Velveteen vs. The Multiverse

by Seanan McGuire

  “Oh, and are you sure that’s because you give a shit about Vel as a person, and not just because you’re still hoping to recruit her to your holiday?”

  “You take that back,” said Jackie, eyes narrowing and lips thinning into a hard line. Any low-flying aircraft that had come upon the two heroines would have turned around on the spot, seeing the look on Jackie’s face. “Vel’s my friend, and I’ve been one hell of a better friend to her than you have. You tried to kill her.”

  “Are you honestly telling me that Santa Claus had no idea that Marketing was playing us?” The question was mild.

  Jackie’s reaction was not. Her expression thawed, becoming almost pained. “We’re not allowed to discuss the details of the Naughty List with people who aren’t on it. If I could have told her…”

  “You wouldn’t have done it, because you wanted to keep her all to yourself. Not the same way I did, maybe—and don’t worry, that crush died a miserable death a long, long time ago—but that’s just details.” Sparkle Bright quirked a very small smile. “So while I have you alone, I’d like to propose a truce. And a deal.”

  “I’m listening,” said Jackie warily.

  “I’m not leaving her again, Jackie. I let Marketing split us up once, and I hated who I was while I was with them. I hated it. I’ve been guilty and alone for my entire adult life, and I am done with that shit. But you really have been a good friend to her, and what happened to us wasn’t your fault. So you don’t try to make her give up on me based on what I did in the past, and I won’t try to make her give up on you based on what you might do in the future. Deal?”

  Jackie took a deep breath before finally nodding. “Deal,” she agreed. “You know, I think I liked you better when you were a malleable little kid.”

  “Funny,” said Sparkle Bright. “Marketing used to say the same thing.” She turned abruptly in the air and flew onward, leaving Jackie behind her.

  The blue girl watched the photon manipulator fly away and sighed. “You’re going to be trouble,” she said to Sparkle Bright’s retreating back. Then she smiled. “I’m good at trouble.”

  A moment later there was only the rapidly-melting ice ramp left to show that anything had ever been in the sky at all.

  If the people of Portland thought it was strange to see a car crammed with superheroes driving through their streets, they didn’t say anything about it. There are some things that are better left unremarked upon. Velveteen did her best to obey traffic laws, although her superhero license did render her exempt from speed limits when in active pursuit of a supervillain or hostile incursion. “Robots trashing downtown” definitely counted as “hostile incursion” in her mind. Still, the people around her weren’t exempt from speed limits, and the last thing she wanted to do was splatter herself, Tag, and Victory Anna across the backside of a bus.

  It didn’t help that Tag had, in fact, allowed Victory Anna to take shotgun, which meant that she was riding in the front passenger seat with her shotgun, or at least its mad science equivalent. As a weapon, it was large enough to verge on ludicrous. It had a backpack power source, which was pinned between Victory Anna’s ankles as she tinkered with something inside the body of the gun, seemingly unconcerned by the fact that she was in a moving vehicle. Every time Velveteen took a corner without slowing down, she was secretly terrified that the entire improbable machine was going to explode.

  “We’re almost there,” said Velveteen, hands clenched whiteknuckled on the wheel. When this is all over, I’m talking to the Governor about a minivan.

  As if she had read Velveteen’s thoughts, Victory Anna, without looking up, said, “If we can get me an old bus or something of the sort, I can build a flying conveyance to make the next situation of this type a trifle easier.”

  “That’d be swell,” said Velveteen, through gritted teeth.

  “We’re going to die,” said Tag conversationally from the back seat. “That’s what I’m taking away from this drive. Oh, that, and we got seriously screwed in the super powers department. Why does super strength need to come with flight? And how the hell does manipulating light keep somebody in the air? I think it’s pretty clear that who can and can’t fly is totally arbitrary, and we shouldn’t be stuck down here with a giant unstable gun in the car, surrounded by people who don’t know how to drive.”

  “Oh, stuff it,” said Victory Anna, not unkindly. “I’ve not blown up anything I didn’t intend to blow up in years. You all worry far too much about a little harmless science.”

  “I’m going to be honest here: I don’t even know where to start pointing out all the things that are wrong with that sentence.”

  “Then it’s a good thing you don’t have to,” said Velveteen, stomping her foot down on the brakes. The car squealed to a stop, accompanied by the smoky smell of burning rubber. Maybe they’d been bending the speed limit a little more than was strictly safe. “We’re here.”

  “You sure?” asked Tag.

  A large chunk of masonry landed on the street in front of their car. Velveteen reached up and adjusted her mask.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I am.”

  The real difficulty with leading an unstoppable robot army into battle is that, at a certain point, your input becomes irrelevant. Dr. Walter Creelman, DDS, sat comfortably on the stoop of what had been (still was, dammit) his dental practice and watched as half his robots went about the business of systematically dismantling the neighborhood. He’d asked them to do it with minimal loss of life, and so far they seemed to be listening. It was very considerate of him, really, no matter how much the people who’d been filed under “acceptable losses” might disagree. Why, when he finished his rampage and presented his (quite reasonable) list of demands to the city, he’d be able to point out a death toll that was still solidly in the double digits. Not something most conquerors were concerned about.

  “I told them not to laugh at me,” he said peacefully, and took a bite of his peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

  On the other side of the chaos, Velveteen and the others were climbing out of the car. Sparkle Bright dropped out of the sky like a glitter-powered comet, pulling up just before she made impact with the pavement. “We’ve got a problem,” she said, without preamble.

  All three earth-bound heroes looked at her like she’d just said something remarkably stupid.

  “I hate to side with the Rainbow Ranger, but she’s right,” said Jackie, spiraling down her artfully-twisted ice ramp and onto the street. “I wouldn’t have spotted it without her.”

  “Spotted what?” demanded Velveteen. “I love the witty banter as much as the next superhero, but people are dying, so speed it the fuck up.”

  “This is only half the robots,” said Sparkle Bright, cutting off Jackie’s doubtless caustic reply. “The other half is moving slow, not breaking anything—and heading for City Hall.”

  Velveteen paused. Then, pulling a handful of little green army men out of her belt, she said, “Tag, go with Sparkle Bright, and stop those robots. Jackie, Victory Anna, you’re with me.” She flung the army men to the ground, and they rushed the nearest robots, already beginning to fire their tiny plastic bullets into the air.

  “On it,” said Sparkle Bright, and grabbed Tag around the waist before he could object. The two rocketed away into the sky, Tag’s fading yelp trailing behind them like an afterthought.

  There was a subsonic whine as Victory Anna powered up her gun. “Now can we fight the army of automatons?” she demanded.

  “Yes,” said Velveteen, “we can. Teddy bears, attack!”

  The teddy bears charged. So did Jackie and Victory Anna. The battle was on.

  * * *

  “Don’t drop me don’t drop me don’t drop me!” chanted Tag, clinging to Sparkle Bright’s hands as she flew him in low over the rooftops. If he looked down, he could see the marching robots. If he looked down, there was a very good chance that he was going to throw up all over the marching robots. He stopped looking down.

  “I
’m going to set you down on that corner,” Sparkle Bright shouted, raising her voice to be heard above the wind that she was generating. “See what you can do to slow them down, and I’ll start blasting from the rear! Maybe we can get them to turn around and go back to the others!”

  “Oh, right, because more robots is exactly what we need!” Still, they were dropping lower, and he appreciated that. He appreciated that a lot. When his feet touched the sidewalk, he grabbed two cans of spray paint from his belt, and stopped being quite so eager to kill his girlfriend. He turned back to Sparkle Bright. “Think you can stop them?”

  She grinned. “I think it’s going to be fun to try!” Then she was launching herself back into the air and flying toward the robots, shooting beams of light from her hands.

  Tag shook his head, muttered, “Photon manipulators,” and got to work spray painting a solid wall on the air.

  Dr. Creelman first realized something was wrong when one of his robots flew backward out of the throng, slamming into the side of a nearby building hard enough to crack its casing. The second sign of trouble was the redhead in the corset and button-up boots who appeared in the opening the flying robot had created and shot it, several times, with what appeared to be the bastard child of a ray gun and a bazooka. Grinning ear to ear, she turned and ran back into the fray while Dr. Creelman still sat, stunned, with a mouthful of peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

  There were more blasting sounds. Dr. Creelman remembered himself and staggered to his feet, swallowing his half-chewed mouthful as he pulled the remote control from his pocket. “YOU FOOLS!” he bellowed. “I TRIED TO MAKE THIS EASY ON YOU, BUT YOU COULDN’T ALLOW THAT! NOW SUFFER THE WRATH OF DOCTOR WALTER CREELMAN, D! D! S!” He flipped the switch that would take the robots from destructive to deadly.

  There was a pause as the instruction was transmitted to the robot army. Then they straightened, growing taller as their joints and pistons realigned, and descended upon the attacking superheroes. Dr. Creelman heard screams and shouts of dismay from the depths of the fray. “Good,” he muttered, sulkily shoving the remote back into his pocket. How dare they? All he was doing was making a statement about economic unfairness and the difficulties of maintaining a foothold as a small business, and they had to go breaking his toys? Well, fine. He’d break them.

  Amidst the crush of robotic bodies, Jackie was forming an ice shield to protect Velveteen, who was on her knees and concentrating as hard as she could. The bunny-eared superheroine’s toys were still fighting, and had even managed to take down a few robots—although Jackie couldn’t really have said how; it didn’t make any sense on the surface of things—but they were getting damaged at a remarkable rate, and Vel wasn’t animating any new ones. “Think you can hurry it up there?”

  “No,” snarled Velveteen. “They have faces, but they’re blurry. I can’t get a lock.”

  “Swell.” Jackie blasted two more robots, this time aiming for the joints in their knees. Frozen robots moved more slowly. She was in favor of things moving slowly, especially when the things in question seemed inclined to kill her.

  Of the three of them, only Victory Anna seemed to be having any fun. She was shooting robots left and right, occasionally grabbing pieces that had fallen off their bodies. “Salvage!” she shouted, following her cry with the sound of her enormous gun being discharged again.

  “Therapy,” muttered Jackie, and kept blasting.

  At the same time on the other side of the city, Sparkle Bright and Tag were experiencing problems of their own. Sparkle Bright was dazzling and frying robots as fast as she could, and Tag’s paint wall was holding, but neither of them could keep it up forever. “Cracks on the left!” shouted Sparkle Bright.

  “I’m on it!” Tag ran for the breaking piece of wall, shaking his can of spray paint as he went. They’d gone through this routine ten times in the past three minutes. The bodies of the fallen robots were creating a barrier of their own, slowing their compatriots enough to make it a little easier to keep things standing. As long as Vel and the others took care of their part, it was all going to be fine. It had to be.

  He uncapped his paint can, beginning to add long red streaks of unbroken brick to the top of the ones that were already there. He was focused enough on his work that he didn’t see the robot closing in.

  Sparkle Bright’s scream could have woken the dead.

  But it didn’t wake Tag.

  “Vel!” This time, Jackie’s shout contained an urgency that was impossible to ignore. Velveteen glanced up to see her blue-skinned friend holding back four robots with a massive ice shield. Jackie cast her a frantic look. “Hurry, or it’s not going to matter if you hurry.”

  Ice had collected on the faceplates of the robots, settling into the grooves and rivets and making the subtle pattern of their “faces” easier for her to see. Mouth, eyes, a smooth glossy surface broken by a thin rivet line for a nose…Velveteen’s eyes widened as it all fell into place. Raising her hands in a summoning gesture, she clapped them together over her head.

  And the robots stopped.

  The sound of Victory Anna shooting continued for a few seconds more before the gadgeteer realized that the battle was effectively over. She came clambering over a fallen robot, holding her gun in one hand and dragging an entire mechanical arm with the other. “What, is that it?” she demanded. “That’s a bit anti-climactic, don’t you think? Nothing exploded!”

  “I don’t know,” said Jackie, gesturing toward the furiously shouting man in the white lab coat. “It looks like he’s about to blow.”

  The three superheroes picked their way across the battleground to Dr. Creelman, the surviving robots following Velveteen like good little toys. “Were these yours?” she asked the red-faced doctor.

  “Are! They are mine!” he shouted, and pulled the remote out of his pocket, mashing several buttons before Victory Anna nimbly plucked it from his fingers. He grabbed for it. She stepped back, and Jackie froze his hands together. He howled.

  “It’s your lot who give innocent gadgeteers a bad name,” said Victory Anna reproachfully, and hit him over the back of the head with the remote.

  Dr. Creelman fell like a sack of potatoes. Velveteen nudged him with her foot. “You think he just got bored?”

  “I think motives are a problem for the police,” said Jackie.

  There was a clattering sound from behind them. They turned, robots and all, to see Sparkle Bright—blood and grease in her golden hair—standing amongst the wreckage, Tag cradled unmoving in her arms. She looked at them with pure desperation. “A…a robot,” she stammered. “He was at the wall, and…oh, God, Vel, I’m so sorry.”

  “Tag?” whispered Velveteen. She took two stumbling steps forward, and then she broke into a run, leaving a stunned-looking Jackie and Victory Anna behind her. “Tag?!”

  “I flew as fast as I could, but…” Sparkle Bright stopped talking and bowed her head, tears leaving rainbow trails down her cheeks.

  Velveteen stopped a few feet away, putting a hand over her mouth. “I don’t…he can’t…Tag. Tag. You can’t be dead, do you hear me? We’re supposed to go out. Just us. Remember? You…you can’t…” She, too, fell silent, and just sobbed.

  Tag opened his eyes.

  “Where am I?” he asked, sounding dazed. Sparkle Bright’s head snapped up. Tag groaned. “And did someone get the number of that bus? That evil robot army bus?” Then he blinked. “Vel? Why are you crying?”

  “Tag!” she leapt forward and slung her arms around him, never minding the fact that he was still being held up by Sparkle Bright. The resulting tangle of limbs nearly toppled over backward, but managed to stabilize, thanks to a few quick glitter-blasts by an utterly confusedlooking Sparks. Vel kept sobbing, while Tag kept demanding to know what was going on.

  Jackie and Victory Anna didn’t move. “Okay, that was…intense,” muttered Jackie.

  “It still is,” said Victory Anna.

  “Haven’t you got eyes?” snarled Dr. Creelman, st
aggering back to his feet. “The boy was—” A blast of ice from Jackie cut him off midsentence.

  “Well,” she said, clapping her hands together. “Who wants to call the police and tell them that the robot rampage is finished, but needs some major cleanup?”

  “You do,” said Victory Anna. “I am going to scavenge the parts necessary to construct a rocket car. Much of this could have been avoided if we’d been able to arrive here sooner.” She turned and scampered off into the wreckage, still dragging the robot arm she had claimed as her own.

  “Coward,” muttered Jackie, and pulled out her phone.

  “You’re sure you’re okay?”

  “Vel, I’m fine. I’ve never felt better.” Tad watched his reflection in the mirror as he spoke into his phone. Everything certainly looked normal. “The paramedics said they couldn’t find anything wrong with me. I’m cleared for duty, ready for action, and about to go to bed.”

  Velma sighed with audible relief. “You scared the crap out of me.”

  “So you’ve said. Fifteen times. Sixteen, now.”

  “I believe in clear communication. Speaking of clear communication…” Her tone changed, turning flirtatious. “I believe I promised you a date? Just you, me, and no supervillains or patrol.”

  “Can you take the time off?”

  “That’s the nice thing about having a team: they’ll cover for us.”

  Tad smiled as he turned away from the mirror. “You know, this permanent team-up thing is sounding better all the time. As is this ‘us’ you speak of. Friday night? You, me, dinner, a movie, and inappropriate displays of public affection during the trailers?”

  “I’m all yours,” said Vel. “I love you.”

  “I know, Vel.” Tad took one last look back at the mirror. “I love you, too.”