a first.
“You never even asked Sara out?” she asks. I can’t keep myself from fidgeting uncomfortably. “Oh, come on. You never asked her out? Not once?”
My hands tighten on the steering wheel. “I asked.”
“Oh, right. Lesbian,” Natalie says. “Sorry.”
I shrug.
“Hey.” She gives me a friendly punch in the shoulder. “You going to open this baby up or what?”
The turnpike rolls out ahead of me. Traffic is light. I have nearly four hundred horses at my disposal that have never been fully tested. I wrap my hand around the stick shift.
“I feel the need,” I say.
“The need...for speed,” Natalie says.
4.
We rendezvous with Deuce in the far end of a Walmart parking lot. Never let it be said that life as a super-hero is nothing but glitz and glamour.
Deuce is easy to find. He’s six feet-plus of solid bodybuilder muscle, rocks a George Hamilton tan and a spiky buzz cut, and he’s leaning against an old fire engine-red Pontiac Firebird T-top.
“Jeez. Even mid-eighties Schwarzenegger was never this Schwarzenegger,” I say.
“Let’s keep this brief,” Natalie says. “Oh, and FYI, he doesn’t know my real name. I’d like to keep it that way. I don’t need this doofus stalking me on Facebook.”
“Gotcha.”
We get out. Deuce stops ogling my car and starts ogling Nina. Stay classy, Deuce.
“Nina! Babe! How’s my favorite fiery Latina?” he says. “See? I remembered this time.”
“Deuce,” Nina says through her teeth. Deuce moves in for a hug. Nina pivots as she gestures toward me, deftly taking herself out of Deuce’s line of fire. “This is Captain Trenchcoat from the Hero Squad. He’ll be working with us.”
“Hey,” Deuce says to me, giving me a dudebro chin tilt greeting. “Those your wheels?”
“They are,” I say.
“Where’d a kid like you get a sweet machine like this?”
“eBay.”
“Wow. Cool,” Deuce says. Man, dumber than a bag full of hammers. “This thing rocking a Hemi or what?”
“You said you located some of the Byrne fugitives,” Nina says, forcing us back on mission.
“Want to get right down to business, eh? That’s cool. Let’s roll out, we’ll go get ‘em right now.”
“Deuce.” He pauses. Nina takes a breath and addresses Deuce in the tight, measured tone of an irate teacher trying so hard not to lose her temper with an uppity student. “We can’t just go running in blind. You need to brief us on who we’re going after, then we need a strategy for taking them down.” She adds after a moment of thought. “And I need to eat. If I’m going to be throwing down, I need to fuel up.”
“Sounds like a plan. I know a great Mexican place in town,” Deuce says. Nina scowls. “Wait, n
o. You’re Spanish, not Mexican. Um...”
Deuce searches his brain for another, less racist option. It’s a long and ultimately fruitless search.
“He’s trying,” I say to Nina.
“Do not defend him,” Nina growls before letting Deuce off the hook. “A steak house would be fine.”
“Cool,” Deuce says. He climbs into his car by jumping gracelessly through the open window. It’s very Smokey and the Bandit — if the Bandit had been played by a large log instead of Burt Reynolds. The Firebird starts with the shrill squeal of an engine belt on the verge of slipping and a fart of oily smoke from the tailpipe. He grins and flashes us a thumbs-up. I return the gesture.
“This guy’s hilarious,” I say.
“That’s one word for him,” Nina says. “Not the one I’d choose...”
We follow Deuce into the heart of Springfield, to a local steak joint with a cheesy Texas theme. A life-size statue of a bull wearing a Stetson stands out front. We park and head inside, where a waitress in bargain cowboy regalia — a cheap straw cowboy hat, cutoff jeans, and heavily scuffed brown leather boots — leads us to a booth in a back corner, well away from other diners.
“Thanks, honey,” Deuce says to the waitress. “Bring me a Bud, would you? What are you two having?”
“We’re all having Cokes because we are all going to be working soon,” Nina says pointedly.
“Come on, it’s one beer. I barely get buzzed off of one beer.”
“Three Cokes, please,” Nina says to our waitress. After she leaves, Nina fixes Deuce with a glare. “Let’s get something straight. You wanted to bring the Protectorate in on this job? We’re in. That means you conduct yourself like a professional, and professionals do not drink before going on a mission. Got it?”
Deuce holds his hands up. “Okay. Cool. Whatever.”
“Good. Be right back.”
Nina heads out in search of the ladies’ room. Deuce watches her leave and grunts in approval.
“Dat ass,” he says. “Am I right?”
“I wouldn’t know. I’ve never checked Nina’s ass out before.”
Action Figures - Issue Five: Team-Ups Page 4
