The Velvet Marauder

2006-02-03T00:09:00.000-08:00

VM art by Ken Christiansen

August 2004

Exploder ambushes our hero, destroys his car. A team-up with Kestrel. Bitching about public transit and bruises.

September 2004

A business trip with the object of Connor’s affections. New armor. A co-worker goes apeshit. Humiliated by a ninja. Positive media coverage.

October 2004

A huge fight with Yiff, a freak in a bear suit. More positive media coverage. Team-up with Hydrangea to battle zombies and a Tibetan sorcerer. VM finally gets laid.

November 2004

Connor’s brother and fiancé visit. A mugging. Recruited into the mysterious QuantumWorks project at work. A brawl with Jet Pack Mafia. Connor destroys a printer.

December 2004

Connor grows suspicious of weird plants. My bitch, Chad. Kung fu fight with an elf at a holiday gala. VM crushes the Jet Pack Mafia. New glider wings.

January 2005

Team-up with Kestrel and Wombat to battle Baron von Blitzkrieg and his super-blimp. Connor grows suspicious of his new bosses.

February 2005

The perils of super-powered sneezing. The Paracrime Unit hunts VM. Saving an ungrateful old lady from Judo Boys.

March 2005

Connor gets laid, then dissed. A Paracrime dragnet. VM battles his first robot.

April 2005

VM accidentally kills the villain Parka in battle. Hiding in Costa Rica from The Malefactors, Parka’s homies.

May 2005

Silver Striker gives Connor a pep talk. Return from exile. Margo is suspicious of QuantumWorks, wants to meet VM.

June 2005

Margo and VM finally meet. A battle with Green Dragon. Showdown with Connor’s mysterious bosses. All is revealed. Connor skips town yet again.

November 2005

Return from extended road trip. Who the hell is Paleowolf?

Is this the end of The Velvet Marauder?

2005-11-23T12:37:00.000-08:00

Well, yes and no.

Hello everybody, Dave Campbell here, the guy who has been chronicling The Velvet Marauder's adventures for the past year or so. Forgive me for breaking the "fourth wall" and all that, but this seems the appropriate time to break character and speak directly to the big handful of people who regularly read my little narrative blog.

Sadly, I'm putting The Velvet Marauder on hiatus. I know: bummer.

Lately I haven't been able to devote the time and energy into The Velvet Marauder that he/it deserves. There are a number of different forces competing for my attention these days, and it seems that VM always comes up short. I've got a job, a family, baby #2 on the way (Jan 1st!), another blog, and a number of writing projects in various stages of development. It sucks, but I just can't put the time into writing VM like I used to, and I'd rather not do it half-assed. So for now, I have to put the adventures of Connor Mackenzie aside.

Will The Velvet Marauder return? I think so, although perhaps not in blog form, if that makes sense. There are still a number of plot threads that I want to explore. Interbionics, The Malefactors, Margo... there's still a lot of story left and I hope to get to the point where I can continue where I left off.

I want to thank everybody for reading and for commenting - I really appreciate everyone's support and interest. I started The Velvet Marauder back in the summer of 2004 as a writing exercise, a way to get the creative juices flowing and to motivate me to write on a daily basis. I never wrote notes or plotted the story out ahead of time, which was a departure and challenge for me. I just wrote the damn thing and let VM and his world sort of unfold as I went along. The trick (and I'm not sure I was successful all the time) was to make it seem like VM was a natural part of a bigger universe that slowly revealed itself as time went on, and to make seemingly disconnected episodes tie in to a grander plot. At the risk of sounding corny, I learned a lot about the craft of writing and grew as a writer while writing the blog, so I suppose I accomplished what I set out to do.

But now I must set aside The Velvet Marauder and Wombat and Yiff and Dr Quark and Margo and all these characters that I've grown sort of attached to and focus on other stuff. I invite those of you who may not have visited my blog Dave's Long Box to stop by - I'll announce any future projects on DLB, including any VM-related stuff.

Again, I want to thank everybody who has read VM over the past year -- it means a lot to me that people actually dug something that I wrote, and I hope to "see" you all in cyberspace soon.

Do not fear - there is a decent chance that The Velvet Marauder will return, in one form or another...

Thanks and good luck!

-David Campbell

A series of awkward but heartfelt metaphors

2005-11-05T16:46:00.000-08:00

It feels great to go out on patrol again.

I suit up early and hit the town around sunset, when the streets are clogged with buses and cars abandoning the city for the night. The salty November sky is full of the river-rush white noise of traffic.

Sharing the top of a midtown condo with some seagulls, I watch the sun set on Evergreen City. The skyscrapers glow orange in the last rays of daylight. Across The Bay, the twin towers of the half-completed suspension bridge shimmer against the burning Pacific horizon. Behind me, huge pink thunderheads rise above a foundation of smeared grey clouds that cling to the darkening earth. Gulls whirl above the city like white leaves in a fall storm.

And then, the sun slips below the distant sea, and the rich warm colors fade. The city, The Bay, and everything before me turns a steely palette of blues and greys. The towering cumulus clouds glow for a few minutes, and then they too cool and turn blue.

A crescent moon rises in the south as the lights of the city twinkle to life. I turn around on the roof, letting the salty breeze tug at my topcoat. The pulsing red beacons of the radio towers throb like metronomes or lighthouses or something over South Bend.

The gulls scream and cry, then wheel away to wherever seagulls go when it’s dark.

Ahh, my city. Evergreen City.

I feel like beating up some muggers or something.

Back in the E.C.

2005-11-04T15:55:00.000-08:00

Well, that was interesting.

Maybe I’ll get around to chronicling my cross-country adventures and my stay in New Avalon someday – sort of a “Velvet Marauder: The Lost Adventures” type of thing. Suffice to say I had a number of interesting and dangerous misadventures traveling this Great Land of Ours. I learned a few things about myself along the way, as well as crushing cultists, having sex with a mysterious female hitcher, nearly getting turned into a werewolf, battling mutant bikers, and enjoying roadside café food. You know, the usual road trip stuff. It was like one big long episode of BJ and The Bear, only with no chimpanzee.

Now I’m back, and my house smells dusty and stale. Evergreen City looks a little different; the corner store down the street is gone and they’re putting up townhouses in its place, monorail construction is coming along, and they’ve begun building that suspension bridge across the mouth of The Bay. Looks like there’s been a spike in gang activity in Chinatown – Judo Boys versus a new gang. Paracrime bagged another superfreak last month.

So, I’m back, but I have one question:

Who the hell is Paleowolf and what is he doing in my city?

Vaya con dios

2005-06-23T09:44:00.000-07:00

Okay, I’m out of here. I pack up the Saab with clothes and my armor and weaponry (one never knows) and I’m leaving today. I’m going cross-country, baby, driving all the way to New Avalon. No blogging for me for a while; I’m taking a break from that, too.

I settle all my affairs before departure. I hire a landscape service to keep the place looking okay, pay all my bills, call the post office to have them hold my mail, and set the lights on timers.

On my way out of town I stop for a quad soy mocha at Starbucks and, using their wireless internet service thing, I type up a quick email to Margo. In short, I tell her I’m quitting and that I’ve had enough of The Company and am taking a break. Without going into too much detail, I tell her that The Velvet Marauder contacted me and everything’s cool with the QuantumWorks project – they’re not supervillains after all. The Marauder has a mission “out of the country” but he’s assured me not to worry, et cetera.

I feel kind of lame just firing off an email like this – Margo deserves more than just a brush-off. But what can I say without blowing my cover?

Here we go: road trip!

I hate bugs

2005-06-22T14:37:00.000-07:00

I’m writing this on my laptop because I kind of put my fist through my monitor and shattered my computer tower over my knee.

I’ve discovered something about myself: I don’t like the idea of electronic surveillance when it’s directed at me. After demolishing my computer and swearing like a longshoremen with Tourette’s, I scoured every flat surface, every nook, every cranny in the Secret Chamber, muttering to myself the entire time. Not surprisingly, I didn’t find anything. What did I expect? If the Midnight Rambler bugs your pad, you’re never going to find the damn things.

With all the stress and confusion and humiliation and violence of the last week, I think I’m going to respond in the time-honored Connor Mackenzie way to my problems:

Run away!

I’m bailing, going to go stay with my brother in New Avalon. He and Moonbeam just had a kid; I know they’d appreciate somebody to babysit and stuff. Plus, they have that huge guest room downstairs. I’m sure they’ll be happy to see me. Right?

So yeah, I’m going to leave. Travel around for a while, see the country, spend some of the Black Budget. What’s keeping me here? It’s not like I have a job.

God, I can’t stand it here now, in my house. I feel like the Storm Riders are watching me.

I stop writing and flip off the walls, the ceiling, the room. For good measure, I double-flip off every point of the compass, just in case they’re watching.

Fucking Storm Riders.

The Boardroom, Part Two

2005-06-21T23:56:00.000-07:00

(This is Part Two; please read The Boardroom, Part One before you read this. Actually, you should read the entire blog - that's right, the whole damn thing - before you read this)

It’s uncomfortable when people announce their godhood in front of you.

“Well,” I say. “I can sing ‘Stairway to Heaven’ in Pig Latin.”

More silence. Dr. Quark looks at me like I’m a bug.

“He does that a lot, the secrets of the universe speech,” Ted says, referring to Dr. Quark. I’m stunned – did Ted just make a joke?

Quark continues, ignoring Ted. “I have a higher purpose, Mr. Mackenzie, and I’m willing to break a few Earth laws to reach my goal. I would expect you of all people to understand. Your relationship with the police could best be described as adversarial, yet you persist in pursuit of the greater good, breaking the law every night.”

I bite back the obvious comment about how my nocturnal activities haven’t spawned any unstable miniature black holes lately. I don’t want to push my luck.

“My goal is simple: I want to bring dimensional technology to the planet, to humanity, before it’s too late. Think of the possibilities, Mr. Mackenzie. Think of the problems it would solve.”

I smile sourly. “And of course, it’s proprietary technology, right? You’d license it to humanity - but at a price.”

“Yes, we would stand to make a lot of money,” Dr. Quark says in a matter-of-fact way.

“One has to cover one’s costs,” Aaron Clarke says.

Ted Bradbury bristles. “You got something against making money, Mackenzie?”

“Defensive much, Ted?” I say. “Yeah, I have a problem with making money when you’re doing mad scientist shit and accidentally creating black holes just to make a buck. Call me crazy.”

“Let’s move on,” Dr. Quark says flatly to me. “Next question?”

“All right. Are you shutting down QuantumWorks?”

Quark sighs. “Yes. Given the circumstances, we think it’s best to suspend the project until we can figure out what went wrong and how to fix it.”

That’s the answer I was looking for. “Okay then, why did you bring me onboard? You must have known I was The Velvet Marauder – I don’t get why you’d risk having me hanging around.”

Dr. Quark smiles, and there’s actual warmth there for the first time. “To be honest, we were scouting you for a project. We wanted to monitor you up close, see how you reacted.”

“Who’s we? QuantumWorks?”

“The Storm Riders.”

He lets that one sink in for a minute, and then speaks: “We’re interested in expanding our organization by creating a network of auxiliary heroes. It’s similar to Silver Striker’s affiliate program, but instead of a loose network of on-call agents, we want to form a few regional super-teams to support The Storm Rider mission.”

“Like a minor league,” I offer.

“More like a bush league,” Ted says.

I mouth the words “fuck you” to Ted as Dr Quark continues.

“The regional teams would handle terrestrial threats that the Storm Riders might not otherwise have the time to handle. It would be a good opportunity for young heroes to learn tradecraft and get some experience, and provides the Storm Riders with a large pool of potential replacements if one of us is killed or otherwise incapacitated.”

I’m a little insulted that he thinks I need to work on my tradecraft, but I’m flattered that I’m even on the Storm Riders’ radar, to say nothing of actually being a candidate for an auxiliary program. I must rule.

“Why didn’t you just ask me?”

Mr. Black chimes in from the corner of the boardroom. “That’s not how it works.”

Who is this guy? I turn my attention to Mr. Black as he rises from his seat and approaches the table. Big fella. “Okay, so how does it work?”

Mr. Black says, “We place candidates under surveillance so we can get a better idea how they work. We’ve been monitoring you for nine months now.”

“Surveillance?” I ask. I’m starting to get a bad feeling about this. “What kind of surveillance?”

“We bugged your house with KOMA probes and set up micro-cameras in your secret chamber and gym-- ”

“You WHAT?”

Without missing a beat, Mr. Black says, ““We bugged your house with KOMA probes and set up micro-cameras in your secret chamber and gym.”

This is a nightmare. Am I blushing? I must be blushing, because I’m thinking of one night a few weeks back when I was online in the Secret Chamber, looking at pictures of Valkris. Specifically, I was looking at video footage of her famous “wardrobe malfunction” during the battle with those zombie conquistadors. Don’t tell me you haven’t looked that shit up – she’s got to be the most Googled heroine ever. Anyway, I might have, you know, engaged in activity which requires the use of tissue paper that night – and these guys have it on video.

“Oh Christ,” I mutter, hiding my face in my hand.

Mr. Black says, “We also installed GPS tracking devices in your armor, and set up a video feed through your goggles for point of view shots.”

I’m still hung up on the whole masturbation thing, so I’m not sure I heard him right. “You what?”

Patiently, Mr. Black says, ““We also installed GPS tracking devices in your armor, and set up a video feed through your goggles for point of view shots.”

“How the hell did you do that?” I say.

“It was built into the armor.”

But my armor and stuff comes from My Guy -- Wombat referred him to me. Is MY Guy in bed with The Storm Riders? “Wait a second – are you My Guy?” I ask Mr. Black.

“Pardon?”

“My weapons and armor dude.”

Dr. Quark interjects. “Your equipment was all designed by Hephaestus, our weapon smith.”

“You gotta be fucking kidding me.” Hephaestus designed my suit, my Marauderangs? The guy who makes Midnight Rambler’s armor, who designed the Storm Shuttles, who made Sun King’s containment suit, the guy who made the Katana giant robot? “Hephaestus made all my shit?”

“More accurately, Hephaestus’ team of engineers made your shit,” Quark says.

I stand up and walk away from the table, mind racing. This is all happening too quickly, I’m getting flooded here. If I was just a little smarter I could have figured this all out months ago. Steadying myself at the buffet table, I pour myself a mimosa. They’re all looking at me when I turn around. Ted Bradbury has a big smirk on his face. He’s enjoying this, watching me squirm.

“Hang on a second,” I say. “Wombat referred me to My – to Hephaestus.”

“Yes,” Mr. Black says. “Wombat was under consideration for the teams as well. Hephaestus designed his suit and spades.”

“But the KOMA probes – Hephaestus made those, right?” Nods. “But he does work for villains. I fought this ninja once – he was planting KOMA probes--”

“That was me,” Mr. Black says.

“That was you? In the Interbionics Building that one time?”

“That was me.”

“Who are you?”

Mr. Black says, “I’m The Midnight Rambler.”

Any other time this would be a major, mind-blowing revelation, and I’d be awe struck by the presence of the hero who, let’s face it, I’ve idolized for years. Now I’m just numb. Plus, The Midnight Rambler has been privy to some of the most humiliating episodes in my life: the embarrassingly one-sided fight with Ninja Rambler, the varsity football pep talk I gave myself in the bathroom before this meeting, and my pathetic masturbation session inspired by one of his teammates. Oh, and Midnight Rambler probably watched the video of me pissing myself that one night when I was drunk and decided to go on patrol. No, I’m not exactly psyched to finally meet my hero. Not like this.

“Great,” I say gloomily. “You’re The Midnight Rambler.”

“Yes.”

“So you were planting bugs in the Interbionics Building that night and I came along and screwed it up.”

“Not entirely,” he says. “You didn’t find all the bugs; I got the information I needed.”

“So I was right. Interbionics is dirty.”

The Midnight Rambler nods. “They’re in league with The Pomeranian government and have developed some extremely dangerous technology in their lab in eastern Washington.”

“And that robot I fought – the Insekt model. That was a Pomeranian robot that Interbionics was going to use to guard their lab.”

“Yes.”

Then it hits me. “Hey! Hey, you were the waiter at the Interbionics Christmas party, the one that slipped me the note warning me about the champagne!”

“Yes. And I was the one that broke into your house and stole the canister of material you retrieved from Interbionics. It was very helpful, having a sample of that material to analyze.”

“Well, what’s in the canister?”

Mr. Black smiles. “I can’t say unless you’re part of the team.”

“That’s bullshit!” I say, forgetting who I’m talking to. “I risked my ass to get that canister! I saved the fucking day during that Christmas party!”

“Yes. But I’m still not telling you until you’re part of the team. I don’t share intel with outsiders.”

“I can’t believe this,” I say. “You guys spy on me, jerk me around for the better part of a year, and now you’re holding out on me.”

“Yes.”

Dr. Quark gets up and pours himself some coffee. “Any other questions?”

I’ve segued from embarrassment to anger now, but I stay cool. “Sure. What about Margo? Is she involved in all of this?”

“Ms. Thompson was brought on to the QuantumWorks project as a further incentive for you to join,” Quark says. “We were aware of your feelings for her and thought you’d be more likely to participate if she were involved.”

Aaron Clarke adds, “She’s an excellent project manager, though. Quite intelligent. She was suspicious of the entire program from the beginning.”

“What about Hydrangea? Was she working for you guys?”

Dr. Quark sits back down and sips his coffee. “We’ve had our eyes on her for a while, but direct surveillance was impossible given her powers. She’s been tapped to join our teams.”

I say, “So was she working for you during the whole Hungry Ghost caper?”

“No,” Quark says, but I’m not sure I believe him. “We approached her shortly afterwards to ask for her help with the unstable dimensional vortex. Hydrangea is impressive. She’s barely tapped into her full potential. In time…”

“Good for her. What about the bacon smell, what’s up with that?”

“Well, an inevitable byproduct of side slipping – matter teleportation – is a fairly strong odor at the destination point. Originally it was an overpowering brimstone stench – like the devil had farted.”

His joke gets a little courtesy laugh from me. I get the impression that Dr. Quark has explained the bacon smell a million times and he always throws that little gag in there.

“You can imagine how a noxious smell would undermine the drama of Dr. Quark suddenly appearing out of nowhere. Through a great deal of trial and error, I managed to change the smell to a sickly sweet perfume odor. I kept working at it, and now we have the relatively discrete bacon smell. I’m working on a Nag Champa scent right now. Next question?”

I point at Ted Bradbury. “Who is he?”

“That’s Ted,” Dr. Quark says.

“I mean, who is he really? You’re Dr. Quark, he’s The Midnight Rambler, he went to M.I.T. – who is Ted?”

“I’m retired,” Ted says. “I don’t do the cape thing anymore. I’m a businessman now.”

“Okay, who were you then?”

Ted hesitates, and then says, “I was Action Lad. Then I was The Wanderer.”

The room is quiet for a moment.

Then I bust out laughing. “You were Action Lad?” I cackle. “Fisticuffer’s sidekick? Holy shit, Ted!”

Ted jumps to his feet, pissed, as I nearly collapse laughing. One part of me knows how inappropriate it is, but I can’t stop myself. Maybe it’s the stress of the situation, I don’t know.

Laughing, I point at Ted. “Dude, and you had those shorts and the little cape!”

“Shut up, Mackenzie,” Ted says, clenching his fists.

“I’m just trying to picture you in those shorts, Ted.”

“I’m warning you.”

“And the Wanderer!” I laugh. “What was with the shoulder pads and shit? When was that ever cool? You looked like an extra from that Olivia Newton-John movie, with the roller disco--”

“Xanadu,” The Midnight Rambler offers.

“Right!” I cry. “Xanadu! You should combine the two looks, Ted, and wear those short-shorts with some big fucking shoulder pads and that headband.”

“I think that will do, Mr. Mackenzie,” Dr. Quark says.

But I’m on a roll. “The Wanderer! I heard Siegfried and Roy sued you for stealing their look!”

Ted lunges at me, snarling. I’m ready for it, and I swing my fist around in a roundhouse punch aimed right at his face.

“Stop.”

My punch stops. I stop. Ted stops. We’re suspended in mid-action, totally frozen, but Dr. Quark and the others can move. It’s the strangest sensation, like when you just space out and stare for a minute into space. Do you ever do that? Just kind of zone out, staring at nothing, self-hypnotized, lost in non-thought? It’s sort of like that – I feel like I am able to move, but won’t.

Dr. Quark approaches and looks at me. “Do you have any more questions, Mr. Mackenzie?”

“No, I think I’m good,” I say. I’m keenly aware that he could wrap me up like a pretzel if he wanted to.

He waves his hand and Ted and I float away from each other, weightless. Dr. Quark puts us on the other side of the room and lets us go.

“Now then, if you’re done antagonizing Mr. Bradbury, let’s talk business,” Dr. Quark says.

“Talk business?” I say, smoothing out my shirt. “Are you kidding? You guys offer me a fake job, bug my house and my armor and shit, and just generally play me like a chump, and you want to talk business?”

“You’re letting your pride dictate your actions, Mr. Mackenzie,” Dr. Quark says. “Be reasonable.”

“Fuck reasonable. You made a fucking black hole, dude! How is making a black hole on accident any worse than making one on purpose? I mean, if Diabolik did this you guys would be on him like stink on shit!”

“Nice analogy. Lower your voice,” Dr. Quark says, his eyes growing dark.

“Sorry,” I say quietly. “Let me tell you quietly, then: I quit. Connor Mackenzie quits, The Velvet Marauder quits. I don’t want to be part of your little ant farm.”

“Don’t be stupid, Mackenzie,” The Midnight Rambler says.

“Let him go, you don’t need him,” Ted says.

I hold out my hand. “Give me my phone back,” I say to Dr. Quark, who is glaring at me now. I don’t think he hears the word “no” a lot. Or “fuck,” for that matter.

The Nokia transat phone that Silver Striker gave me appears in my open hand with a flash of light.

“Thanks,” I say, pocketing the phone.

They’re all looking at me.

I start to walk out. Nobody is saying anything. Lightning doesn’t fall from the sky.

I stop at the boardroom door and turn around.

They’re all looking at me.

Deliberately, I walk across the room to the buffet table. I grab a croissant and hold it up.

“I’m taking this,” I say, then walk out.

My heart is thumping heavily in my chest as I walk down the main corridor of the QuantumWorks annex for the last time. At the end of the hallway Hydrangea waits for me, standing next to one of the big non-carnivorous potted plants. She’s wearing a green silk kimono-type gown, and looks tired.

“Hello, Connor.”

“Hello back,” I say bitterly.

“What happened?”

“I quit. I’m walking away. I don’t want any part of that bullshit, I don’t care who they are.”

“You’re angry,” she says in her Katherine Hepburn voice. “You shouldn’t make any rash--”

I stop in front of her. “You could have told me. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I was instructed not to,” she says.

“And if Quark told you to jump off a bridge, would you do that?” I say, then instantly regret it. What a dumb thing to say. What am I, seven?

“What are you talking about?”

“I don’t know,” I say. I turn and walk away. “Have fun working for Mr. God Complex.”

She calls my name, but I’m gone.

I’m gone.

The Boardroom, Part One

2005-06-21T23:19:00.000-07:00

(This is a big post so I will break it up into two parts.)

Getting out of the Saab is difficult this morning. I unfold myself from the driver’s seat and slowly stand in the nearly empty parking garage at my office. It’s late Sunday morning, almost time for my meeting with one of the most powerful beings to ever walk the face of the earth, who I kneed in the balls last night. I’m beginning to think that wasn’t a smart move.

I wince at the scorpion sting of pain between my shoulder blades that starts every time I move my head or breathe or blink. It feels like I pinched a muscle in my neck, too, and I think one of those walls Ted tossed me through last night screwed my hip up big time.

I take the elevator up to nine, where Dr. Quark told me to meet him. I’m not sure where exactly he thinks we’re meeting, because Ted and I have pretty much demolished the QuantumWorks annex. There’s nobody on nine, everything is cool and quiet. I limp into a bathroom for a safety pee and a damage assessment.

In the mirror: Split lip. Swollen left ear. Blood shot eye. Scratches on neck and cheek. Other than that I look good in my black Egyptian cotton shirt. Even when I’m beat to hell I’m still fine.

I shoot myself a little thumbs up and grin at my reflection.

“You look fabulous,” I tell myself, but I sound as terrified as I really am.

What the hell was I thinking, going for a crotch shot on Dr. Quark? I mean, the manipulative bastard deserved it, but that still doesn’t mean it was a good idea. He could kill me in a thousand ways.

I must be an idiot, walking in there like this…

“No,” I say, firmly. “No, you are going to go in there and kick some ass.”

That’s right. I am. Who do these guys think they are, fucking with me like this? Jerking me around?

“That’s right! They don’t know with whom they are fucking.”

I have every right to be pissed! It doesn’t matter who these guys are, they can’t screw with me like that. I’m not out of my league. I’m the Velvet Fucking Marauder!

“Major league!” I say, then louder: “Major league!”

I’m going to suck up all this doubt and uncertainty and shit and I’m going to go in there with my “A” game.

“A-Game!” I yell at the mirror, pumping my fists in the air. It hurts, but I’m on a Tony Robbins roll here.

There is no fear. No fear here!

“No fear!”

Fear is the mind-killer!

“No fear!”

That’s right!

“A-GAME!!!”

Fucking right! You’re the Terminator, Connor! Unstoppable!

“TERMINATOR!!!”

Game on!

“TERMINATOR!!!” I scream, stabbing my fingers at the mirror.

Game on!

“Game ON! Game ON!”

Connor Mackenzie Machine: zero defects!

“ZERO DEFECTS, BABY!”

The toilet in the stall behind me flushes. I freeze.

I feel my stomach drop and my face get hot as a big, dark-haired guy steps out of the stall, buckling up his belt. He looks at me. Good looking cat, wearing a black turtleneck and grey wool slacks. He looks like Antonio Sabato, Jr. And just because I know who Antonio Sabato, Jr. is, it doesn’t make me gay.

The guy steps up next to me and starts washing his hands. “How you doing?” he says in a deep voice.

“Good, good,” I say, and begin washing my hands as well, trying to be cool.

He dries his hands on some paper towels, then nods on his way out. “Good luck with that meeting.”

God, I’m such an ass. I lean against the sink for a minute, letting my face regain its normal hue. That was mildly humiliating. I wait for a few minutes, then collect myself and limp out towards the QuantumWorks annex, which I’m kind of looking forward to seeing destroyed in the light of day.

To my surprise, there is a completely intact set of stained oak doors at the entrance to the annex, right where a gaping hole should be. Mike the security guard nods and buzzes me in. I walk through exact replicas of the doors I knocked down not twelve hours ago –

-- and into an immaculate, totally un-destroyed QuantumWorks annex. Instead of snapped beams and crumbling drywall, the main corridor is the same tasteful mix of greys and pastels that I left on Friday, without the slightest hint of the mini-apocalypse that raged through here recently. As a matter of fact, the place smells like it’s been freshly vacuumed and has a new coat of paint.

The only thing that is different are the plants. The groping, stinging, vomit-inducing alien plants are gone, replaced by tasteful grasses and miniature palms. They’re exotic and expensive-looking plants, but they’re definitely of this earth.

A little dazed, I walk down the hallway towards the board room, eyeing the plants warily. They don’t attack. I pass by a wall that I know Ted and I crashed through – it looks as good as new. Paint isn’t even wet. This is Dr. Quark’s work; Surgeon of Reality stuff.

I reach the board room doors and hesitate before I touch the handle.

My heart is beating fast.

My armpits feel hot.

I take a deep breath – game on – and open the door.

They’re waiting for me inside, four of them. Impassive, owlish (owly?)Aaron Clarke sits behind a cup of coffee and scone, fixing me with an inscrutable look as I enter. Ted slumps in a chair at the big boardroom table, looking sullen and bruised. It makes me feel warm inside to see that his face looks as bad as mine. Dr. Quark, in his GQ John Quentin persona, looks up from a small buffet table and smiles politely at me. He’s wearing a smart black cableknit sweater that’s too early for the season. If he doesn’t banish me to a prison dimension, I’ll have to ask him where he got it.

And the fourth person? Antonio Sabato, Jr., from the restroom, of course. He sits off in a corner, reading a magazine and drinking bottled water.

That’s just great.

“Good morning,” I say to the room, neutrally. What else am I going to say?

“Good morning, Mr. Mackenzie,” Dr. Quark says, waving at the table. “Care for something to eat?”

I walk over to the buffet table, nodding to Aaron Clarke. Ted gets the stink eye. I nod to Antonio Sabato, Jr., who looks vaguely amused at my discomfort.

“Oh, Connor, this is Mr. Black. He’s a business associate of mine.” Dr. Quark turns to Antonio. “Mr. Black, meet Connor Mackenzie.”

“We’ve met,” he says dryly.

I grab a couple of croissants and some juice. “What line of work are you in, Mr. Black?” I ask, trying to recover some initiative.

“Security.”

I’ll bet. I sit down at one end of the table with my food. “Well, let’s get this party started, then.”

Dr. Quark takes a seat. “I imagine you have some questions.”

“I do.”

“I can assure you that I will answer any question I can truthfully, Mr. Mackenzie, but I can’t promise you’re going to like the answers. And I can appreciate how you would be angry about our deception – I would be, too, if I were in your position – but I want to be clear with you. I won’t tolerate any outbursts or violence today. We’re going to have a civilized meeting where we will discuss matters peacefully. And if you try to knee me in the groin again I will genetically castrate you. Are we clear?”

“Clear,” I say, crossing my legs. I don’t know what genetic castration is, but it doesn’t sound good. I can feel my face burning. I resist the urge to apologize – he should be the one apologizing.

Aaron Clarke pipes up. “Yes, speaking as the only one in the room without the benefit of parahuman abilities, I’d appreciate if we kept the groin kicking and whatnot to a minimum.”

“Wait a minute, you don’t have parahuman abilities?” I ask.

Clarke shakes his head. “Well, I have degrees from Harvard, Yale, and M.I.T..”

“I thought you were some retired golden age hero or something.”

“Sorry,” Clarke says. “I’m a lawyer.”

Dr. Quark reasserts control. “Well, you have questions, Mr. Mackenzie.”

“Right,” I say. “How did you fix this place so quickly?”

Dr. Quark says, “I reverted the cellular matrix of the damaged area to a previously saved state. It’s sort of like using a computer back-up disk, but on a subatomic level. Unfortunately, it only works with non-living matter, so everyone’s plants and goldfish died.”

“What was the story with those crazy plants in the hallway?”

“Just some plants I picked up on my travels. The Royal Court on Shang Seven uses them as guards in their palaces.” Quark’s features darken a little. “Pity they were destroyed.”

Quark shoots Ted Bradbury an irritated look. Ted sort of shrugs and keeps glaring at me. I ignore him.

“Okay, so the QuantumWorks project?”

“What about it?” Quark says.

“I just want to make sure I understand what’s going on. Are we in danger of having that black hole thing in there bust loose and swallow the world and shit?”

“Currently the situation is under control,” Quark says carefully.

“How encouraging,” I say. “So just to be sure I understand: The QuantumWorks search engine was going to use this transdimensional technology that you developed, and something went wrong, and now you have an unstable breach between dimensions in that big chamber back there.”

“More or less,” Quark says.

“And you’ve got Hydrangea and Buddhist monks stabilizing the breach, but it’s still kind of dicey.”

“Yes,” Quark says.

“What the fuck were you thinking?” I say.

Dr. Quark’s jaw tightens. “Frankly, Mr. Mackenzie, I don’t think you could grasp my reasoning or thought processes regarding issues like this. I have a more… holistic perspective.”

“Well why don’t you explain it to me like I’m a child?” I snap, ripping a big chunk of croissant off with my teeth.

“Very well,” he says with a somewhat forced smile. “Three years ago I purchased a controlling share of stock in The Company and brought Ted and Aaron on board. We began the QuantumWorks project using proprietary technology that I had developed.”

“Illegal proprietary technology,” I added.

“Don’t interrupt, please. Multidimensional technology is restrictively regulated by Congress. It’s understandable after the incident in Pittsburgh, but that was a terrorist act perpetrated by a dangerously ignorant man – the QuantumWorks project is for the benefit of the human species and will usher in a new age of clean, efficient energy and information management.”

“You’re off to a great start,” I say.

He ignores my comment. “And at the risk of sounding immodest, I’m operating beyond terrestrial law,” Quark says. Attorney Aaron Clarke shifts uncomfortably in his chair. “I have tread the cosmos, transcended the limitations of space and time. I watched a universe being born and have seen vast empires fall. I survived a lifetime of torture in a place you would call Hell and brought an entire species back from extinction. I was the court advisor of gods. I healed a sun and assassinated a planet. I studied with the creator of worlds. I held Alexander’s hand as he succumbed to fever. I have slain dragons that eat stars, and have led armies in battle. I have a thousand lifetimes of experience and knowledge – I have read the secrets of the universe, Mr. Mackenzie. Now I want to share that knowledge with my own people, help mankind reach their best destiny. Do you really think I’m going to let some fickle, arbitrary law stop me?”

There’s silence in the room.

Oh, my aching everything

2005-06-21T01:26:00.000-07:00

I get home and I peel off my filthy armor and just leave it on the living room floor in a stinking heap. Crawling into the bath tub, I soak my battered body in scalding water for the better part of an hour. I’m going to look like a prizefighter in the morning. I can practically feel the bruises bubbling their way up through my flesh to the surface.

Too confused and angry to focus, I seek the comfort of cable television. I am an American, after all.Laying there, slowly working on a pint of Cherry Garcia ice cream, I look at the TV without actually watching it while I work the night’s events around in my head.

Did I really hit Dr. Quark in the balls? Was that a smart thing to do?

I’m wondering if I should actually show up at the meeting tomorrow with the super-assholes who run the company, or if I should just change my name and get out of town.

It's Off

2005-06-20T10:59:00.000-07:00

[This conversation takes place in the ruined QuantumWorks wing in the office building I work in on a Saturday night. Ted Bradbury and I have just gone four rounds with each other and some alien plants, and after a brief vomiting interlude, are about to commence pounding on each other again. Dr. Quark has just arrived, revealed that he is actually John Quentin - one of the VPs in our company - and has thoroughly confused and pissed me off. Let’s begin.]

ME: OK, again: what the hell is going on? I’m gonna keep hitting people if I don’t get answers.

QUARK: Please, Mr. Mackenzie, calm down. I can explain everything.

ME: That would be fucking great. Go.

QUARK: First of all, I’d like to apologize for deceiving you. It wasn’t our intention to –

ME: That’s not explaining, that’s apologizing! I don’t know if I’m conveying how super-molten-lava-nuclear war pissed I am right now! If that’s not coming across –

DICKHEAD: Why don’t you shut up and let him talk?

ME: Hey, fuck you Ted! You want some more of this? [I point at my fist.]

DICKHEAD: Let’s go, asshole, I’m ready.

QUARK: Both of you, calm yourselves. You’re done fighting.

DICKHEAD: I have to be calm? Me? Q, look at this place, look what he did here!

QUARK: It’s nothing that can’t be fixed, Ted. Mr. Mackenzie was doing what he thought was right, based on very limited information.

ME: Information I still don’t have. What is going on here? What is that thing in there, the black hole thing?

QUARK: That is QuantumWorks, Mr. Mackenzie. I’ll explain. As you know, we were developing an infinite-capacity historic search engine. The key to the whole project is our transdimensional feed technology, patent pending. We created a stable portal to a pocket dimension which both powers and acts as data storage for the search engine.

ME: Okay. Isn’t that, you know, illegal?

QUARK: Yes, well, technically. We were working on the patent process and getting approval with the feds when we had our problem. Several months ago we lost complete control over the portal. To put it in simple terms, the dimensional fabric began to tear, and we had a potential dimensional breach on our hands.

ME: That sounds bad.

QUARK: It is, yes. We’ve had experts from various disciplines working on the problem, and with the help of people like your friend Hydrangea, we’ve managed to stabilize the tear and have averted a full breach.

ME: So you say. What happens if there’s a full breach?

QUARK: Basically all the matter in a particular dimension gets sucked through an ever-widening dimensional rift – a black hole is the nearest analogy.

ME: Let me see if I got this straight. You guys were screwing around with shit that people shouldn’t be screwing around with, and you created a black hole that could destroy everything in this universe? By accident?

QUARK: In essence, yes.

ME: Do you have any idea how fucked up that is?

DICKHEAD: Hey! You have any idea who you’re talking to?

ME: Again, fuck off, Ted.

QUARK: We’re aware of the magnitude of the problem, yes. We pulled the plug on the QuantumWorks project several months ago, but we’ve maintained the illusion that the project is still ongoing while we try to seal the breach.

ME: And so you’re John Quentin, huh?

QUARK: Sometimes.

ME: Who’s he? Who’d he use to be? [I point at Ted/Dickhead.]

QUARK: Ted, would you care to fill him in?

DICKHEAD: No fucking way. He almost broke my knee, Q!

ME: You know what? I don’t care who you were. I just want to know why you guys dragged me into this shit, why you’ve been screwing around with me this whole time.

QUARK: Well, we actually hired you on the QuantumWorks project to keep a closer eye on you. Your work has caught our notice.

ME: Whose notice?

QUARK: The Storm Riders.

ME: [disbelieving] Ted’s a Storm Rider?

QUARK: No, Ted’s the CFO of our company. My projects overlap, frequently. We – The Storm Riders – have been interested in starting a franchise organization, of sorts. For more ground-level threats. We –

ME: Hang on. You guys hired me so you could spy on me, see if I could play nice?

QUARK: It was my idea, really.

ME: Have you guys bugged my house? Did you break into my house in January and steal that canister I took from Interbionics? What about Hydrangea, did you send her out to test me, was that the deal? And Margo –

QUARK: I have a proposal, Mr. Mackenzie. How about we shelve this conversation until tomorrow, say about 11:30? We can meet here and discuss the matter, answer any questions you might have.

ME: I can’t believe you would dick me around like that! Like a little fucking chess piece or something!

QUARK: See, this is why I think we should talk about this when we’re all a little more calm.

ME: Fine.

[At this point I walk out. On the way past Dr. Quark, I stop. I can hear the blood pounding in my ears. I can rarely recall feeling so stupid, so pissed, so outraged.]

ME: One last thing.

QUARK: Yes?

[I drive my knee into Dr. Quark’s crotch. He folds, slumps to the floor.]

ME: That.

[Then I split before he turns me into a toad or something. I can’t believe I just kneed the Surgeon of Reality in the nuts.]

[He had it coming.]

It's On, Part Three

2005-06-20T10:35:00.000-07:00

CONTINUED FROM PART TWO

You got me runnin’ goin’ out of my mind,
You got me thinkin’ that I’m wastin’ my time.
Don’t bring me down, no no no no no,
I’ll tell you once more before I get off the floor
Don’t bring me down.

ELO, “Don’t Bring Me Down”

I am shocked – shocked – by the flimsiness of the interior walls in this building.

Ted Bradbury throws me through, like, the fifth wall in the QuantumWorks annex at work. I end up in a heap of debris in the middle of yet another ruined office. Somebody’s desk is wrapped around me. I cough, mouth full of drywall dust.

Either Ted has high-range super strength, or these office walls are really weak. I think it’s a little of both. Seriously, though, don’t all office buildings have to be earthquake and parahuman-resistant these days? You’d think I’d bounce off some of these walls instead of smashing through them like a wrecking ball.

Bouncing sounds less painful.

Awkwardly I pull myself to my feet. Whose office is this? It’s fucked up now.

Then Ted Bradbury emerges from the drywall fog, charging at me in his bathrobe and boxers. I’d laugh if he wasn’t kicking my ass.

This time I’m ready. As I’ve found out in the last 90 seconds or so, Ted is fast. Super-fast. He may be a little older, but he’s got game to spare. Ted’s been hitting the Bowflex and the Ensure, too, because he hits like a kicking mule or some other animal analogy. So this time I’m not underestimating him, this time—

Ted smacks me in the face, again. Hard.

My body flies back, launched by Ted’s fist. The back of my head cannonballs into some shelving units and rams through a wall. Suddenly I’m stuck, my head lodged into the damn wall.

I’ve got seconds before he grabs me.

Quick, quick! I grab something blindly off my utility belt -

- a solar flare bursts somewhere below me, and I’m rewarded with the sweet sound of Ted bellowing in pain.

“You son of a bitch!” he screams.

My feet find something to push off of and I kick myself the rest of the way through the wall and into the next office over. I fall headfirst on to a stout red oak desk and flop to the floor.

Okay, keep moving.

I get up, look around. I’m in Margo’s office. There’s that dumb cat clock of hers, there’s that cool lamp…

Then, in the seconds before Ted Bradbury smashes through the wall behind me, I notice on her desk a picture of us - Connor and Margo. It’s from that business trip to Turbine City we took last year, the Delphi project thing. The project team all went out drinking, and I guess somebody had a camera. I remember that night fondly. I do.

She’s got a picture of us on her desk.

Of me.

The wall behind me explodes and a big Ted Meteor plows through. He’s covered in a nice frosting of plaster and drywall. Directly behind him is a floor-to-ceiling window which has (in the daylight) a nice view of the rail yards and The Bay.

Ted notices the window at the same time I do.

As hard as I can I kick Margo’s desk at Ted and the big window.

The solid oak piece shatters the glass and launches out high over the yards.

- but Ted has jumped over the desk and is now coming straight at me, yelling something.

I duck, and Ted’s fist plows into the bookshelf behind Margo’s desk, splintering it. Another punch whooshes through the air next to my face, narrowly missing.

You know, screw this being-on-the-defensive shit. I’m not going to let some old guy in a bathrobe beat the crap out of me. This is a dignity issue.

Grabbing him by the front of his robe, I pull Ted’s face towards me and head butt the bridge of his nose as hard as I can. I get an acceptable “gaaah!” noise from the big guy and he staggers back. That’s two points for me. Now if I could just get him out that window…

Ted recovers quickly, and returns the favor by punching me in the face.

It’s just a quick jab, so it doesn’t shoot me through the wall, but it stuns me for a second. I get little dancing motes of light in my goggles. Then my vision clears and I see Ted closing to grapple.

“You stupid son of a bitch,” he shouts. “You see what you’ve done?”

“You’re the one throwing me through walls, asshole.”

Ted drives his elbow into the side of my head. Ouch.

I grab his throat with one hand and stab him in the ribs with my rigid gauntlet. Even through my ringing ears can hear him groan. Gotcha, fucker.

I squeeze hard on Ted’s throat and twist as violently as I can, wrenching Ted’s body over mine in a super-powered ippon seoinage – a one-arm shoulder throw. He breaks through the wall of Margo’s office and tumbles into a hallway, caught in a tangle of metal framing and wires.

“Ted, I gotta admit man, you’re in pretty good shape,” I say, producing a sepia bomb from my belt.

I pull the pin, drop the bomb into the hallway, and - vooosh! - Ted is suddenly engulfed in an expanding cloud of black ink.

I switch on the infrared setting on my goggles and move to engage Ted. Ted knows I’m coming. He swings blindly, doesn’t connect. I wait for an opening then kick him in the ribs again -- same spot. I know, it’s not very heroic of me, but I think we’ve established that Ted is not somebody to screw with, in many ways. I just need him to be unconscious right now.

Ted groans and drops to one knee, clutching his ribs. He looks strange in my goggles, a grimacing infrared gargoyle. It makes it easier to drive a wicked haymaker into the side of his head.

Ted drops.

Toggling back to the normal setting on the goggles, I step out of the sepia and back into Margo’s ruined office. I can hear Ted coughing in the middle of the ink cloud.

I think it’s time to call in the cavalry. Ted could be back on his feet in seconds, and frankly, I don’t have the power to shut down whatever transdimensional dog-and-pony show they’re running here. Plus - way confused. What the hell is Hydrangea doing in there? And what is that black hole thing? Margo has a picture of us on her desk? It’s too much shit for me to deal with alone. It’s time for the nuclear option: Silver Striker.

I bust out the switchblade Nokia that The Man himself gave me. Among other things, it’s a hotline to Striker Mountain. All I have to do is dial “911” and in seconds –

The Nokia reads “NO SIGNAL.”

“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.”

Ted Bradbury (or more accurately, Ted Bradbury’s forearm) slams into the back of my neck. I sprawl forward and blow through another wall with Ted on top of me. I drop the phone.

Where are we now? Ted decks me in the jaw. I almost black out. My head is pumping with blood. My neck hurts like a bastard.

“We’ve got jammers in play, idiot!”

Ted grabs me by my topcoat lapels and shakes me like a Muppet. He’s all blurry and loud.

“Who were you calling, Mackenzie?” Ted yells.

“Your wife, Ted.”

Ted shakes me some more. “Funny! You’re a funny guy.”

“I try,” I say. My vision is clearing.

Ted backhands me. I taste blood.

“What were you possibly hoping to accomplish, Mackenzie? Or do you even know?”

Ted pulls back his hand for another slap.

And right then and there I make up a new rule: nobody slaps me twice. Before he can land the blow I point my gauntlet down at Ted’s bare legs and fire a Marauderang point fucking blank right into his kneecap.

Ted screams like a pirate – “Yaargh!” – and falls back, clutching his knee.

I aim a kick at Ted’s head, but I’m still a little wonky from the neck trauma, and Ted catches my foot. He swings me into the nearest wall, but I only hit hard enough to crack it.

“You son of a bitch,” Ted yells as he holds his knee. “This is my bad knee.”

“Well if it wasn’t, it is now,” I say.

Ted leaps at me again, growling. I catch him in mid-air and try a throw of some sort, but we both end up crashing through the cracked wall and into the main hallway.

Right. The hallway with all the plants.

The red light is still on in the main hallway, and the air is thick with bitter smoke that reeks of burnt plastic. Ted and I end up on top of each other in the middle of the hallway, half-covered in plasterboard. I don’t think Ted realizes where he is –

- until a tentacle from one of the aloepus plants coils around his head.

I start to laugh, until another tentacle snares my right leg and lifts me up into the air. Crap, not again! Twisting around, I see more vegetable tentacles reaching up for me out of the plant’s giant ceramic pot. If more than one of these tentacles grabs me, my chances of escaping are not great. And I’m out of solar flares.

It looks at first like Ted’s in a similar predicament with his aloepus a few yards away, but then I watch him tear his tentacle in two like a baguette. The plant drops him, tentacles quivering in shock. He kicks the plant, pot and all, down the hallway, bashing into my plant, which drops me. The two plants scatter like tenpins down the hallway.

I barely have a chance to get to my feet when Ted tackles me.

We both rocket down the length of the hallway, which is now a red alien landscape of acrid smoke and thrashing tentacles. We smash into something solid, then careen against the main doors to the QuantumWorks annex, busting them open.

Too late, I realize that we smacked into the jumbo planter that holds the weird red orchids. I look up to see three of the beautiful orchids craning down towards Ted and I. Before I can react, the orchids shoot red dust down on us.

I breathe in this time. Smells sweet.

Both Ted and I scramble to our feet and away from the giant red orchid plant, wiping red powder from our faces. This can’t be good. I feel like I’m going to sneeze.

We stare at each other in the entrance of the annex. Neither of us moves to attack. Nice to see Ted’s favoring his hurt knee.

“Okay, Ted. What’s the story with that plant? What is this shit? Are we going to die or what’s the story?”

“Calm down,” he says, irritated. He blows his nose, farmer-style. “I can’t remember what that plant does – I don’t think it’s lethal.”

“You don’t even know what it is? What kind of lame-ass villain are you?”

“Villain?” Ted laughs. “You really are a fucking idiot, Mackenzie. I don’t know what Q sees in you.”

I definitely feel like I’m going to sneeze. What’s he talking about? My stomach gurgles.

Ted holds his stomach, burps. “Aw, no. I just remembered what that thing, that plant does –“

Then my stomach contorts violently. I feel like a face hugger has planted an alien in me – severe cramping, sudden nausea, gas… I don’t have to sneeze, I have to puke.

“It -" Ted starts, then burps. “It makes you s-sick…”

We both vomit, in unison.

The sheer unexpected power of the vomiting drives us both down on our hands and knees. It’s pretty bad. My eyes tear up inside my goggles and my nose bubbles snot as I violently empty my stomach on to the carpeted floor on the ninth floor. Now there’s some shrimp phad thai that I never thought I’d see again.

I don’t know how long we’re like that, Ted and I, barfing helplessly on the floor. Occasionally we manage to groan an insult or profanity at each other between fits of heaving. Finally, we’re both just laying their next to our respective puddles of discharge, panting and occasionally retching.

“Jesus,” Ted says, coughing. “That was awful.”

“I thought I was going to fucking die,” I say.

Then, I smell bacon.

It’s that familiar aroma of cooking bacon that I smelled on occasion over the last few months – the smell of somebody interdimensionally transporting, or “jumping” as they call it. Well, that’s what SuperPeople says it’s called, anyway.

Bleary-eyed, I look up at a shimmering panel of light near the security desk. A silhouetted figure steps through the portal, which promptly collapses.

Dr. Quark – as in the Stormrider, Surgeon of Reality – is standing right there in front of me and my puke. He's wearing his trademark white lab coat over his trippy black suit that's full of stars.

I wipe my mouth. I'm confused. My head hurts. What the hell is going on? "Dr. Quark?"

"That's right," he says, in that same smooth baritone you hear in all the press conferences. "But you also know me as... John Quentin."

Dr. Quark takes off his black eye mask.

I stare at him. John Quentin - the VP in charge of QuantumWorks - is Dr. Fucking Quark?

I feel really stupid all of a sudden.

"Okay, will somebody kindly tell me what the fuck is going on?"

CONTINUED

It's On, Part Two

2005-06-20T10:30:00.000-07:00

CONTINUED FROM PART ONE

It's the eye of the tiger, it's the thrill of the fight
Risin' up to the challenge of our rival
And the last known survivor stalks his prey in the night
And he's watchin' us all in the eye of the tiger

Survivor, “Eye Of The Tiger”

The first plant grabs me with a serrated tentacle and hoists me off my feet and into the air.

It’s like a cross between and octopus and an aloe vera plant. Four or five big limbs rise up from the big ceramic planter, blindly lashing out at me. Another tentacle grabs my right leg. At this rate, I’ll be immobilized in seconds. I’m starting to panic, and that’s not good. What can I say? I’ve never fought alien plants before, and it’s kind of freaking my shit out.

Okay, okay – assess the situation. I’m in the main corridor in the QuantumWorks annex, where my secret identity Connor Mackenzie works. Every day I pass these plants, six of them, big exotic succulents in huge planters. They’ve never attacked me before, but now, after hours, it’s a different story. There’s three aloepus plants, a mean looking Venus flytrap plant, a weird orchid-looking thing, and at the end of the hall, a huge creature with whipping vines and scorpion stingers. The corridor is bathed in red light, which just makes everything look more bizarre.

Crap, the aloepus just snagged my right arm. The thing’s strong – I don’t like my odds of busting loose if it gets all those tentacles around me.

Red orchid flowers float on thin stalks toward me, and the aloepus twists me around to face them. Double crap.

With my free leg I kick off the wall, jumping out of the way just as the orchids spew some sort of red dust at me. For a second I’m reminded of an old Star Trek episode, and then I turn my attention back to the evil aloe vera plant.

Holding my breath, I rip a solar flare incendiary bomb from my utility belt with my free hand. The aloe plant swings me into the red spore cloud.

I pop the top on the solar flare – fssss – and drop it right down into the aloepus planter.

That works. The tentacles suddenly go slack and I drop out of the cloud and on to the floor. The aloe stalks flail madly as the solar flare burns with nova intensity in the center of the plant.

The orchid plant’s beautiful flowers are looking for me, scanning around. I think the solar flare threw it off my scent. One of the red dust-spewing flowers rushes towards me – I decapitate it with a Marauderang.

I’ve got a plan.

Crouching on the floor, I dig out three more solar flares, activate them, and throw them down the hallway. The plants must be heat-seekers, because they go fucking crazy as the solar flares sizzle and pop like mini-novas. I don’t know how long the flares will distract them – I better move. The Nerd Zone, my target, is at the other end of the hallway, which never seemed so long as it does right now.

I spring up on to a wall, just above the writhing aloepus plant that attacked me.

Launching from the wall, I ricochet to the other side of the corridor, then bounce to the other side, and so on. I’m bouncing off the walls like Jackie Chan, dodging the tentacles and dust spewing flowers, leaping over the incandescent solar flares that burn the carpet… one final leap and a barrel roll takes me under the confused scorpion stingers of the last plant, and I’m suddenly clear.

Looking back, I see the corridor filling with stinking smoke from the burning carpets. The alien plants thrash in the gloom, backlit by the burning flares. The red overhead lights cast a hellish glow on the scene. Then the sprinklers switch on, dousing the corridor in a red monsoon. It doesn’t look remotely like the hallway I’ve walked hundreds of times to visit Margo’s office or to get bad coffee, or to take a piss.

I smile grimly. No stupid plants are going to stop The Velvet Marauder.

Gotta keep going. I run down a short hallway, past Aaron Clarke’s office, past Ted Bradbury’s office, then stop in front of the Nerd Zone, the mysterious tesseract chamber that holds the secret to this whole mess.

There’s a stout looking steel security door and a keypad blocking the way.
No problem.

I jump up on the wall opposite the door and launch myself, shoulder first –

- right at the wall about ten feet from the door.

I crash through the wall in a dusty explosion of drywall and Tyvek and roll into the Nerd Zone foyer. Suckers should have reinforced their walls as much as their door.

Coughing, covered in plaster dust, I get my bearings quickly. I’m in a reception area where non-clearance staff can meet with Nerd Zone techs. In front of me is a security desk and two very startled looking security guards. Behind them, another steel door and the Nerd Zone proper. I’m almost there.

One of the guards rushes me while the other picks up a phone and starts yelling “Intruder alert! Intruder alert!” They look like average rent-a-cops in their white uniforms, but I have to assume that these guys are parahuman or have some cool toys. They’re both going down.

The first guy is all business. He swings a nightstick at my face as he runs forward. I see a telltale blue crackle of energy coursing up the nightstick: stun baton.

I take the blow on my armored forearm. Doesn’t hurt at all. Then I hit him with a move I call “The Philadelphia Story.”

Let me be irritating here and stop the narrative to explain. Have you ever seen The Philadelphia Story? Great old flick with Carey Grant, Jimmy Stewart, and Katherine Hepburn. In the classic no-dialogue opening scene of the film, Grant and Hepburn are breaking up. He storms out of this house, mad as hell, and Hepburn follows him. Carey Grant turns, looks at her smug face – he’s just volcano TNT pissed – and you can tell he’s thinking about decking her. He hesitates for a second, then grabs Katherine Hepburn’s face and just shoves her down. That may not sound funny, the whole violence against women thing, but trust me, it’s hilarious. Besides, she’s not hurt or anything. Okay, now I feel like a dick for even bringing it up.

Anyway, I’ve been practicing the super-powered equivalent of Carey Grant’s face shove in my gym, and I’ve been just dying to try it in a combat situation.

Back to the fight: I block the security guard’s stun baton with my left forearm in a classic karate rising block, then twist my arm and grab a handful of the dude’s face with my gauntlets. Palming his head like a basketball, I shove him down. Hard.

The security guard slams to the ground in a reverse-belly flop, bounces, and stops moving.

“Boo-ya!” I shout, stabbing a finger at the guy. “Philadelphia Story!”

The other guard drops his phone and reaches for something on his desk. I’m already in mid-air by the time he brings a sub-machine gun up. He’s about to fire when my flying roundhouse kick catches him on the ear. Guard #2 is down.

Quickly I look at the security desk. A red light is flashing and buzzing, which can’t be good. Fortunately, there’s a big yellow button that says “ACCESS” right there on the desk, which I punch.

Behind me, the Nerd Zone security door slides open. I grab the transat telephone that Silver Striker gave me and step into dark territory.

“Holy sheee-it,” I say.

I’m standing on an observation walkway that wraps around the perimeter of a huge circular chamber made of polished steel. The room is about three stories tall, paneled in brushed steel. Twenty feet below me, on the other side of the chamber, I can see a control room full of computers and blinking lights and techs in silver hazmat suits. Red alert signs are flashing. It’s full-on Death Star stuff.

But the insane thing, the holy sheee-it thing, is the miniature black hole slowly spinning in the center of the round chamber. It’s utterly black in the center, devoid of any light, but at the edges purple and blue energy slowly swirls the dark core like pure energy circling a drain. It’s probably about ten feet in diameter, and I get a chill just looking at the thing.

Oh, yeah. There are two people floating in a lotus position in the chamber, deep in meditation. Both wear the saffron robes of Buddhist monks. As a matter of fact, one of them looks like a monk – Asian guy with a shaved head. The other person –

- the other person is Hydrangea.

She’s deep in a trance, floating about ten feet off the ground, legs crossed, facing the miniature black hole – Hydrangea, the most beautiful Tibetan Buddhist sorcerer I’ve ever met.

“Heidi?” I say.

And then, from behind, somebody grabs the collar of my faux-velvet topcoat and hurls me back into the reception area with incredible force.

I splat against the steel security door that I so easily bypassed minutes ago. I conk my head, and for a second I think I’m going to black out. My vision narrows and ears start to ring.

Pulling myself unsteadily to my feet, I shake off the impending unconsciousness with a groan. I’m back in the real world, in the reception area. The big steel black hole chamber seems like a dream I just woke from. My head hurts.

And I smell bacon.

“Mackenzie, you stupid asshole,” says a familiar voice.

Ted Bradbury is striding across the room towards me. He’s wearing a terry cloth robe over boxer shorts and a tank top. He’s barefoot. It looks like the big guy just rolled out of bed.

“Ted,” I say. “Did I wake you up?”

“Yes,” Ted says. Boy, does he look angry. “I’ve been waiting months to beat the hell out of you.”

“Then we have something in common." I take a deep breath and smack my fists together. "Let’s go.”

He charges me.

It's on.

CONTINUED

It's On, Part One

2005-06-20T10:03:00.000-07:00

So please, stay off my back
Or I will attack, and you don’t want that
I've got the power

-Snap “The Power”

After the sun goes down, I warm up for about thirty minutes by jumping and running over warehouses and train cars in the South End. I made a mix of hopefully inspirational music on the suit’s audio system, but I’m afraid it’s having the opposite effect. Listening to Snap’s “The Power” or fucking “St Elmo’s Fire” isn’t exactly motivating me in the Tony Robbins way I was hoping for – instead it just seems cheesy and desperate. So I turn off the audio right in the middle of “Highway to The Danger Zone” and just jump around in peace.

Once I’m suitably warmed up I work my way over to The Company’s building on the edge of the South End, a sprawling amalgam of old brick and new steel and glass. With an impressive series of leaps and flips I work my way up to the top level of the garage. I’m not being vain; it’s just a fact, people are always impressed when I hop and flip around like a monkey. What can I say? I have game.

Okay, here I am. I’m standing on the edge of the parking garage roof, buffeted by a warm breeze from the Harbor. I click my gauntlets into the glider wing hardpoints and spread my arms. Fwooosh. I leap off the garage, gliding on an updraft towards my target, a vertical cliff of glass on the west side of the building.

This time I stick to the glass. I flare my glider wings at the last second and gently smack against the building, limbs spread akimbo like a frog. The suction cups on my gloves and boots take hold of the slick glass.

I allow myself a proud smile. “Not bad,” I say.

Activating my goggle optics, I peer through the tinted glass and make sure I’m on the right floor. Then I wind back with my right hand and drive it like a spear right through the window in front of me.

It’s safety glass, so the window cracks into a crazy spider web when my fist punches through. I rip and tear at the hole until it’s big enough to crawl through, and then I do.

Family pictures, Post-It notes, bamboo shoots -- I’m in somebody’s cubicle on the tenth floor, one level above my objective. I was right. The Ninth Floor may be shielded and cloaked and reinforced, but the rest of the building is just good old glass and brick and Tyvek.

Time to haul ass.

I run through a labrynth of carpet-walled cubicles, heading for the staircase that will take me down to Nine. It feels weird to be here at work in my VM armor – it’s like I don’t belong in such a mundane environment.

I take the entire flight of stairs in one jump, skidding to a halt on the hardwood floor on Nine. Spinning around, I orient myself – the special QuantumWorks annex is fifty yards away to the west, beyond a miniature canyon land of grey cubicles and desks. It’s dim in here, so I scan the area with infrared. Nothing. Yet.

Trotting over towards the entrance of the QW annex, I’m surprised to find nobody manning the security desk. There’s a pair of stained teak double doors ahead of me, monitored by security cameras and accessible only with a high security pass card. They are probably reinforced with steel and have magnetic locking mechanisms, maybe even one of those stasis fields I’ve been reading about.

I break from a trot into a run, right at the doors.

Eye of the Tiger. Eye of the Tiger, baby.

I'm sprinting full-on. The doors blast towards me like I’m going into hyperspace. I twist my torso and use my shoulder, my padded shoulder, like a battering ram, striking the center of the doors with (and again, I’m not being vain) incredible force. The high-tech security doors crash open in an explosion of splintered wood and twisted metal. I stumble and skid into the main hallway in the QuantumWorks annex –

-- you know. The hallway with all the alien plants.

I make it about halfway to my feet before the first plant grabs me.

CONTINUED

My stupid/brilliant plan

2005-06-18T16:24:00.000-07:00

I go through my plan for breaking into QuantumWorks for like, the tenth time today, and I still can’t tell if my scheme is inspired or fatally stupid. Sitting in the Secret Chamber in my underwear, I contemplate my imminent doom or triumph while I listen to Iron Maiden and devour shrimp phad thai.

Here’s where I’m at: I got hired some months ago to do marketing for special project called QuantumWorks, which I discover is basically the Mother of All Search Engines. Using mysterious proprietary technology, QuantumWorks allows a user to search for any information that has ever been published on the internet ever – even stuff that doesn’t exist anymore. It’s a “comprehensive historical search engine with total recall,” and I think The Company is using dimensional technology to run the thing. As we all know, dimensional technology is highly regulated by the feds. Nobody wants another Pittsburgh Disaster.

Sounds like a big deal, right? The QuantumWorks thing? Like a revolutionary product? The kind of thing you’d hire a whole army of marketing guys for, or outsource it, right? No, there’s just little old me. My bitch Chad and I are the entire marketing department for this incredibly important product.

Naturally, I’m a little suspicious from Day One. I’m a superhero, I think everyone’s a supervillain. But over time my suspicion ripens into full-on paranoia. I’m not the only one who is leery of the whole thing; the unrequited love of my life Margo Thompson, who was brought in as a project manager, is convinced that something illegal is going down.

The three executives who run the QuantumWorks project stink like supervillains to me. I’m guessing that the enigmatic John Quentin is the idea guy, the project visionary. I hardly see him around, but the dude is smug and handsome in that criminal mastermind way. The day-to-day brains of the operation is Aaron Clarke, a professor-type who I have seen chatting with guys in strange hazmat suits. Clarke doesn’t seem dangerous, so of course that means he’s the most dangerous of the three. That’s the way it works. And then there’s Ted Bradbury, The Company’s CFO, a big aging jock with a handshake that could warp cold steel. Definitely parahuman. Definitely a patronizing asshole.

These three guys, the QuantumWorks executive team, seem to know that I am The Velvet Marauder, but don’t seem to care, which worries me. I bugged one of their conference rooms and picked up some interesting info before they found the bug. Oddly, they didn’t seem to care about the bug – they seemed to think I was being “plucky.”

The really weird thing? When I got weirded out by their set-up and tried to quit, they just told me to be patient and offered me a huge raise. I took it of course.

But now my stew of mystery has come to a boil and I’m in a position where I have to do something – something heroic. Margo got pictures of the ultra-restricted Nerd Zone on the Ninth Floor, where techies in radiation suits sequester themselves behind security doors to work on God-knows-what. There’s some kind of strange high-tech chamber in the Nerd Zone, beyond those security doors that I think is the missing piece of the QuantumWorks puzzle, and I have to find out what it is. I think the Nerd Zone on the Ninth Floor is a tesseract chamber, a pocket dimension that is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. You could fit a football field into a broom closet using tesseract technology.

So what’s the plan?

I’m going to raid the Nerd Zone tonight and I’m going to prove that, at the very least, these dickheads are using illegal dimensional technology. And then I’m calling my secret weapon –

Silver Striker.

A few months back when I was taking a sabbatical in Costa Rica after (accidentally) killing Parka, Silver Striker himself came down to give me a pep talk. Okay, actually he came down to Costa Rica to determine if I had murdered Parka or if it was a just kill. Striker told me to buck up, get back on the horse, walk it off, etc., and urged me to return to Evergreen City. I was a little concerned at the time about The Malefactors, Parka’s crew, taking revenge on me, so Silver Striker gave me a transat phone. Among other features, the custom Nokia phone has a direct line to the emergency operators at Striker Mountain. You just dial 911.

I’m going in there. I’m going to take some pictures of this high-tech chamber in the Nerd Zone, and then I’m going to send them directly to Striker Mountain. Even if I die, at least I will have got the word out. If shit gets hairy, I’ll just call in an air strike.

Sure, the smart thing to do would be to call Silver Striker and explain the whole thing and let the pros handle it. I’ll admit that I don’t have a ton of experience with vast super-conspiracies, and I may be way out of my league, power-wise. But I feel a certain sense of ownership over this whole scenario. It’s my problem, right? And what kind of hero would I be if I turned cases over to a big time player every time shit got rough? Plus, I don’t want him to get the credit. I know, that sounds really petty, huh? But I’m still trying to establish my brand identity, trying to cultivate the Marauder image – I need big wins like this if I want to keep seeing my name in SuperPeople.

So there you go. That’s my plan. And on Monday I’ll either be dead or not have a job. Or both.

I guess it’s a good thing I sold all my company stock this week.

Patrol Report

2005-06-17T23:49:00.000-07:00

There are two of them -- ECPD Paracrime Unit cops in black tactical armor -- perched on the roof of the Hunan Hotel. The troopers are backlit by the neon glare of Chinatown, so I don't even have to zoom in with my goggle optics to see that they're on dragnet duty - they've created a mini-bunker bristling with antennae and rifles and spotting scopes. They look like post-apocalypse deer hunters waiting up in a blind for something big to wander by.

I'm about two blocks away on another roof, hiding behind some HVAC units. I had been bopping along on patrol, listening to... You know, it's not important what I was listening to. I was minding my own business, keeping the city safe, etc., when I spotted the surveillance post, so I ducked under cover, and here I am. They haven't seen me. I scan the surrounding area until I'm satisfied that there is only one post, then sit down and consider the situation. I start chewing on a Power Bar from the utility belt.

I gotta call Margo, I told her I would. Well, Connor told her I would. You know what I mean. I flip open the transat phone.

Her phone rings and rings.

Crap! The voice changer spray! Why is it so hard to remember the fucking thing? Am I self-sabotaging or what?

Her voice mail picks up. "Hi, it's Margo. I can't take your call right now --"

I tear the voice changer from my belt - it's like an asthma spray - and take a deep hit.

"--but if you leave a message at the beep, I'll get back to you. Probably."

Beep.

"Good evening Ms. Thompson, it's the uh, Velvet Marauder," I say in my altered Robert Goulet voice. "I wanted to thank you for you help. I've uh, concluded my investigation and will be taking action. Soon. So, uh, thank you. I'm also very sorry about your car -- about your car getting destroyed like that. That's all. I'll touch base with you once this is all over. Uhh, have a good one."

I snap shut the phone with a groan at my own stupidity.

"Have a good one?" I say to no one in particular. "Have a good one? What the hell is wrong with me?"

God, you would think that I would have thought about what I was going to say. I'm so uncool. It's probably better that she wasn't there, I would have just made a bigger ass of myself in person. What hero says "have a good one?" Gas Station Attendant Man?

Pissed at myself, I pop to my feet and check on the Paracrime deer hunters. Still there. I devour the rest of my Power Bar and consider how I can childishly lash out at these cops to salvage some self-respect. I wish I could eavesdrop on the Paracrime Unit's radio frequency, but they changed it months ago and I haven't been able to find it again.

You know what? Let's just keep this simple. I look around the roof for something appropriate. There are a bunch of empty beer bottles in a corner. Some kids must have come up here to drink. They're perfect.

The first bottle falls short and torpedoes through one of the Hunan Hotel's windows.

"Oops. Shit."

The troopers hear the bottle hit, and start looking around frantically. That woke them up.

I throw another beer bottle. Direct hit. The bottle explodes against the deer blind with a brittle splash of glass. The Paracrime troopers leap to their feet, wildly swinging their guns around, screaming into their radios. They're not hurt, their armor protects them, but they're a little rattled. It makes me laugh. I'm a dick like that.

"Hey!" I yell in my chemically altered voice. "Officers! Over here!"

They start looking around. I jump up and down, waving my arms. "Officers! Hey!"

The cops spot me. One of them looks at me through a pair of binoculars while the other calls in my position to Paracrime. I wave to them.

Then I hop around and smack my butt in the universal sign for "kiss my ass." Seriously, everyone in the universe knows what that means. Dolphins know what that means.

"You guys SUCK!" I yell, then leap off the rooftop.

By the time I hit Queen's Row I can hear the Sherriff's Department helicopter overhead, looking for me. I drop down into an alley way and walk the last 100 yards to my parked car. Then I slip into the Friday night traffic and drive home, smirking the entire time.

I've had my fun. Tommorrow night I hit QuantumWorks.

Fuck it, I might die tommorrow: I was listening to the Pretty in Pink soundtrack on patrol tonight. Okay? Everybody happy?

Again, not gay.

Margo Report

2005-06-17T15:05:00.000-07:00

I’m in the parking garage, sitting in the Saab eating a sub sandwich from Gino’s, this great little mom and pop sandwich joint on Atlantic not far from the office. If you’re ever in Evergreen City, check it out. Anyway, I’m sitting in my car eating and listening to Science Friday on NPR. They have an interesting program today about the origins of that evil death rock zombie-making meteor that the Storm Riders destroyed last November. Remember, when a fragment of the death rock landed up in the Yukon and turned everything Bad? Anyway, the theory is –

There’s a loud knock on the passenger window that scares the hell out of me.

Margo leans down and waves through the glass. I unlock the door and she slips in. Man, good thing I’m anal about keeping my car clean.

“This where you eat your lunch, Mackenzie?”

“Not a lot. I was just in the mood for some privacy today.”

“You want me to go?” she asks, putting her hand on the door handle.

“No!” I say too quickly. “No, no you’re cool. It’s all right.”

Today Margo is wearing a crisp white fitted blouse and a long black and white poplin skirt in a floral print, and cute little black bangle earrings. Trust me, she looks good. She smells good, too. That uniquely Margo scent fills the car, overwhelming the smell of raw onions in my sub.

“Hey, have you heard from our, um, mutual friend?” She means the Velvet Marauder.

“No.”

“God damn it, I knew this was going to happen,” she says ruefully.

“What?”

“I risk my ass and my job getting him this information, and then he just cuts me out of the loop. Typical male bullshit.”

“He’s probably just concerned about your safety,” I say, which is true.

“I’m not asking to fight supervillains and stuff, I just want to know what’s going on. It’s not fair; I mean, I brought the whole thing to his attention in the first place, I’m the whistle blower here.”

“Exactly,” I say. “This is why you should have as little to do with what comes next as possible.”

Her eyes narrow suspiciously. “What comes next? What’s coming next, Mackenzie?”

“Nothing good, presumably. Violence, destruction.”

“You sound like you know what’s going on,” she says. “Have you talked to him? To Velvet Marauder?”

“No…” I say lamely. Even I don’t believe me.

“Oh come ON, Mackenzie!” She punches my shoulder. Hard. “What’s going on? You’re hiding something! You talked to him, didn’t you?”

“Really, Margo –“

“Liar! What’s going on? Why is he talking to you and not me? Is it because I’m a girl?”

“No! Come on, I don’t know anything.” I’m whining now.

“You are like, the worst liar ever,” she says.

“Fine. Fine! I’ll tell you what: I’ll have him call you tonight. He can explain everything.”

“What do you know? Give me a hint at least.”

I take a deep breath. “Well, I think he’s going to take some sort of action this weekend, when the building is empty.”

“What sort of action?” she says, eagerly.

“I don’t know, man.”

“Mackenzie…” she groans, frustrated.

“Really. Really. I’ll have him call you tonight, okay?”

“Okay.” She’s calming down a little. “Okay.”

“Great.”

Margo looks over at my sandwich. “That looks good. Can I have a bite of that?”

I almost tell her to get her own damn sandwich, but I end up giving her half of it. I'm a sucker.

The calm before "it's on"

2005-06-17T13:08:00.000-07:00

I pack up a few things at work today; stuff I don’t want to get destroyed. My GameBoy. A picture of Colin and I when we were kids. Some CDs. This really expensive pen that I never use. I throw all the crap into a box and walk it out to my car.

As I’m walking down the main hallway in the secure area on The Ninth Floor, the one with the alien potted plants, I pass Ted Bradbury in the hall. He just gives me a look; no smart-ass comments from Big Ted today. Fine, I’m not in the mood to play footsy with supervillains today.

I pass through the security doors and out into the offices where all the Normal People work. Here, people are working on payroll, or taxes, or R&D, or marketing, or whatever. They’re gossiping about that bitch in accounts payable, or who’s sleeping with whom, or maybe they’re passing dumb joke emails around or talking about last night’s game. Normal stuff. Office stuff. The kind of stuff I used to do every day when I worked downstairs with Fred Schneider and Corine and Wookie and all those guys. Hundreds and hundreds of people work in The Company’s main office, and 99% of them have nothing whatsoever to do with the QuantumWorks project and the weird behind-the-scenes supervillain games that have been going on.

And if I’m successful this weekend, I’ll bet most of them are going to lose their jobs. The Company is going to blow up Enron-style.

An Adventure in Babysitting

2005-06-16T23:41:00.000-07:00

So I babysit little Hector for Mitch and Lisa.

I know what you're thinking; this is going to be a cute anecdote about the big tough superhero guy running around in a panic trying to find the right ointment, or trying to clean up poo or trying to get the baby to stop crying. Like in Three Men and a Baby, or that one scene in Tootsie. And when the parents get home they find their baby sleeping victoriously in the arms of the vanquished babysitter, who is covered in baby powder and has passed out from exhaustion, and isn't that charming?

That did not happen.

Or maybe you're thinking this is a little story about how the big tough superhero guy realizes that the true heroes are parents who do their best every day raising their kids in an unpredictable, crazy world, and maybe the real way to save the world isn't by punching out maniacs in costumes but is by making sure that the next generation of tenants on this planet value things like love, sharing, and justice.

Okay, that might have happened a little bit.

Mitch and Lisa get home three hours later and find little Hector and I asleep on the couch. I have my shirt unbottoned and the baby is sprawled out on my bare chest sleeping peacefully while I watch Wings of the Luftwaffe on the History Channel.

"Everything okay?" Lisa asks while Mitch looks around for property damage.

"Yeah, we're just hanging out watching the Nazi Channel."

"Did he take a bottle?" Lisa asks. She looks surprised to find her kid alive.

"Uh-huh."

"Did you change his diaper?" Lisa asks.

"Yeah, no problem."

"Did you remember the ointment, the stuff in the orange tube?" Lisa asks.

"Yeah."

"Did he fuss at all?" Lisa asks.

"A little. I did the bare chest thing like you said and he fell asleep right away. He's a little snuggler, isn't he?"

Lisa smiles.

"Yes, you're a little snuggler, aren't you Hector?" I say in a dog-voice to the sleeping kid.

"Wow, so... everything's okay," Lisa says.

Mitch returns. "Nothing broken or burned down. I can't believe it."

I smile sourly. "Ass," I say. "Drank all your Snapple, by the way."

Lisa strokes her sleeping baby's head, smiling. "Looks like you guys got along okay. Thanks a lot Connor."

"No problem. Hey, can you lift him up off of me? I've been lying here for the past hour because I didn't want to wake him up. Now I've got a bladder full of Snapple and I have to pee like a goddamn race horse."

I think I did pretty good with the babysitting thing. I mean, the baby survived, so that's Job #1 accomplished right there. I wouldn't want to make a habit of babysitting, but at least I know it can be done.

Climbing skyscrapers for beginners

2005-06-16T01:07:00.000-07:00

There’s a good wind blowing up here tonight on top of The Company’s parking garage. I stand on the edge of the twelve story building, suited up, looking down a few hundred feet to the building’s loading bay. Beyond that, the rail yard where I fought the Insekt robot sprawls under bright fog lights, and beyond that, The Bay.

I take a deep breath, snap the glider wings on to the clips on my gauntlets, and step off the building.

The wind fills the nylon wings and I take flight. I soar out away from the parking garage, letting an updraft pull me higher, and then I arc back towards The Company’s building and zero in on my target: the Ninth Floor.

The black glass wall rushes towards me. I pull back, flaring the glider wings to slow my approach. I’m coming in fast –

SMACK!

I slap into the glass doing about twenty miles per hour. I make a horrible noise when I hit, like the world’s largest seagull meeting a glassy fate. Damn, it feels like I broke my nose…

“Shit!”

Then I start to fall.

“Shit!”

Panicking, I scramble against the glass, but there isn’t the tiniest crack or protrusion to grab on to. Then I remember my suction cups, and kick and swat the glass trying to make them stick.

I’m falling, kicking, swearing –

I jerk to a halt. One of the big cups on the palm of my hand sucks on to the glass, stopping my fall. I quickly slap the other palm cup on the glass, then kick until the two suction cups on the toes of my boots grab hold. Okay. Okay, I’m sticking to the building now.

I look around. I slid a couple of floors; I think I’m on six.

Slowly, carefully, I start climbing up the glass wall with the suction cups. It’s slow going at first, because you have to trigger a suction release button that un-sucks the cup, then move the cup, make sure it’s secure, then repeat the process with another cup. After a while I get in a rhythm and soon I’m clinging to the black glass outside the Ninth Floor, where the mysterious QuantumWorks project is being run.

I figure that this is the easiest, least-risky way of snooping around. Every other option I’ve come up with involves jeopardizing my secret identity, and even though I think that Ted Bradbury and those clowns already know my identity, I’d rather be discrete than not. If this doesn’t work I’ll move on to Plan B.

According to my calculations and the information Margo gave me, I should be right outside the ultra-restricted Nerd Zone inside the already restricted QuantumWorks wing where I work. I have reason to believe that the Nerd Zone is a tesseract chamber; it’s larger on the inside than it is on the outside. In other words, The Company is using dimensional technology to “fold” a huge lab into a small area. In realspace, I would be right inside the inner chamber of the Nerd Zone instead of hanging nine stories above the loading bay.

You’d think it would feel weird, being so close to a tesseract. I was expecting my fillings to ache or to be dizzy or smell bacon cooking or something, but I don’t feel a thing. Maybe I’m wrong about the whole thing.

I switch on my goggle’s optic systems and take a look through the tinted glass. Hunh. Nothing on infrared, nothing on ultraviolet, nothing on the passive EM setting… I can’t see through the glass at all.

“Weird,” I say to myself, then shimmy up to the tenth floor. I switch on the goggle’s optics –

-- and I can see just fine. I look through the tinted window in on a conference room: table, chairs, whiteboard, potted plants…

OK, obviously the Ninth Floor is shielded from conventional surveillance. I don’t know if this changes anything, it just confirms that I’m not high – there really is some serious shit going on here. Fine.

I release the suction cups and spring backwards off the glass and into the air.

Time for Plan B, which involves fucking shit up big time.

Care package - suction cups and incendiary flares

2005-06-15T14:23:00.000-07:00

I got the package from My Guy today – a replacement topcoat, a bandolier of solar flares, and a set of suction cups for climbing.

The topcoat fits great and feels lighter. It’s the same nomex/Kevlar/ballistic nylon weave, but it feels stretchier, less heavy than the last coat. I’ll have to ask My Guy what he did differently this time.

I put the solar flares in the fireproof safe in my Secret Chamber, which doesn’t smell nearly as bad now. I simmered some orange peels* and now the place smells citrus fresh instead of smelling like burnt plastic and ass. Anyway, I usually carry just four solar flares at a time in a pouch on my utility belt. They certainly are handy, the solar flares. They saved my ass in that fight against Parka, and worked pretty well against Green Dragon. Thumbs up for solar flares, is what I’m saying.

I’m going to try the suction cups out tonight – I have a recon mission planned against The QuantumWorks project that requires some true wall crawling.

*Thanks Verity, for the tip!

My new enemy: Singing Guy

2005-06-14T16:32:00.000-07:00

There’s a guy in our office who sits near my bitch Chad out in the non-restricted area of the ninth floor who sings when he talks. I mean, not every word or anything, but the guy sings when he should speak. Every time I see this guy in the hall or in an elevator or wherever, he sings his salutations. He’s like a one-man Glee Club.

I have a presentation at two for the steering committee, and I have this snazzy hand-out that I whipped up in Publisher that I’m passing out to everybody. I need Chad to run off a couple dozen color copies so I walk out to his desk to give him a disc with the file on it.

Singing Guy is leaning against Chad’s desk with a cup of coffee in his hand. So as not to be a dick, I say hi as I walk up.

Singing Guy literally sings, “Good morn-innnng!”

I look at him and managed a pained smile. “You have a good weekend?” I ask.

“Soooper, soooper,” he says lyrically. It sounds like he’s about to bust out in some Gilbert & Sullivan number. “Got some golfin’ in, never bad, never bad…” He pantomimes swinging a golf club as he sings.

“Right on,” I say unenthusiastically, then turn to Chad. I don’t want to encourage Singing Guy by feeding him anymore questions.

I give Chad the disc and some brief instructions, then excuse myself. “See you later.”

“Have a good one!” Singing Guy sings.

Briefly I consider punching his jaw clean off his face. I could, you know.

Patrol Report

2005-06-13T01:36:00.000-07:00

Boring patrol tonight.

I hang around Chinatown then swing through Queen's Row. Nothing going on, crime-wise, but it's a nice warm summer night. There's a salty breeze blowing in from the ocean, so I practice gliding through the condos and mid-rises of Midtown with my suit's glider wings.

I'm listening to Pink Floyd's Momentary Lapse of Reason because I am a White Guy.

Shanghai'd

2005-06-12T18:34:00.000-07:00

We’re on the ninth hole at Sheffield, and as usual, I am just kicking Mitch’s ass. At this point I can’t tell if I’m a really good golfer, or if it’s just my powers. But really, who cares? Winning is the important thing, especially if you're beating one of your best friends.

“Hey, would you mind babysitting Hector on Thursday for us? Lisa’s got this thing she’s dragging me to.”

I stop before my five-yard putt and look up at Mitch.

“Me? Babysit?” I sound incredulous.

“What, do you have plans?” Mitch asks.

Well, yeah. Fighting crime, keeping the city safe, or catching up on all my Tivo’d Battlestar Galactica episodes. You know, important stuff. Non-baby stuff. Of course, I can’t say that, so I just kind of lamely go: “No…”

“So what’s the problem? It’s just for a few hours.”

“Does Lisa know you’re asking me?” I say.

“Of course.”

“For real? But it’s me.” I say.

“Believe me, you’re not our first choice. I wanted to get that hottie in Lisa’s book club to babysit, but that was a no-go. We’re desperate.”

“Great, thanks,” I say, sourly. “I’m the last on your list.”

“Well, yeah.”

“I don’t know, Mitch. Hector’s like… he’s like a little baby and shit.”

“Connor, he’s not like a little baby, he is a little baby,” Mitch says.

“Whatever.”

“Come on, dude,” he says.

“But I’m totally irresponsible, the last guy you would want taking care of your child.” I don’t mention that I have super-strength and I’m scared to death that I’d accidentally hurt his baby. How do you work that into a conversation?

“No, Lisa’s uncle Nick is the last guy I would want taking care of my child. You’re not even close to the top of the list.”

“I don’t know…” I already know I’m going to do it. Mitch knows it, too.

“Great!” he says. “Thanks Connor. Can you be at our house by six-thirty on Thursday?”

I sigh, and set up for my putt again. “Okay.”

“Attaboy.”

I miss my putt by a good ten feet. Shit.

Placing another order with My Guy

2005-06-11T20:41:00.000-07:00

Time to place an order with My Guy, my anonymous weapons and gadget dealer. I log in to a secure one-time-only chat room and place my order for a replacement topcoat. While I’m online I have a stroke of inspiration:

X9: The jacket will be ready in two days. Anything else?

ME: Yeah, do you have any suction cup things? For climbing glass walls?

X9: I have a standard set of four climbing cups, yes. Two for the palm, two for the toes. Their test weight is 350 lbs.

ME: Are they really big?

X9: No, they can fit in a large size utility belt pouch, which I’ll throw in free of charge. It’s not something you’d want to carry around with you all the time, but if you know you’re going to climb glass, you can just load the pouch on to your belt.

ME: That sounds awesome. I’ll take a set.

X9: OK.

ME: One other thing. I picked up a high-tech samurai type mask off of this villain guy, Green Dragon. It’s made of some sort of lightweight material, has some optics in it, and has a flamethrower feature so the wearer can spit fire. I’m not sure what else it does; the fire thing kind of made me nervous to screw around with it. Does it sound familiar?

X9: Sounds like a Yakuza design. They have a corps of assassins who wear masks like that.

ME: So you didn’t design it?

X9: No. Why do you ask?

ME: Just curious.

X9: I’d be happy to examine it and write up a user’s guide if you like. You’d have to ship it to me, of course.

ME: I don’t know…

X9: Where are you keeping it?

ME: Right now?

X9: Yes.

ME: At my headquarters.

X9: You know, it’s not uncommon for hardware like that to have tracking devices, or micro-GPS recorders that keep track of where the device has been…

ME: No shit?

X9: No shit.

ME: If it has one of these trackers, can you disable it?

X9: Yes.

ME: OK, fine, I’ll send it in.

X9: Good. I’ll return it within the week. Anything else?

ME: Yeah, how about another dozen solar flares? Those work great.

X9: I thought you’d like them. Those are very popular with my clients.

Whoever his clients may be... I’ve got a feeling My Guy plays both sides of the hero/villain street.

Patrol Report

2005-06-10T09:27:00.000-07:00

Tonight I go on patrol without my trademark faux-velvet topcoat, which was scorched by that damn mini-flamethrower in Green Dragon’s mask. I hop around Midtown in just my black nightstalker armor, and at first I feel like I’m running around in my underwear but after a while I get used to it. It’s kind of nice, actually. I didn’t realize how bulky that coat is.

I’m listening to Jane’s Addiction tonight on the suit’s audio system. The sky is cloudless and clear, and I wish I could turn off all the lights in the city for a minute and just check out the stars hidden by the urban glare. A nice breeze drifts in off The Bay. Summer in the E.C. is pleasant.

Swinging through Chinatown, I spy two Asian guys breaking into a shop through the rear door. I call 911 for once and give the operator the location, then stand on a rooftop overlooking the alley waiting for the ECPD to show up. This is one of those cases where yes, I could stop the two guys, but what happens when the police show up? What do they charge the guys with, getting their asses kicked by a superhero? And oddly enough, courts don’t accept testimony from masked men, so I can’t testify as a witness against them. No, the best thing is to just let the cops catch them red-handed and make the collar, as Lenny Briscoe would say.

In a matter of minutes two bike cops show up in the alley, and are soon joined by two more cops in a cruiser. The cops find the shop and quickly drag out the two guys, who can’t be more than sixteen, and slam them on the hood of the cop car.

One of the bike cops spots me watching them from above and points me out to his buddies. I give a jaunty lil’ wave to the cops and jump across the alley, high over their heads, then vanish into the night.

I’m feeling pretty chuffed as I head back to my car. That was a bit of mature decision making on my part, I think. See? I am growing. No longer a young padwan am I.

Margo Report

2005-06-09T16:07:00.000-07:00

“—so I’m trapped, right? Inside the car. The passenger seat has sort of been smooshed all around my right leg, and I can’t reach the seat belt. I’m freaking out, getting really claustrophobic. The car feels like it’s collapsing around me, right? I’m hyperventilating.”

“Kind of like Margot Kidder at the end of Superman,” I interject.

Margo stops telling her story, thrown off. “What?”

“In Superman. The movie. The scene at the end with the earthquake, you know, where Lois Lane’s car gets crushed and all the dirt’s pouring in and stuff…”

“Is that the one with Richard Pryor?” Margo asks.

“No.”

“Oh. I think I’ve only seen the one with Richard Pryor.”

“Superman III,” I say. “That one sucks.”

“I thought so,” she says.

“The first one’s good, though. And half of the second one.”

She takes a sip of her latte. “Can we get back to my story? Can I get a little Margo time here?”

“Sorry, go ahead,” I say.

“Where was I?”

“Trapped. Hyperventilating.”

She continues excitedly recounting the fight between The Velvet Marauder (moi) and Green Dragon from her unique perspective inside her crushed and flaming Nissan. We’re sitting on the patio at the Starbucks in the lobby of our building, Margo and I, drinking our various beverages and taking a long lunch. It’s another beautiful day in Evergreen City – blue skies and seagulls.

The wind makes Margo’s hair dance. She’s wearing a sleeveless white top with a cardigan draped over her toned shoulders, and she has white Jackie O sunglasses on. I think she’s fabulous.

She gets to the part where I knock Green Dragon out. “And this Green Dragon guy is choking him, right? With this wire. He’s on Velvet Marauder’s back pulling back really hard. I thought his head was going to come off.” So did I. “And so Velvet Marauder’s got this guy on his back, right, strangling him. What do you think he does?”

I shrug or shake my head or something, pretending like I don’t know.

“He hops up into the ceiling. The dragon guy’s head goes conk against the ceiling, and he just goes limp. I can still hear the noise his head made when he hit the concrete or cement or whatever. Ugh.”

“Wow,” I say.

“I know! It was the most terrifying and exciting thing that has ever happened to me! I mean, it was like: big superhero battle, right there!”

“Wow…” I say.

“Oh, and you know what he says, The Velvet Marauder? Right after he smashes Green Dragon’s head into the ceiling, he goes, ‘Low overhead clearance, asshole.’ I mean, it was just like what you would expect a superhero to say, it was brilliant!”

It makes my heart smile to hear that.

“That’s awesome,” I say. “So then what?”

“Oh, by then the cops were about to show up. He took the mask off Green Dragon and split before they could arrive.” Margo smiles. “But not before I kissed him.”

My heart suddenly starts thumping around in my ribcage. “You kissed him? For real?”

“Well, it wasn’t like a total passionate kiss or anything, but yeah. I gave him a little sugar.”

“Tongue?”

She swats my arm in faux outrage. “No! It was just like a little thank you thing. Nothing sexual. Although I wouldn’t rule anything out…” Her eyebrows arch a little when she says that.

Hunh. So Margo digs The Velvet Marauder.

“I heard he was gay,” I say, fishing for more info.

“I read that somewhere, but I don’t think so,” she says. “He didn’t register on my gaydar.”

I laugh. “Not that it would be bad if he was,” I add, unnecessarily.

“It would be for me!” she says.

“I don’t know, Margo. Having a crush on a superhero is so cliché.”

“You say that because you’ve never been rescued by one,” she says.

We both drink our lattes in a comfortable quiet. God, I am so happy right now.

Damn that mask!

2005-06-08T01:22:00.000-07:00

I almost burnt down my house tonight.

I’ll have to get a new flatscreen monitor and keyboard, because I pretty much melted the ones I had. I set up fans to air out the Secret Chamber but the place still smells like smoke hours later.

So I was in the Secret Chamber, in my underwear (boxers) watching the local news and checking out the cool techno-samurai face mask I jacked from Green Dragon. I was actually hoping to hear some news about my strange attacker, but no such luck. The big news today is the groundbreaking for construction of the new monorail line that will snake through the city. KORN has footage of Mayor Chip McChesney posing with some guys in suits, all holding a golden shovel. I hate that guy, but I’m psyched about the monorail, strictly from a professional perspective. What superhero hasn’t longed to battle an enemy on top of a speeding monorail? I say hurry up and build it and send in the ninjas, baby.

Anyway, I was sitting down, sort of half watching the TV and half fiddling with Green Dragon’s mask, when a huge jet of fire just fucking erupts from the mask and spurts across the room, torching a command console and an expensive fucking flatscreen monitor. Suddenly half the Secret Chamber is on fire.

I say something apropos like, “Oh shit!” and grab a fire extinguisher. The fire is quickly out, but my relatively small secret headquarters is now filled with bitter plastic-smelling smoke.

Swearing, I open the secret door into my living room and let the smoke roll out into my house. God, I am such an idiot. I really am. I should be ticketed for idiocy. Playing with flame-spewing supervillain mask = not smart.

I hit the exhaust fans in the Chamber to hopefully suck some smoke out. I installed the fans myself after realizing that without proper ventilation, my Secret Chamber quickly became a humid, farty dungeon, which is never cool. I mean, I never have people over to the Secret Chamber or anything, but I still have standards. I don’t want to be the hero with the skuzzy headquarters.

Well, I’m not going to screw around with that mask anymore. I wanted it for my modest trophy collection, but now I’m not so sure. I’m nervous to even check out the mask’s other features now – what if it has like, a face recognition system and if anybody but Green Dragon puts it on, it shoots spikes into the person’s skull. In my world, that could happen.

Maybe I should send the mask to My Guy, see if he can tell me more about it. I need to order a new topcoat anyway; mine got sort of trashed in the fight. I’ll email him.

I decide to skip patrol and spend the rest of the night cleaning up my damn Secret Chamber.

The Nerd Zone

2005-06-07T16:07:00.000-07:00

Margo isn’t at work today. I can’t blame her; I wouldn’t come in to work either if I had almost burned to death the night before.

It’s a beautiful sunny day in the E.C.. I take a long lunch and go shopping down at Waterfront Park. It helps me think, what can I say? I get a kick-ass pair of Bacco Bucci loafers on sale and picked up a green tie at Fonte’s, because you never know when you’ll need a green tie. Again: not gay.

After lunch, instead of working I pore over Margo’s notes about this whole QuantumWorks conspiracy. I look at the floor plan she printed out of the ninth floor and the photos she took on her phone camera of the restricted IT area on the floor.

I need to get back there, to the Nerd Zone. It’s the key to this whole thing. The Nerd Zone (I’m going to call it that from now on) is a limited access area; only the geeks with the red badges can get back there. Mysterious figures in hazmat suits have been seen in the Nerd Zone, and occasionally the smell of cooking bacon wafts out of the Zone and into the rest of the ninth floor. Based on everything I’ve seen, I think the Nerd Zone is actually a large high-tech supervillain lab that exists in a tesseract room – it’s a huge area smashed into a small space through the wonders of dimensional technology. The whole thing gives me the creeps.

But how to get back there?

Maybe I should go shopping after work and think about this.

I suck

2005-06-06T08:29:00.000-07:00

Sorry guys, I promise I will resume normal posting early next week...

Not dead,
VM

Giddy vigilante

2005-06-06T02:52:00.000-07:00

As I head back over the rooftops of the South End towards my Saab, Green Dragon’s jade mask in hand, I realize that Margo kissed me.

She kissed me.

Granted, it wasn’t like, a deep passionate kiss or anything. More of a chaste Princess Leia/Luke Skywalker “good luck” kiss, but still – she kissed me. I saved Margo’s life, and she kissed me. Just like a real hero.

I honestly can’t help myself, but Coldplay’s “Clocks” is playing in my head as I spring and vault over the warehouses and railroad cars south of the city. I’m sappy like that; my subconscious apparently has no taste or sense of irony.

I turn on some White Zombie on my suit’s audio system to drown out the Coldplay, but it doesn’t fit the mood, so I stop for a second and pick out something appropriate. Ah. Neko Case. Now I can finish off the evening on an appropriate note.

She kissed me.

Green Dragon, Part Two

2005-06-05T17:08:00.000-07:00

That’s one thing about being a superhero: there’s always some asshole out there who wants to kill you.

The guy in black wearing the jade samurai mask walks steadily towards me across the empty ninth floor of the Metro parking garage. He’s about sixty yards away and closing.

“Who is that?” Margo says behind me.

I whirl around. Why isn’t she in her car? “Margo, get the hell out of here!”

“Prepare to die, Marauder!” the guy yells. He’s not very original, whoever he is. He’s about forty yards away. Margo is running around to the other side of her car and hopping in.

“I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure,” I say, readying myself for the attack.

“Green Dragon!” he shouts through his grimacing Asian mask, and then breaks into a run.

Margo starts her car behind me.

Green Dragon launches himself into a full-on flying kick at about ten yards. He must think I’m slow, or perhaps he’s testing me. I easily dodge the kick –

--but as he passes by in mid-air he casts flash powder at me. Fwoosh! A fleeting but intense ball of fire engulfs my face. The auto-polarizing goggles immediately compensate for the glare, so I don’t go blind, but it’s still dazzling. I brace for the real attack --

Green Dragon rebounds off Margo’s car and springs at me like a jaguar. He whacks me in the jaw with a wicked mid-air roundhouse punch that sends me sprawling. He’s strong, maybe in my class.

Good, that means I don’t have to worry about killing the fucker.

“Today you die!” he yells.

He kicks me in the head. I take it, wait for another one…

I grab Green Dragon’s calf before the kick can land. I twist, and he goes down with a roar. His other foot – I have enough clarity to notice that he’s wearing ninja tabi, cloven toed moccasins – swings up and smashes into my face. I lose my grip.

We both pop up and away from each other, crouched in ready stances. Margo has her car in reverse and is trying to back up.

“What’s your story, dickhead?” I say, wiping blood from my mouth.

“You’re my story, Marauder,” Green Dragon says. “You’re my ticket to the big leagues.”

“I’m your ticket to Painstown, baby.” I fire a couple of Marauderangs at him.

He blocks and dodges the spinning Marauderangs. I thought he would, but as he’s doing that – I strike.

With a Robert Goulet battle cry I leap the short distance between us and drive a right hook into his mask. He flattens under the impact. I get in another punch as he goes down.

“You like that?” I yell. “You want some mo—hulgh!”

He drives his elbow into my sternum. I fold in two.

Green Dragon hops into the air and kicks me – his feet jackhammer into my chest, sending me flying through the air –

-- right into Margo’s car.

I strike the Sentra’s passenger side door, crumpling it like a soda can. I’m vaguely aware of the sound of her screaming and the side-impact air bags popping. Glass from the window rains down on me.

Gah, I’m having a hard time catching a breath. Fucker knocked the wind out of me.

Stuck in Margo’s car. I smell gas. I reach up and grab crumpled metal, start pulling myself free…

Here he comes.

I wrench a Solar Flare out of my belt and hurl it in Green Dragon’s direction. It fizzes, then explodes in a brilliant flash of light. He screams.

“Margo, you all right?” I yell.

“Yeah,” she calls from inside her crumpled car. “Just great.” I think I detect a note of sarcasm.

I pull myself out of Margo’s Nissan. Green Dragon is staggering a bit, disoriented. His chest is singed and his jade samurai mask is blackened. He kicks the brightly burning flare out of the way and turns to face me, shaking his head to clear the haze.

“So has somebody put a hit out on me, or are you just doing this because you’re ambitious and stupid or what’s the deal?”

Green Dragon laughs. “You mean you don’t know?”

“Enlighten me,” I say.

“My pleasure!” He spits flame at me. He fucking spits flame at me! A blast of fire erupts from his samurai mask and engulfs me. I stagger back into Margo’s Nissan. You know, the one that’s leaking gasoline?

Margo’s car instantly goes up in flames.

“Shit!”

I’m on fire, Margo’s car is on fire. I’m not worried so much about me; my suit is fireproof and so am I for the most part, but I’m pretty sure Margo isn’t.

Green Dragon is laughing. “Burn, Marauder!”

I can hear Margo screaming, trapped inside her burning car. I have to end this quick or she’s dead.

“Burn!”

Still on fire, I grab hold of the caved in passenger door on the car. I extend the climbing talons in my gauntlets, which pop out of the fingertips like cat claws into the car door. I can smell the Nomex outer layer of my suit bubbling and smoking. Smoke fills my lungs.

“Burn!”

Everybody has been in a social situation where afterwards you wish you had said something witty or stinging or appropriate. It’s like that for me every time I fight some goon like Green Dragon here. Afterwards I sit around in the Secret Chamber nursing my wounds thinking of all the clever things I should have but didn’t say while fighting the Jet Pack Mafia or somebody. When I first started the superhero thing and was establishing my brand, I envisioned The Velvet Marauder as sort of a dashing, mysterious hero (more on the Zorro end of the spectrum) and I thought that I’d be able to incorporate some banter and tag lines into my crime fighting. You know, to help reinforce the brand identity. But you know what? It’s hard to make the funnies when somebody’s kicking your teeth in or a robot is swinging your ass around in the air. I’ve gotten a couple quips in here and there, and I try to keep it light, but I’ve got a pretty lame track record as far as superhero banter goes. Which is why I told myself that next time I get in a fight, I’m going to remember to say something witty and appropriate.

I think of this while I’m still on fire as I rip the door off of Margo’s burning Nissan. I can feel Green Dragon’s presence behind me, sense him through the shimmering heat and rolling black smoke of the fire.

It’s Go Time.

“You know, this has been fun…” I call through the blaze, gripping the door.

I swing the car door around in a big whooshing arc, like a battle axe.

“But I’m showing you the door!”

There’s a terrible car-crash noise as I swat Green Dragon with the burning car door. The door busts apart and the man in black goes flying into a concrete pillar twenty yards away.

I jump back into the burning car and reach for Margo. Her beautiful face appears out of the smoke and I feel her hands clutching my arm. I lift her up and out of the car. She’s coughing. Gently I toss her down and away from the car, and then hop after her.

“My car…” she says, dazed.

The gas tank on the Nissan finally goes, and the car explodes. We both step back from the sudden blast of heat.

“My car!” Margo yells. “Shit- my car!”

“Sorry…” I say lamely.

Margo looks over at me, stunned. Her face is smudged with black and her hair is a charmingly tangled mess. The black leather jacket she’s wearing is steaming and charred. “You, um, you’re still on fire.”

“Oh.” I shrug off my burning faux-velvet topcoat and pat out any smoldering spots on my black nightstalker armor. I smell like burnt plastic. “Thanks.”

“The notes,” she says, looking around. “Have you seen – LOOK OUT!”

Green Dragon leaps on my back. Before I can react I feel a wire go tight around my throat. Margo screams.

I try to hook my thumbs into the garrote, but it’s no good. He’s up on my back pulling hard on the wire, his knees digging into my shoulders. Feels like he’s crushing my Adam’s apple.

“I’ll have your head!” he yells. “That’s all I need anyway!”

He yanks back violently. I gag. If the neck of my suit didn’t have a reinforced collar, he’d have decapitated me by now.

My vision is going hazy. I can see Margo, and the burning car, and the garage…

Ah. Got it.

I bend my knees, and then hop directly up with all my might. There’s a sickening thump as Green Dragon’s head smashes up against the low cement ceiling of the parking garage. The garrote suddenly goes slack, and he topples off my shoulders and on to the ground.

Massaging my throat, I say, “Low overhead clearance, asshole.” It’s the best I can do under the circumstances. I know, I need help.

Margo runs up. “Oh my God, are you all right?”

I cough. “Fine.”

“Who is he?”

Kneeling down next to Green Dragon, I roll his limp body over. I pull his jade samurai mask off – it’s surprisingly light weight. This is going in the trophy collection for sure.

Under the mask is an Asian guy, mid-twenties, and unconscious.

“Do you know him?” Margo asks.

“Never seen him before, never heard of him.”

“Do you think he’s from The Company? Hired to kill us? Or me?”

“I don’t think so,” I say. “I got the impression he was after me. I’ve made enemies…”

Sirens wail in the distance.

“Listen, you’re going to have to talk to the cops,” I say. “Tell them that you were just getting your car, that you got in the way of this fight. It happens to people all the time, they’ll believe you. Don’t mention The Company, okay?”

“Got it,” she says. “Got it. My car…”

“Margo, let the paramedics check you out. You’ve got some burns; they’re going to want to take you to the hospital. Are you listening to me?”

She scratches her head and looks at me like she’s trying to remember something. I think she’s in shock. “My car…” she mutters.

“Sorry,” I say. “I’m sorry you got caught in the middle of this.”

“You saved me,” she says. Margot’s face glows warmly in the firelight.

I wave a hand dismissively. “It was nothing, really.”

She looks at me funny.

The sirens are louder now, echoing through the parking garage.

“I better get out of here.” Oh, shit! My voice! I sound like me! Like Connor Mackenzie! Green Dragon must have fucked up my vocal chords with his garrote.

Margo squints at me – does she recognize my voice?

I clear my throat and say huskily, “Damn, that guy did a number on my throat.”

“Right,” she grimaces. “Ouch. Listen, thanks for helping me with the conspiracy and saving my life and stuff.”

She rushes forward and plants a quick dry kiss on my lips. “Thanks,” she says, quietly.

And then a pair of ECPD cop cars squeals up the ramp and on to the ninth floor, sirens wailing.

“See ya,” I say, and, with Green Dragon’s mask in hand I take a flying leap out of the garage and into the night.

Green Dragon, Part One

2005-06-04T17:30:00.000-07:00

“I'm a man, and I’m torn between vengeance and fashion”
Electric Six "Vengeance and Fashion"

The spot I’ve picked for my rendezvous with Margo is a ten story parking garage at the edge of Midtown near Waterfront Park and the Metro Mall. It’s a good spot – it’s open 24 hours and connects to the Metro building by several sky bridges. There are no parking attendants, just an automated gate. Late on a weeknight nobody should be around up on the ninth floor of the garage. I know this because I often use the Metro garage as a rest stop when I patrol Midtown. It’s good to have places where you can chill out unobserved for a minute and drink some water or change the music on the MP3 player, maybe take a piss.

I hang out on top of an office building across the street from the parking garage. At 11:27 I watch Margo’s silver Nissan enter the garage from Wellman Street. She pays for a ticket and starts driving her car up a corkscrew system of ramps. Doesn’t look like anybody’s following her. After a last glance around for lurking Paracrime cops or Malefactors, I leap over to the parking garage and wait for her.

Margo’s car pulls up a ramp on to the empty ninth floor. She sees me and pulls into a spot near the corner of the parking garage.

Shit! My voice!

Scrambling, I rip the inhaler from a pouch on my utility belt and take a hit. The aerosol affects my vocal chords, and for the next couple of hours I will sound exactly like entertainer Robert Goulet. That’s slack; I should have changed my voice beforehand. I’m an idiot.

Margo steps out of her Nissan on the opposite side of the car and keeps the door open. I don’t know if she’s purposely keeping the car between me and her, but it’s smart of her. She’s wearing a tailored black leather jacket, a white T-shirt, and faded jeans. She looks nervous.

“Ms. Thompson, thank you for coming,” I say in my new voice, walking towards the car. I look around. The place is empty and nobody followed her. Seems okay.

“Sure,” she says, looking around, too. “I, um, I have an envelope for you with some notes and stuff.”

“That’s excellent.” I stop on the other side of her Nissan. “Can I take a look?”

“Right,” she says, pulling a manila envelope out of her car.

I open the envelope. There are pages of handwritten notes, a few pictures, and a floor plan. I scan through the notes – mostly it’s stuff that I already know, but the photos are interesting; low-res images of a guy in a silver radiation suit in a high-tech chamber of some kind.

“Those are from my cell phone,” she says. “That’s a shot of the IT annex for the QuantumWorks project. It’s a restricted area. That’s looking through the sliding doors in the rear of the annex. Sorry they’re not better pictures…”

I hold up the floor plan. “And what’s this?”

“Here, I’ll show you.” Margo comes around the front of the car. She sets the floor plan and photos on the warm hood of the Nissan. “This is a map of the ninth floor of the building. Here’s my office, and here’s the IT area. Okay? There’s a foyer here where people without clearance can talk to the IT guys, some meeting rooms here.” Her nervousness has completely vanished. I have to hand it to her, she adapts quickly. And she smells like shampoo.

“Now take a look at these pictures,” she says, pointing at the blurry shots of the rad-suit guy standing in a chamber of some kind. “I took these pictures here, in the foyer, through two open doors, okay? And –“

“And this guy here in the hazmat suit is standing in a room that’s not on the building’s floor plan,” I say.

“It’s not just not on the plan. It’s not anywhere. I mean, this room would be nine stories above the loading bays, floating in space. I’m not really good at spatial relations, but you can’t tell me that that chamber fits in the building.”

She’s right.

“It’s a tesseract,” I say.

“A what?”

“A tesseract. It’s a space that is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. These people you work for are monkeying around with dimensional technology. This QuantumWorks project, it uses proprietary technology, right?”

“Yeah, they’re very secretive about it,” Margo says. “Patents, and all that.”

“And QuantumWorks, it’s like a super-search engine, right?” I work for the same pricks she does, so I know all this stuff, but the Velvet Marauder doesn’t necessarily know, so I have to play dumb. “Mackenzie said it was a meta-historical search engine.”

“Right, it can look up any material that’s ever been on the internet, like ever. Even emails. So you think QuantumWorks is powered by this dimensional technology.”

“Right.” It makes sense. No wonder they’re so paranoid about it; dimensional technology is highly restricted in the States. Too many mad scientists and accidents like the Pittsburgh Incident put the brakes on interdimensional research in the 90’s.

“Can we get back to the tesseract thing?” Margo says. “So this room here, with the guy –“ She holds up the photos. “This room is in another dimension?”

“I don’t know, I’m not an expert on stuff like this,” I say, which is really understating things. “But it’s either in a pocket dimension, or the room itself is dimensionally transcendental and is just bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. Like in Dr. Who.”

“Pardon?”

“On Dr. Who, he traveled around in the TARDIS, his phone booth time machine, right? And when he goes inside, it’s huge on the inside and high tech, but on the outside it’s still a phone booth. It is dimensionally transcendental.”

“I’ve never watched Dr. Who,” she says.

“Well, you’re missing out.”

“Apparently.” She grins at me. We have a little moment where we look at each other, and then:

“Okay, well, thank you for the material,” I say.

“Oh, you’re welcome. Thank you. I mean, I hope it’s helpful. What do we do next?”

“Well, you go back to work and forget this ever happened, and I take it from here,” I say, putting the stuff back into the envelope.

“Uh, that doesn’t work for me,” she says. She has stopped smiling.

“Well, it’s going to have to. You’ve already put yourself in enough danger just by meeting with me. You’ve done your part –“

“You wouldn’t even have this stuff if it weren’t for me!” she yells.

I hear something.

She yells, "Now you’ve got your notes and I’m getting cut out of the picture? I’m the only inside person you have in The Company! I mean, aside from Mackenzie, but the point is –“

“Shhh!” I hold up my hand and she goes quiet.

“Hang on.” I walk away from Margo and the car, craning my neck to one side, listening. I dial up the tolerance on my suit’s audio system.

Footsteps.

At the far side of this level of the garage a man in black walks down the ramp from the tenth floor. He points at me. At first I think it’s a ninja – he’s dressed in a black bodysuit – but then I see the green mask.

“Velvet Marauder!” His call echoes through the empty garage. I hear Margo gasp behind me.

I zoom in on him with my goggle optics: He’s wearing a jade green samurai mask with a leering, menacing face. No obvious weapons. Doesn’t look familiar…

He starts walking towards us.

“Your time has come!” he yells, stabbing a finger at me.

“Ahh, shit,” I mutter.

I turn to Margo. “I think you better get out of here.”

(CONTINUED in Part Two)

The Sensitivity Review Panel

2005-06-03T15:42:00.000-07:00

I have to endure a four-hour meeting with the Creative and Marketing groups. I'm a member of the Sensitivity Review Panel, a group of people from different departments who review upcoming promotional material for things that might offend or lead to problems from a branding perspective. Basically we look at slides and albums full of ads and shit and we say things like, "The family in this one seems awfully white..." and "Is it just me, or does that look sort of phallic?" and "Are we going to change the spelling of 'flavor' for the Canadian market?" It's pretty lame.

During this marathon sensitivity-fest, my mind wanders to my meeting with Margo the night before.

Was I a dick? I was brusque, at one point. I should cool it on the brusqueness. I don't want to be one of those dick superheroes with a chip on their shoulder; the Velvet Marauder is supposed to be dashing and mysterious in a Zorro way, not Dirty Harry.

Meeting her wasn't like I always thought it would be. For one, there was the screaming. The whole thing was sort of anticlimactic, really. I don't know what I expected, maybe Coldplay's Clocks to come on and she'd swoon into my arms? I guess I always thought I'd be rescuing her from a burning building or something. You know, Hero Guy, not Scary Guy on the Patio.

"Connor?" somebody says. I snap out of my reverie.

"Huh?"

"Any thoughts on this one?"

I look up at PowerPoint slide #577. Another ad.

"Looks great."

The Velvet Marauder Meets Margo

2005-06-02T02:12:00.000-07:00

I zoom in with the binocular setting on my goggles to get a better look at Margo’s condo.

I’m suited up, crouching behind an air conditioner unit on the roof of a Midtown apartment building, looking out across the 50 yard chasm that 4th Avenue carves out between my building and the target condo. Margo lives on the twelfth floor of the sixteen story Proctor Arms building in a condo with a view of the Bay. She has stylish potted grasses and bonsai on her balcony. A windchime delicately rattles. I can see somebody inside, shadows moving on the Venetian blinds.

She’s home.

Okay, showtime. I pull out the voice changing spray I got from My Guy. It looks and works just like an asthma inhaler. “Hello hello hello,” I say in my normal voice. I take a deep hit of the inhaler… hold it… then exhale. “Hello hello hello,” I say in a deeper, richer voice. I sound like Robert Goulet!

I pull out the switchblade Nokia that Silver Striker gave to me. It’s loaded with options, including a special emergency hotline to Striker Mountain in case I get jumped by The Malefactors. You know you’ve hit the big time when you have a hook-up with Striker Mountain. Who knows, they may even make me a Strike Force affiliate. I’m not saying I’d do it, I’m just saying. I dial Margo’s number.

“Hello?” She answers.

“Margo Thompson?” says Robert Goulet.

“…Yes.”

“Ms. Thompson, this is The Velvet Marauder,” I say. Man, that sounds really stupid. “A mutual friend of ours said you might need my help.”

Silence.

“Hello?” I say.

Her voice is hard, suspicious. “Yeah, okay, who is this? Is this Brett?”

“No, no, seriously. This is The Velvet Marauder.” Man, I sound cool.

“Who gave you my number?”

“Connor Mackenzie,” I say, which is true, really.

Silence.

“Hello?” I say.

“Okay,” she says slowly, processing this. “So what do we do, how does this work?”

“It’s not a good idea to talk about this on a phone. Hang on a minute.”

I put her on hold and dash for the edge of the building I’m on. Leaping high over 4th Ave I snap open my glider wings. The salty night air catches me, and I sail silently towards Margo’s balcony. I flare just as I come in, rearing back and landing lightly on the railing. I have got to give that move a name.

“Are you still there?” I say quietly into the phone.

“Yes,” Margo says.

“Okay. I don’t want you to freak out, all right? Because I know this is weird, but I really am The Velvet Marauder and I’m a good guy and I’m not here to hurt you or anything like that. I don’t want you to freak out. Okay?”

“Yes,” Margo says, sounding a little freaked out.

I hop down on to her balcony and approach the sliding glass door. I can see her shadow on the blinds, right on the other side of the door.

“I’m outside right now. On your patio.”

“My balcony?” she says.

“Your balcony, whatever.”

“Wait,” she says. “You’re outside right now?”

“Don’t freak out, please. Just open the blinds a little.”

Her shadow grows larger on the blinds. The slats of wood turn slowly, and she gradually comes into view. So do I. Her eye widen with fear and she screams, jumping back.

“Shit! Quiet!” I make shushing noises and wave my arms. She screams again.

I hold my hands up and back away from the glass door. Margo’s wearing jeans shorts and an oversize white button up shirt. Her hair is up and her face is freshly scrubbed. She’s holding a toothbrush and a cell phone in her shaking hands.

I can’t blame her, it would be pretty freaky seeing me on your back doorstep. I have your standard black nightstalker armor made of a lightweight ply of Kevlar, ballistic nylon, and nomex. I have a matching black cowl with high-tech goggles, and I wear a dark blue/purple coachman’s coat of faux-velvet fireproof material over the whole thing. I like to think of the look as “dark and dashing.” Again, not gay. I might look freaky to Margo, but I must admit that my motif isn’t totally original in the hero world and that there are a lot of guys out there with that whole nightstalker look, like Major Domo, and Night Hunter and even the Teutonic Knight with his lame new armor. However, nobody has the velvet, baby. Nobody but the Velvet Marauder.

Margo stops screaming. “What do you want?” she says,

“I just want to talk to you about the thing,” I say, feeling defensive. “Jesus, you contacted me?”

“I’m sorry,” she says. “Sorry, you’re right. It’s just, you know, freaky. Do you have some sort of ID or something?”

“What?”

“I’m sorry, that’s stupid,” she says.

The phone rings. She gestures for me to wait, and picks it up.

“Yeah… Yeah, hi. I’m sorry, Judy, I was watching The Shining… I know!... Yeah… No, it was the scene with the little girls in the hall… right… Right, and he’s riding his little bike…”

I tap softly at the window and point at an invisible watch, indicating I want her to hurry up. She grimaces, mouths, “one second.”

“Yeah, well… no, I’m sorry… I should just turn it off… Okay… Okay, let’s do that. Sorry, good night!”

Margo hangs up the phone and walks over to the door. She lifts up the blinds and, taking a deep breath, slides open the door.

“Sorry,” she says quietly. “My upstairs neighbor. Umm, do you want to come in, or…?”

“Not necessary,” I say, rather brusquely.

“Oh. Oh, right. Of course not.”

“You have information for me about Bradbury, Clarke, and Quentin? Mackenzie says you suspect them of some sort of illegal activities.”

“Right,” she says. “I have some notes…”

“Not here.”

“Okay.”

“Meet me tomorrow night at eleven-thirty at the parking garage next to the Metro. Ninth floor,” I say, grinning wryly. She just looks at me. I move on. “Bring your notes, and make sure you’re not followed. Tell no one, not even Mackenzie.”

“Got it,” she nods.

I look over her shoulder into her place.

“Nice pad,” I say.

She turns around and looks back inside. “You think so? I just moved in six months ago…”

While her back is turned, I backflip off her balcony and into the night. I pop the wings about five stories above 4th Ave and swoop off into the night.

I have always wanted to do that vanishing thing.

Psyching myself up

2005-06-01T19:27:00.000-07:00

The Velvet Marauder is going to contact Margo tonight.

I prep myself for the op in the Secret Chamber, by eating leftover phad thai and watching movie trailers on the MarauderMac.

I look around the Chamber.

The black Marauder armor is mounted against the wall, dramatically lit by a mini-floodlight. The faux velvet jacket and headpiece hang on a mannequin in the corner. The moody lighting and gratuitous support arches makes the Secret Chamber look like a the bridge of the submarine. Half a dozen TV screens glow in the gloom, and the soft murmur of the police band fills the soundproof Chamber. This is the nerve center of my crime fighting war… and it stinks like a fucking yeti. I’ve got to get better ventilation in the Chamber. Seriously, it smells like wet ass in here.

I open the secret panel in my living room wall, hoping to air the Chamber out a little.

Setting the issue of the stink aside, there’s good news on the superhero front. I just read an AP report that my buddy Wombat defeated Yiff in battle down in San Francisco. I guess Wombat was a guest of honor at a Gay Rights Parade and Yiff jumped him. They had a big battle right there on this float, and Wombat put his ass down. And fast, too. I mean, the footage on the TV makes it look like Wombat takes him out in like, five seconds flat, which is kind of weird. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that Wombat couldn’t take care of Yiff, it’s just that I thought I was stronger than Wombat, you know, and it took me a while to defeat Yiff when I fought him. Maybe he gassed him or something, I don’t know. I should email him and find out.

Okay, I’m almost ready. Have to wait for it to get dark. I crack a Red Bull.

What am I going to say to Margo? Should I be all stoic and quiet, or should I just let my freak flag fly?

I don’t think about it and rate the cute kittens on kittenwar.com and wait for it to get dark.

Slacking

2005-05-31T15:20:00.000-07:00

I’m not working today.

I slap a Post-It note on my door that says “On Conference Call,” lock that bastard, then bust out the laptop for a marathon session of Freedom Force vs The Third Reich. Because really, fuck work. How hard would you work if you thought your bosses were a bunch of supervillains? Well, maybe if they were the Darth Vader type who strangles their underlings you would work pretty hard, but mine aren’t. So its video games for me!

I surface occasionally to make coffee runs down to the Starbucks in our building’s lobby and to give Chad “action items” to work on. Somebody has to look busy around here, and it might as well be him. I know, I’m a dick.

Margo flags me down in the main hallway on the Ninth Floor, the one with the alien plants. She’s wearing a flared ivory skirt and a pink blouse with cute pumps today – again, I’m not gay.

“Have you, uh, heard anything from your friend?” she says, looking around furtively.

Ted Bradbury – one of the VPs who run the QuantumWorks project – passes us in the hallway. He nods to us. Ted hates me, and I think he knows I’m the Velvet Marauder. Whatever.

I watch Ted pass and then I pull Margo into my office. “Yeah, he left me a voice mail,” I say quietly. “He hasn’t made contact with you yet?”

“Umm, no. How would he do that, exactly?”

“I don’t know, I’m new at all this stuff,” I say. “He’ll be in touch.”

“Okay. Okay, thanks.” She seems a little nervous.

During my dinner with Margo last week I volunteered the services of The Velvet Marauder to help crack the mystery surrounding the executive supervillains in our company, but now I’m wondering if that was a good call. I told her that VM saved my life once from Exploder and that he gave me a way of contacting him in case of emergencies. But what am I going to do? As the Marauder, I mean? Now that I’m committed, I actually have to do something about this whole QuantumWorks mess. I just thought it would be kind of fun introducing Margo to my alter-ego, but now that means I have to take on a conspiracy of white-collar-super-bad-guys. I’m more of a night stalker type hero, you know? Rescuing people from muggers? I don’t think I’m cut out for this intrigue shit.

I go back to my game and don’t think about it.

Emmanator II: Judgment Day

2005-05-30T22:51:00.000-07:00

JC and Wendy have a barbecue on Memorial Day, and Wendy’s cousin Emma Casperson, the hot cop from the ECPD’s Paracrime Unit is there. She looks great, she’s wearing clamdiggers and a tight pink cap-sleeve shirt. By the time she shows up I’ve already had a few beers and JC and I are hanging out on lawn chairs debating what the best war movie is. JC thinks it’s Saving Private Ryan, which is just blasphemy.

“Hey, Emma,” I say, waving her over.

She grabs a beer and saunters over with those hips of hers. “Why it’s Mr. Mackenzie,” she says, smiling mischievously. “Long time no see.”

“What’s the best war movie, Emma?” I ask, as if we never slept together.

“Scoot over,” she says and rests her tight butt down on the end of my lawn chair. “Best war movie, huh?”

I jerk a thumb at JC, who looks interested in how this conversation will play out. This is the first time I’ve seen her since the night we had sex. We haven’t called each other. Wendy informed me that I was a “sport fuck.” My term, not hers. “Maynard here thinks it’s Saving Private Ryan.”

“Please,” Emma says scornfully, taking a chug of her beer. Her neck looks beautiful as she swallows. “What’s your pick?” she asks me.

“Patton! Patton rules all.”

“Oooh, that’s a good one. I don’t know, I’m old fashioned so I’m going to have to go with The Longest Day or maybe Zulu.”

JC and I both nod. Acceptable choices.

“Okay, next question,” I say. “We ever going to go out again?”

She laughs. “You and me?”

“Yeah.”

“I wouldn’t get your hopes up,” she says, smiling.

“Cold!” JC says.

I say, “Yeah, what the hell?”

She pats my knee patronizingly. “Don’t misunderstand. I had a good time, and you’re a fun guy, but I’m too involved with my work right now.”

“Busting super-criminals,” I say.

“Right.”

“I heard you guys caught – what was his name? Javelin?”

“Atlatl,” she says.

“That must have been a relief,” I say. I’m feeling bruised, I need to get a shot in to salvage my ego.

“How so?” she says.

“Well, Paracrime hasn’t had much luck catching The Velvet Marauder, have they? I mean, how many chances have you had, but he keeps getting away. That would be frustrating, I imagine, for such a goal-oriented person as yourself.”

JC is smiling, watching this. I bet he wonders if Emma is going to hit me.

Emma stands up, looking a little pissed. Her cheeks redden slightly. “Stick to marketing, Connor. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Will do,” I say, grinning.

She stalks off.

JC snickers. “You have a unique way of pissing people off, Connor.”

“It’s my super power.”

Patrol report

2005-05-27T01:42:00.000-07:00

Uneventful patrol.

I jumped around Chinatown for a while listening to Ted Nugent on my audio system. Come on, who doesn’t love The Nooge, the Motor City Madman, The Ten Fingers of Doom, the Commando-in-Chief? A guy with that many nicknames can’t be bad.

Things seem to be going okay. I haven’t seen any Paracrime troopers since I got back from Costa Rica, The Malefactors haven’t tried to kill me yet, and I’m meeting Margo as the Velvet Marauder. I should do that tomorrow night. Anyway, I feel good, glad that I’m back, glad that I’m so handsome, glad that I have superpowers that let me jump around like a crazy-ass monkey while I listen to “Great White Buffalo.” Life is good.

Fun with the voice changer

2005-05-26T18:44:00.000-07:00

I get a package in the mail from My Guy: two voice changer thingies. They look like asthma inhalers, with an albuterol label and everything, but they supposedly can lower and change one’s voice. I need them to conceal my identity when I meet Margo as the Velvet Marauder – otherwise I’d open my mouth and she’d recognize my voice in a second. I wish I was good with voices and accents and stuff; then I could just have my own Velvet Marauder voice. But I suck, the only voice I can do is Christopher Walken –seriously, my Walken rules - and I can’t fight crime talkin’ like Walken.

After working out in my gym outbuilding I try the inhaler. I stand in front of the mirror and say, in my normal voice, “Hello, Margo. I am The Velvet Marauder.”

I squeeze a dose of the voice changer inhaler into my mouth, breathing in deeply. I hold my breath to the count of ten, and then exhale, a bitter chemical taste in my mouth.

“Hello, Margo. I am The Velvet Marauder.” Woah! That sounds totally different!

I try it again. “Hello, Margo. I am The Velvet Marauder.” My voice is rich, deep, well-aged – I sound totally different.

“Beef. It’s what’s for dinner.” I laugh. That shit really works!

I should really test this out and call somebody who knows my voice. I call Mitch and Lisa’s house on my cell phone. Mitch answers.

“Hello.”

“Can I speak to Mitch, please?” I say in my cool new voice.

“Speaking.”

“This is Officer Dover with the Washington State Patrol. I’d like to talk to you about an incident that occurred on Monday involving your car.”

“My car? What sort of incident?” Mitch is rattled. He really can’t tell it’s me.

“You don’t know what I’m referring to?”

“No.”

“It appears, sir, that somebody else was driving your car on Monday.”

“Who?”

“Your mama.” I laugh. The “your mama” gag – the pinnacle of modern western humor.

He sounds annoyed. “Who is this?”

I’m laughing in my deep voice now. “I’m Officer Dover, Mitch! Officer Ben Dover!” I start cracking up; it’s very strange hearing an alien voice coming out of your mouth. Strange and funny. “Wait, here’s my buddy Phil McCavity!” I laugh and laugh. God, I am such a schmuck.

“Fuck off,” Mitch says, and hangs up.

The voice changer fucking rules!

These stupid-ass ball things

2005-05-24T15:13:00.000-07:00

What is up with these fucking ball chairs?

I come back from Costa Rica and all of a sudden everybody at work is sitting on these goofy balls. Have you seen these? They’re these big sturdy plastic balls that will easily support your average not-fat person. My bitch Chad sits on one of them all fucking day, slowly bouncing up and down at his desk. I think he looks like an idiot, but that’s just me.

Those things can’t be good for you. I give Chad another week before he goes back to a chair with hip dysphasia or something.

Plus, this is an office for God’s sake, not a day care. Play with your balls at home. Please.

Placing an order with My Guy

2005-05-23T12:57:00.000-07:00

I'm really stressed about meeting Margo and having her recognize me instantly as Connor Mackenzie by my voice. Looking for help of the high-tech variety, I contact My Guy - my anonymous weapons and gadget maker - in a secure chatroom online. Here's the jist of our chat:

ME: Do you have anything that can change my voice?

X9: Non-surgical?

ME: Preferably. Like a gadget or something.

X9: You have two options. The first is a throat crab; a tiny robotic voice modulator that you swallow like a pill. It digs itself into your voice box and allows you to change your voice at will. Throat crabs are remarkably effective.

ME: That sounds like a David Cronenberg movie. What’s the 2nd option?

X9: The second option is a special inhaler that delivers an aerosol drug which lowers your voice for up to two hours. It looks like an asthma inhaler.

ME: I’ll take that one, that sounds good. How many doses per inhaler?

X9: About 24.

ME: Can you overnight me a few inhalers? I’ve got a thing I need them for.

X9: Done. Anything else? We have a special on exploding darts.

ME: I’m good, thanks.

Patrol Report

2005-05-22T09:08:00.000-07:00

For patrol tonight I hop around Midtown and Queen's Row listening to a mix on the suit's audio system.

It's a beautiful, warm night in the E.C. and it seems like everybody's out on the town. Nothing too out of the ordinary; I stop three drunk guys from picking on a skater kid by slapping them around a little, I push a stalled truck out of a busy intersection to the appreciative honks and cheers of all involved, and I chase off some kids tagging The Gap. You know, if they were doing one of those cool grafiti murals I wouldn't give a shit, but I can't stand these punks that just tag stuff. It's like a dog marking his territory by peeing, only dumber.

Other than that, I just kind of play around, enjoying my nocturnal acrobatics. I end my patrol on top of the Bank One building in Pose #1, Vigilant Dragon, gazing out over greater Evergreen City's twinkling starfield of lights. A big white cruise ship glows in The Bay. Usually there are three of these monsters in The Bay on the weekends, loading people for Alaska cruises, but not this year. People are too freaked out that they're Love Boat is going to get attacked by The Kraken, and who can blame them?

I've been thinking about my upcoming meeting with Margo. As the Velvet Marauder, I mean. I promised her (as Connor) that I'd get in touch with VM this week, so I have a few days to mull it over. How should I do this, should I call her as the Velvet Marauder? Show up on the deck of her condo in the middle of the night like Batman and pray she isn't armed? Leave a note with rendezvous instructions for her at work?

Hey... what about my voice? Shit, I hadn't thought of that! I don't have a Velvet Marauder voice, I just sound like Connor Mackenzie. She's going to know it's me the second I open my mouth!

Shit!

My Dinner With Margo

2005-05-21T09:18:00.000-07:00

Every time I eat at Moghul Palace I see this grumpy old Indian dude. Scowling, he squats on a stool near the restaurant’s cashier area, watching the waiting area like an old buzzard. I get the impression that the Palace is a family-run joint and that he’s the patriarch, but a figurehead type ruler. You know what I mean? He has all the status, but one of his kids probably runs the restaurant. I’ve never seen the guy do a bit of work aside from the occasional finger pointing and haranguing of the young employees. I get the impression that his job is to just silently, balefully watch the Moghul Palace like a tired old vulture, passing judgment on everyone and everything. I think he’s fascinating.

Sure enough, the grumpy old Indian guy is there on his stool when I meet Margo for dinner. He glares at us from under thick, bushy eyebrows as we exchange awkward greetings in the waiting area.

“Hey Mackenzie,” she says, kind of half-punching/half-patting my shoulder.

“Hi Margo,” I say. “You look nice. I like that skirt.” She’s wearing a light floral print skirt and a ¾ length cashmere sweater over a somewhat low-cut blouse. Amber earrings make her brown eyes sparkle. Margo is beautiful – Have I mentioned that? She’s got sort of a young Mary Tyler Moore look, and her nose crinkles when she laughs. Just to reiterate - she’s beautiful.

“Oh, this thing? Thanks.”

Awkward silence. We look at each other for a second. I’m suddenly keenly aware of my breath, and of the grumpy patriarch staring at us from his perch.

Shit! My pulse rate jumps up. Say something, jack-ass!

“Kind of weird, isn’t it?” Margo says. “Seeing each other outside of work?”

“Yeah,” I say, stupidly.

“Hungry?” she says, smiling.

“I’m Hank Marvin,” I say, stupidly.

“Huh?”

“Oh, it’s uh, cockney rhyming slang. You know, Hank Marvin rhymes with starvin’ so when you’re hungry, you say you’re Hank Marvin.”

Margo laughs. “You’re a nerd, Mackenzie.”

I laugh too and suddenly don’t feel so self-conscious. I don’t know what I’m so stressed about, it’s not like we’re on an actual date or anything, we’re here to talk about the supervillains that are controlling the company we both work for.

We get a booth in back and Margo lets me order. After making some small talk and eating appetizers we get down to business.

“So,” Margo says quietly. “About this supervillain thing…”

“Yeah. Have you ever wondered about the plants on the Ninth Floor, in the hallway?”

Her eyes widen. Of course she has. “Yes! You picked up on that, too? What are those things? I took pictures of them with my cell phone, I’m going to see if a botanist friend of mine from college can identify them.”

“That would be great. I’ll bet they’re alien.”

“You think?” Margo says.

“Totally.”

Her face becomes serious for a second. “Connor, you’re not screwing with me, are you? Because sometimes I can’t tell when you’re being serious or not and this whole thing really freaks me out and I’m going to be really upset if this is like a joke or something to you or you think I’m crazy…” Her eyes glisten and her lower lip quivers slightly – shit, I’ve upset her!

“Hey, no no,” I say. I reach out to touch her hand on the table in what I hope is a reassuring and not creepy move. “I’m sorry, I believe you. I’m sorry. I don’t think you’re crazy. Listen, we’re on the same page on this thing. Those guys – I don’t know if they’re supervillains or not, but I think they’re up to something illegal or dangerous. I’m with you on this, I promise.”

She smiles. “Okay.”

Our food comes; three different types of nan, some tandoori dishes, a succulent fish tikka the size of a John Jakes paperback, and some pilau rice. As we eat, we discuss in greater detail our mutual suspicions about The Company. And as we talk, a plan starts to gel in my mind; a plan that may be the best or the worst idea I’ve ever had since becoming a superhero…

Basically, both Margo and I think that the three executives who run the QuantumWorks project – Ted Bradbury, Aaaron Clarke, and John Quentin – are up to no good. We’ve both been hired to do marketing and project coordination for QuantumWorks, a product we’ve been told very little about. It’s an “omni-search engine” that can find anything that’s ever been on the Internet ever, even if it’s no longer live and available. I have no idea how it works and they won’t tell us. Now I’m not an expert, but I don’t really think something like that is possible unless maybe you’re using alien technology or something, and you know how tightly the feds regulate shit like that. The occasional presence of guys in silver protective suits on the Ninth Floor and a strange bacon aroma do little to reassure me that things are on the level.

Plus – and I can’t tell Margo this part – but I planted a bug in the board room on the Ninth Floor and recorded a conversation between the three executives which led me to believe that they know that I’m the Velvet Marauder. And Ted Bradbury, the big hulking ex-jock redneck dick? Judging by his crushing grip, I’d say he has super-strength.

Margo is talking: “—and then when I asked to be transferred back to Product Development, Clarke just asked me to be patient and gave me a huge raise.”

“Me too!” I say. “I’m making an obscene amount of money, and I don’t do shit.”

“Yes! See, that’s what started me down this whole road; I can’t stand not having a project or something to do, and it just seemed so weird that The Company would waste that much money on a project like this. So I made finding out what was going on my little project.” She tosses up her hands. “And here I am.”

“Here we are,” I say.

“Well, what are we going to do? You have any brilliant ideas, Mackenzie. I don’t have a lot of experience dealing with supervillains and industrial espionage.”

This is it. Should I do this?

“Actually, I do know somebody who has some experience with shit like this,” I say. With each word I’m setting an irreversible course. “Somebody who might be able to help us.”

“Really? Who?”

“We’re not tight or anything, but I know how to get a hold of him.”

“Who, Mackenzie?”

I smile. No turning back now.

“The Velvet Marauder.”

Media Report

2005-05-19T22:49:00.000-07:00

I was on 60 Minutes! Okay, okay: 60 Minutes Wednesday, which I hear CBS is cancelling to make room for CSI: Tulsa or something.

Anyway, 60 Mintues II did a piece on security robots, which is a hot topic these days. I guess a hiker got killed by a security robot outside a bio-lab in Utah last year; I vaguely remember reading about that. Well, people were so pissed that Utah's State Legislature passed a law banning armed robots from the state, and a couple of other states are following suit. A Congressional sub-comittee has been formed to look into the issue.

Where do I come in? They had footage of my battle with the Insekt III robot, the one that went ape-shit in the rail yard in March. (see post Robot fu, 3/29/05) As CBS reporter Bob Simon narrates, you see me getting knocked around big time by the Insekt. Fortunately they did show me dismantling the fucking thing, so I think I came out looking okay.

Then they had an interview with an official from Roboteknen, the Pomeranian company that makes most of the security robots used today, who assures Simon that they've implemented new safeguards that would make it impossible for a robot to go ape-shit (my term, not his) again.

And what do you know, they have a brief interview with Interbionics VP Jason Delacroix, that sinister motherfucker, who defends his company's use of the Insekt robots in their facility outside of Spokane. "We've made changes in the way we do things," Delacroix says, absently stroking his Mephistopholean* beard. "We recognize the public concern about defense robotics, and we've worked with Roboteknen to make sure that the Insekt models are operating as they should." Translation: we added mortar launchers and laser death rays.

Anyway, national TV exposure is never bad for VM.

On an unrelated note, while I was gone it looks like the ECPD Paracrime Unit had their first big supervillain bust. They caught a guy named "Atlatl" skulking around the rooftops with his energy javelin things. I've never heard of the guy, but I guess he had several warrants out for his arrest.

Makes me wonder what he was doing in the E.C.

*Is "Mephistopholean" even a word? I don't know.

Patrol Report

2005-05-17T02:39:00.000-07:00

I am off my game.

On patrol tonight I feel awkward and out of shape. Sure, I can still jump 50 yards with no problem, but I don't stick my landings like I usually do. I start off my patrol in the South End, listening to Ministry on my suit's audio system, but after I trip over some rooftop wires twice, I turn off the music and just focus on where I'm putting my feet and plotting out my next jump before I actually commit to the jump. Man, I take a few weeks off and my roof-running skills go to shit.

No crime tonight, or at least nothing going down right in front of me. I decide to call it a night after I overshoot my landing on a rooftop in Chinatown and crash into Happy Wok's neon sign, demolishing it in a spray of sparks and glass.

My bad.

Mo' Margo

2005-05-16T21:33:00.000-07:00

I spend the rest of my day going through my emails and returning phone messages. Jeez, I get a lot of junk email. In addition to the usual rah-rah- corporate pixie dust emails that everyone in The Company gets, I also get a ton of stupid jokes, links to amusing or noteworthy news articles, and wacky pictures. Delete. Delete. Delete. By the end of the day I’m all caught up and once again I have nothing to do and I find myself looking out the window at The Bay, bored.

I’m a marketing guy without a project to market.

Margo and I were recruited into the mysterious world of the Ninth Floor, where a small corps of employees work on The QuantumWorks Project. Put simply, QuantumWorks is a universal search engine that allows you to search for any data that has ever flickered, however fleetingly, across the internet. You can look up anything – anything that has ever been on the internet. I have no idea how it works; they won’t tell me. I just know that it uses “revolutionary technology” and that I’m to prepare a broad marketing plan for the day QW hits the market. I have no idea when that is going to happen, either.

The whole scenario is so weird, that I started to suspect that the mysterious triad of executives who run the project – Ted Bradbury, Aaron Clarke, and John Quentin – are actually supervillains up to no damn good.

There’s a whole bunch of shit that doesn’t add up around here: When I complained about having nothing to do they gave me an obscene raise and told me to be patient; occasionally one glimpses guys in silver protective suits on the Ninth Floor; a strange bacon smell occasionally drifts through the office; Bradbury, Clarke, and Quentin seem to know that I’m the Velvet Marauder (or do they?); and there are a number of strange aloe-type plants in the main hallway that creep me out. Call me crazy, but in my world, that much unexplained stuff can only mean supervillains.

Yet all I’m left with is this nagging suspicion. I feel like all the pieces are here in front of me, but I’m just not smart enough to make them fit together. It pisses me off.

With all these little fishies of paranoia swimming around in my head, I grab my stuff and head down to the Starbucks in the lobby for my mini-date with Margo.

She's waiting for me at a little table, nursing a latte and entering stuff in her PDA. I order a passion tea lemonade (again: not gay) and sit down. Margo seems a little nervous. We make small talk, office gossip stuff. Apparently my bitch Chad is having a fling with Debbie, one of the HR gals who we all thought was a lesbian.

"But we're not here to talk about Chad," I say.

"No," Margo says. She glances around the coffee shop furtively.

"What?" I say, curious.

"I think -" she begins, then lowers her voice. I lean a little closer to hear her. "I think that something's going on with the QuantumWorks project. Something illegal."

"What do you mean?"

"I can't say for sure, I just have suspicions. There's a lot of stuff that doesn't add up..."

I nod. She's so smart.

"And it's nothing that I would, you know, go to the police with or anything," she says. "But I can't help but thinking - and this is going to sound stupid..."

She pauses, looking at me like she's trying to figure out whether she should go on.

"I think maybe that Quentin and those guys, I think they may be..." She leans even closer and whispers: "Supervillains."

We look at each other for a second.

"Really?" I say. I can't think of what else to say.

"You think I'm crazy," she says.

"No, no."

"Yeah, you do. Brett thought I was crazy, too."

"Listen, I don't -- wait a minute, Brett?" She can't be talking about Evil Val Kilmer.

"You know, Brett. You met him at the party --"

Okay, that totally threw me. Is she going out with that asshole again? "I thought you broke up with him."

She sighs. "It's complicated."

Fuck! "You told him about the supervillain thing?" Suddenly I am irrationally jealous that she told Evil Val Kilmer first. I can't believe she's hanging out with that guy again.

"Shh. Keep your voice down."

"Sorry."

"Yeah, I told him. I had to talk to somebody about it."

"But -- but --" I want to say: But he's an asshole.

"So you don't think I'm crazy?" she says, smiling a little.

"No, of course not. Listen, don't tell anybody about this. Especially him."

"What do you got against Brett?" she asks, arching an eyebrow. I must reek of envy.

"Nothing, I just don't think you should talk about this to other people, that's all."

"Okay," she says. "So what do we do? You noticed this, too? The weirdness."

I nod. "Yeah, there's definitely weirdness going on..."

"So what do you think we should do?"

I suddenly have the most brilliant idea EVER. "I think we should meet off-site someplace, compare notes. Let's hook up for dinner later in the week. You don't have anything written down on disc, right? You haven't emailed anybody about this?"

"No."

"Good. Let's meet on... how's Friday work for you?"

She checks her PDA. "Hmm, I have a thing with Brett, but I can cancel. It's no problem."

That's right, cancel that date with Brett, sweetheart, because you're going out with Connor. "Okay, good. I really think we should discuss this away from this building. I know a good Indian restaurant. You like Indian food?"

"Love it," she says, smiling. She looks relieved that I'm taking this seriously.

"Great. Then it's a date."

A date. I have a date with Margo.

Evil Val Kilmer, you are going down.

Back at work

2005-05-16T10:25:00.000-07:00

Last night I said goodbye to my Canadian friend and flew back into Evergreen City.

I head back to work at The Company today - it feels like I've been gone forever.

Being a nice guy, I stop by the Starbucks in the lobby of our building and pick up some drinks for my bitch Chad and Margo - a grande soy latte with hazelnut for Margo and a grande who cares for Chad. I drop off Chad's drink and chat a little with him before I head into the security area on the Ninth Floor.

Anyway, I fire up my computer and whatnot. I have like, seven hundred emails, and none of them are important. I guess I won the office pool for predicting the new Pope while I was gone, so that's cool. Two hundred bucks, baby!

I don't even want to begin wading through all my emails and voice mails, so I deliver Margo her drink. I knock on the half-open door of her office and find her staring out her window at The Bay and the rail yards.

"Mackenzie!" she cries, and she runs - I'm not kidding, she actually runs - to me and throws her arms around me. She smells as beautiful as she looks. Today Margo is wearing a 50's style aquamarine full skirt and a soft pink tie-front sweater. "I missed you! Don't ever leave me alone with these assholes again, the past few weeks have been boring. Look at you, with the tan! How was Costa Rica? Is that drink for me? Sit down, sit down!"

Wow, she's actually excited to see me. My face feels warm and my heart is beating a little faster. How could I have ever thought of not coming back to the E.C.?

We gossip for the better part of an hour. Margo fills me in on various office goings-on and any new developments in the mysterious QuantumWorks project. She seems really frustrated with her job.

"Listen," she says. "You want to meet me downstairs after work, get a cup of coffee or something?"

"Uh, sure. Sure, okay." I'm not sure I heard her right. Is she asking me on a mini-date?

"I've got some stuff I want to talk to you about but I don't want to do it here." She winks. "Walls have ears and all that."

"Sure." Now I'm intrigued.

As I leave her office she calls my name. I pause in the doorway.

Margo smiles at me.

"Nice to see you again, Mackenzie."

God, I love her.

A Tense Conversation, part two

2005-05-15T16:32:00.000-07:00

(continued from part one)

“You killed Vincent Rapaport – Parka,” Silver Striker says. “And I want to know why.”

“Hey, take it easy. I didn’t murder the guy or anything, it was an accident.”

“What happened?”

I give him the Reader’s Digest version of that night in the E.C. fighting Parka, how he was going to kill those two cops, how he zapped me with his cold/blizzard whammy, and most importantly, how in the heat of battle I threw a car at Parka, crushing him.

“My goggles wer fogged up; I couldn't see real well,” I said. "And I didn't think it would kill the guy. I mean, Parka’s an A-List villain, I figured he could take having a car thrown at him. It wasn’t even a big car. It was a Scion.”

Thor is listening to this whole exchange as he cleans behind the bar, unfazed.

Steve – I mean Silver Striker – takes a pull off his beer. “Yeah, he had been having problems with his powers lately; they were becoming more and more unstable. It was affecting his mind, his decision making. Used to be Parka would freeze himself, make his skin diamond hard. I’m guessing he underestimated you, didn’t think he’d need to armor up. Vincent always was overconfident to a fault.”

He sounds sort of wistful, like he’s talking about a dead college buddy or something.

“Well, for what it’s worth, I’m sorry he’s dead,” I say. How broken up am I supposed to be about this? “But I gotta say, if I hadn’t thrown that car, those two cops he froze would be dead now. I can’t think of what I would have done differently…”

“I understand,” Silver Striker says. He seems a little sad. “It’s just that I had hoped we could cure his condition.”

What is this guy so worked up about a fucking supervillain for? I had heard that Silver Striker and his rogue's gallery, The Malefactors, had a mutual respect for each other, but jeez. I hear Moonbug sends Silver Striker a Christmas card every year. Seriously.

"Yeah, well... shit happens, I guess," I say, lamely.

Silver Striker sighs and takes another drink. Maybe he's bummed out because some bush-leaguer took Parka out - something he could never manage, except on a temporary basis.

"Okay, thanks for filling me in, Marauder," he says. "I just wanted to hear what happened from you. What are you going to do now?"

"Me? I don't know, I thought I'd rent a car and head down the coast for a few days..."

"No, I mean when are you going back to Evergreen City?" Silver Striker says.

"Gosh, I hadn't really thought that far ahead," I say, signaling Thor for a fresh Corona.

"You can't hide down here forever, son," he says. I'm starting to hate it when he calls me "son." I mean, I know the guy's as old as my grandpa, but he looks my age. It's patronizing.

"I'm not hiding. Who's hiding? I get five weeks of vacation a year. What, I can't take a break? Superheroes don't get down time?"

"You're worried about The Malefactors," Silver Striker says.

"The thought had crossed my mind, but that's not why I'm here. I'm not hiding, all right?"

"Uh-huh," he says disbelievingly.

"Really."

"Listen, I'd be looking over my shoulder, too," he says. "But at some point you've got to push that fear aside and get on with your job. People are relying on you to protect them, Marauder."

"There is no fear, okay?" I'm raising my voice. "No fear. And Evergreen City was doing fine before I came along. I check the news; it hasn't burned down in my absence."

"No, but what if you weren't there to stop Baron von Blitzkrieg? Or Yiff? Or the ghouls you fought with Hydrangea last Halloween?"

"You heard about that, the zombie thing?" I ask.

"We keep tabs on things at Striker Mountain. Listen, we need you up there in the Northwest."

"Who's we?"

"America, son."

"Oh for God's sake," I yell. "So that's it, that's the idea? Give me a little pep talk and then hang me out to dry, send me back so I can get killed by your villains? I like fighting crime and shit, and jumping around, but I don't have a fucking death wish!"

"Listen, I understand your fears --" he begins.

"They're not fears!" I'm still yelling. I sound shrill. "They're valid concerns based on objective facts!"

Silver Striker laughs. Silver Striker fucking laughs at me.

"It's not fucking funny!"

"I'm sorry," he says, laughing. "It kind of is."

"Great. That's great. Silver Striker's mocking me."

Chuckling, he takes a cell phone out of a pocket in his cargo shorts. "Okay, take it easy. Nobody's going to hang you out to dry. Take this."

It's a Nokia switchblade phone. "What's it do?"

"It's called a transat. It's a trans-satellite comlink with GPS, wireless internet, radiation detector, the works. You have any problems with The Malefactors or anything else you think we should take a look at, just contact us."

I flip open the phone. It beeps. "How do I do that?"

Silver Striker smiles. "Just dial 911."

"Cute," I say. I'm feeling calmer now. "So what's the story, do you have emergency operators at Striker Mountain or something?"

"Yes, we have a call center. Normally we only give the transat to Strike Force affiliates, but under the circumstances, I think it's best. If this works out we may consider giving you affiliate status in the future."

Strike Force affiliates are local superheroes spread throughout the world who have a loose relationship with Silver Striker, Inc. It's kind of like being a member of the superhero AAA or something. In addition to emergency services, I hear affiliates get a monthly stipend and access to Striker Mountain's research and surveillance resources. Of course, you have to drop everything and come running if Silver Striker needs to assemble a superhero army to face whatever cosmic crisis threatens earth, so that can be a problem. Still, it'd be nice to be an affiliate...

"What do you say? Striker Mountain will back you up if things get out of control."

"I don't know..." I say, staring at the Nokia.

"Your city needs you, Marauder."

Man, what do you say when somebody lays that on you? "Okay," I say. I don't think this is going to end very well for me, but what the hell. I came this far. "Okay, you're right. Thanks, Silver Striker."

"Thank you, son." He hoists his beer and gives me a grin. He looks like a Tucson real estate agent who just closed a big deal.

I sit next to Silver Striker in that little bar in Costa Rica, drinking a beer and watching dark clouds scudding over the ocean in the distance. We just sit there for a few minutes, two guys drinking beer.

That's it, then. I'm going back to Evergreen City.

I'm doomed, aren't I?

A Tense Conversation, part one

2005-05-14T12:04:00.000-07:00

Still on vacation/exile in Costa Rica.

My daily ritual lately has been to wake up around 11 AM, think about shaving, eat brunch with my female Canadian friend, take a swim, shower, think about shaving, walk into town to buy an American paper or go online at the internet café, then hit my favorite bar and begin drinking. I usually hook up with my female Canadian friend later in the day for dinner or more drinks or dancing or sex – sometimes all of these things. That’s pretty much been my life for the past two weeks. No rampaging robots, no muggings to stop, no police dragnets, no vengeful super-villains who want to kill me dead. None of that shit. Just… leisure.

So I’m sitting in my favorite bar, doing a crossword puzzle and working on beer #3. The bar has these big shuttered windows that are always open, looking out on a black sand beach and the Pacific. A gentle salty breeze drifts into the bar.

A gringo eases up to the bar and sits down next to me. He orders a beer from Thor (yes, that’s his name), the Norwegian expatriate bartender. There are plenty of other places to sit in the place, so that catches my attention. I look up from my puzzle, a little irritated that this guy is sitting right next to me. I’m so switched off that it doesn’t even dawn on me that this guy may be dangerous.

“How’s it going?” the gringo asks me.

I look at him. He’s got that healthy, square-jawed, corn-fed blandly handsome American thing going on – looks like an off duty fighter pilot or fireman. Mid-thirties, short, well-groomed black hair, wearing a Bermuda shirt and cargo shorts. He’s got big forearms with some kind of faded military tattoo.

“All right,” I say non-committaly. I don’t want to strike up a conversation with this guy.

“You American?” he asks.

There’s something about this guy. Then it hits me: he’s clean-shaven and his clothes are immaculate and unwrinkled. He’s not a tourist, he hasn’t been hanging out here…

Supervillain.

I tense a little and stare at him.

The guy smiles. “Hello? You American?”

“Yeah,” I say.

“Where you from? I’m from New Avalon. Name’s Steve.”

Wait a second. Maybe I’m overreacting. Steve could be gay, and he’s just chatting me up. That would explain the well-groomed thing, and the sitting too close thing.

“What can I do for you, Steve?” I ask coldly.

“Easy, friend,” Steve says. “Just making conversation. Can I buy you a beer?”

“No. Listen, Steve, I’m sure you’re a nice guy, but do me a favor and fuck off, okay? I’m working on my crossword here.”

I go back to working on my puzzle. There. If he’s hitting on me, that should get rid of him. If it doesn’t, I’ll know he’s a supervillain and I’ll bust this Corona bottle across his face.

“No reason to be an asshole about it,” Steve says.

I look up. “You still here, Steve?”

Steve takes a swig of his beer and kind of sighs. “Okay, I’ll just cut to the chase then. I’d like to ask you a few questions about Vincent Rapaport.”

Parka. He’s talking about Parka, the supervillain I killed (accidentally) in Evergreen City last month.

I switch on. My entire body tenses up, like I’m plugged into a wall socket. The buzz I was working on completely evaporates. I knew it! This guy’s a hitman, or one of The Malefactors or something!

I decide not to hit Steve with my beer bottle. If we get in a fight in here we’ll completely destroy Thor’s bar, and I kind of like the place.

Trying to stay cool, I slowly set my beer down and step away from the bar. “Okay, Steve, or whatever your name is,” I say in a low voice. “Why don’t we do this out on the beach or something?”

Steve holds up his hands in a peace gesture, smiling. “Easy, easy Connor. It’s not like that. I just want to talk.”

“Who are you? How’d you find me?” I say, my voice a little shrill with anxiety.

“Let’s not cause a scene,” Steve says and gestures to my empty stool. “Have a seat and we’ll talk about it. This isn’t anything bad; I just want to talk.”

“No, fuck that. I want some answers. Who are you and how did you find me?”

Steve smiles and nods. His demeanor is vaguely patronizing, like he’s talking to a child. “Okay. Okay, I can see how you’d be leery of talking to anybody. I should have showed up in uniform, but I didn’t want to blow your cover.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m Silver Striker.”

We look at each other for a long minute. I’m sizing him up, trying to imagine him all silvery…

“Bullshit,” I say finally. “You’re some fucking supervillain.”

“Listen, if I was, I wouldn’t walk in here and sit down next to you, I would have shot you in the back of the head from across the street. I mean, you’re sitting with your back to the door and right in front of all these big open windows. Anybody could walk in here and you wouldn’t know it. Pretty sloppy tradecraft.”

“I’m not interested in tradecraft, Steve, I’m interested in Corona,” I say. I’m reconsidering my decision not to bludgeon him with my beer bottle.

He kind of laughs. “Dr. Quark said you had an attitude…”

“Steve, I’m about two seconds away from kicking the shit out of you; I don’t know what’s so goddamn funny.”

“Settle down, son,” he says, with an edge in his voice. “You’re not kicking the shit out of anybody. I’m here to ask you some questions, and you’re going to answer them.”

Something happens to his hand. I flinch, expecting an attack. Steve’s hand sort of shimmers and glows, then turns silver. It’s like his whole hand is covered in liquid metal. His hand sparkles, then in a flash returns to regular flesh. Well, it’s either the real Silver Striker or an illusionist-type supervillain.

“Happy?” Steve says.

Warily, I ease back on to my bar stool. I’m not 100% convinced.

“If you’re really Silver Striker, you should be able to answer some questions,” I say.

“Like what?” Steve asks.

This is where my childhood as a superhero geek comes into play. When I was growing up, Silver Striker was my favorite hero. The guy’s a living legend. I had all the officially licensed comic books, the Silver Striker bed sheet set, and a kick-ass hardback Guide to Silver Striker with all kinds of trivia. I was a nerd, what can I say?
“Okay, what kind of jet did you fly when you first started as a pilot in the Air Force?”

“F-104 Starfighter,” he says. “Beautiful plane.”

“What was your call sign?”

“Quaker,” he says.

“First alien you ever fought?”

“Magedda,” he says.

“Wrong! It was The Krill!” Ha! Got him!

“Actually, Magedda was the first. We didn’t know she was an alien at the time, of course, so most people think it was The Krill. Common mistake.”

“Have you ever had sex with SuperNova?”

He flushes a little. “That’s none of your damn business.”

I’m sold. It’s Silver Striker all right.

“Shit, sorry man,” I say sheepishly. “You gotta understand, I’ve been a little jumpy lately, and you just came up and sat down…”

“No apologies necessary, Marauder,” Silver Striker says. “I should have known you’d be on edge.”

“Right, right. So how’d you find me?”

“Dr. Quark can find anyone,” Silver Striker says.

“Of course.” I’m surprised Dr. Quark would even know who I am, much less be able to find me. Then again, he is the Surgeon of Reality, he probably knows everything there is to know about me.

“So, um, what can I do for you?” I’m suddenly nervous, but for a whole different reason than a minute ago. How do I talk to him? Should I call him ‘sir’?

His face darkens a little.

“You killed Vincent Rapaport – Parka,” he says. “And I want to know why.”

(continued...)

Still on vacation...

2005-04-28T06:36:00.000-07:00

I'm learning to SCUBA dive. And I'm drinking.

I met a nice Canadian backpacker chick who is now staying with me in my condo and having the sex with me and making me food, so that's good.

Have I mentioned the drinking?

Why you no post, Marauder?

2005-04-23T19:11:00.000-07:00

I'm writing this from an internet cafe in Costa Rica:

I'm taking a little vacation, working on my tan and not getting killed by The Malefactors. Staying in a condo on beach here; very nice except for the bugs. It's been raining all day today, but I hope to get some snorkeling and more drinking in later.

Will report in soon.

Media Report

2005-04-18T07:45:00.000-07:00

I can't stop shivering when I get home after my fight with Parka. I take a hot shower which seems to only heat up my outer layer, leaving my inner core frozen. Curling up on the couch under a pile of blankets, I drink hot chocolate and watch Northwest Cable News. I feel like I'm back from a long day skiing.

The news has footage of a mobile crane lifting the car up off Parka's body. All the ice has melted into giant slushy puddles. A blandly handsome reporter stands in front of the taped-off battle zone, looking grave.

"Police have confirmed the identity of the deceased; the supervillain Parka, famous rival of The Silver Striker and member of the villain's club known as The Malefactors," says the reporter. "The ECPD wouldn't say one way or another, but our eyewitnesses confirm that, after attacking the two police officers, Parka battled the Velvet Marauder, and that during the fight, the Marauder physically threw a car on the villain, crushing him."

More footage of the Scion being lifted by crane off Parka's flattened body. Jeez, somebody cover the guy up. What a mess.

"As you can see, Parka definitely was crushed by this small car," the reporter says. "A Scion, I believe."

Man, I actually killed Parka. He was an A-lister, I used to read about his fights with Silver Striker when I was growing up. And I killed him. Me. He fought Silver Striker - and won, several times, if only in a temporary way. You'd think he'd be tougher than that. It was a little car, too. I didn't mean to kill the guy. I mean, I could barely see anything with my goggles fogged up, I just threw the car out of instinct and desperation. But hey, Parka was trying to kill me, and for all I knew he had already killed two cops. Plus, he was trying to kidnap his son and who knows what he would have done to his estranged wife. It's not like I feel bad, it's just... I actually killed Parka.
I find out the two plainclothes cops who got the deep freeze from Parka are in serious but stable condition in Bayview, so that's good news. They were suffering from hypothermia and frostbite, but the Solar Flare I used to thaw them seemed to work. I'm credited with saving their lives, so yay me.

I'm a little nervous about how this whole thing will play out, this me-killing-Parka thing. Then it hits me: The Malefactors.

Parka belonged to The Malefactors, a loose-knit group of Silver Striker villains who occasionally band together for big heists and to break each other out of prison. There are five of them: Black Blizzard, Psychedelia, Moonbug, Demolition Woman, and Parka. Okay, there are only four of them, but they're all heavy-hitters and they're all going to be pissed that I killed their poker buddy.

I'm thinking I'll take a vacation.

Parka Down

2005-04-18T01:01:00.000-07:00

Tonight I head out to South Bend for patrol. I usually stick to the urban center of Evergreen City –Midtown, Queen’s Row, Chinatown, etc – but tonight I want to check out The Bend, as they call it. South Bend is and old dock and warehouse district on the banks of the Willapa under the 101 viaduct. The area is slowly gentrifying; land speculators are buying lots and renovating old buildings into overpriced condos, but it’s still pretty sketchy. Tonight a river mist creeps over The Bend, silently flooding the colorless streets.

I leave my car up on the hill and jog down into South Bend on silent streets at about 30 mph. I hop up on to a warehouse, then run and jump across the dark urban playground until I reach the building I want.

The Cardiff is a rotting old three-story apartment building overlooking the river, flanked by two equally haggard looking brick warehouses. Mist and darkness cling to the damp buildings. I check out the Cardiff from the roof of the café across the street, where I crouch behind a vent. I try not to make any noise, because parked in a van on the street below me are a couple plain clothes police officers watching the same building.

One of the things I found out when I planted a listening device on an ECPD Paracrime Unit trooper was this stakeout: for the past three weeks the cops have had 24 hour protective surveillance on Liz Hellman’s apartment building. The name sounded familiar, so I Googled her and found out that Hellman is Liz’s maiden name – her married name is Rapaport. As in Vincent Rapaport.

As in Parka.

Liz Hellman is the estranged wife of the supervillain Parka, and for the past two years she and her two year old son have been moving around trying to avoid Parka. Apparently Liz got tired of life with a supervillain and decided to split, and Vincent didn’t take it too well. According to SuperPeople, Parka is insanely possessive and wants his son back. That’s not somebody I’d want to be in a custody battle with.

Anyway, from what I understand the cops in the van are here to keep an eye on the apartment in case Parka shows up. I assume their orders are to call for help – I can’t imagine two cops with sidearms taking on Parka. Well, not successfully anyway. From up here I can hear them talking to each other, and the soft squawk of their radio.

I can’t tell who’s in the apartment because the curtains are drawn, but somebody’s awake up there. What the hell, I’ll hang out for a little while, see if anything happens.

Making myself as comfortable as I can on the roof, I rip open a Power Bar and queue up my new mix on my armor’s MP3 player. Tonight I’m rocking the United States of Electronica, perky synthy dance music. Again: not gay.

Every once in a while I poke my head up to make sure nothing’s going on. I see a hobo shuffling down the sidewalk past the Cardiff. The tracks aren’t far from here and hundreds of hobos camp out under the viaduct, so nothing out of the ordinary there.

I’m bopping and humming along to my disco when I hear shouting. I poke my head up –

--and see the two plainclothes cops advancing across the street from their van guns drawn, pointing at the homeless guy on the sidewalk. They’re shouting at him, but I can’t hear – damn it, I can never turn this fucking MP3 player off. The cops are screaming at the homeless guy, who’s wearing a hooded sweatshirt and is holding his hands up.

I finally turn the music off.

“—don’t want to kill any cops!” the guy yells.

I zoom in on him with my binocular setting.

“Oh, shit,” I say.

It’s Parka.

I can’t believe I didn’t recognize him – you’d think I’d be suspicious of a guy in a hood, but no. That’s why I’m not one of those detective type superheroes; no eye for detail. The cops aren’t as stupid as I am, but I have a feeling that in a minute they’re going to wish they hadn’t spotted him.

“Don’t move! Do not move!” the cops yell.

“I’m not going to warn you again!” Parka yells. “I’m just here for my boy! Stand down!”

“Keep your hands in the air and get down on your knees!”

Parka hits the cops with his power. I can feel it from up here, 50 yards away – a wave of cold hits me like a sudden arctic gale.

The street in front of the Cardiff is flash-frozen, a glistening icy wonderland. It looks like somebody sprayed the whole street with that weird white crap – flocking – that people spray Christmas trees with. Parka stands in the center of the icy blast zone, immune to the extreme cold, while the two cops curl at his feet, covered in a thin layer of snow. They’re probably dead.

Briefly I see Liz Hellman part the curtains in her window and look down, and then she disappears.

I stand up and take a deep breath, then crack my neck. I’m not too psyched about this, but what can I do? I’m the Velvet Marauder, and I'm an idiot. I have to go down there.

So with a hollow feeling in my gut, I jump off the roof of the café, hurling myself at Parka.

I should stop my narrative, here in mid-air, and explain my trepidation.

In case you don’t know, Parka is a Silver Striker villain, a member of The Malefactors, a loose-knit group of villains who apparently exist only to fuck with Silver Striker. A lab experiment gone horribly wrong gave researcher Vincent Rapaport incredible icy powers, but also turned his body into a sub-zero cold generator. He keeps his unnaturally cold body in a specially designed hooded containment suit, and wears a mask and goggles. He looks like an evil snowmobiler. Taking the appropriate but weird nom de guerre Parka he turned to a life of crime. Parka is like Iceman from Marvel Comics, but without the ice skating. And he kills people.

Parka, you may recall, was the reason Silver Striker incorporated. During the Galactic Trauma a couple years back Silver Striker fought all five of The Malefactors at once. He kicked the shit out of them, but Parka froze Houston’s water supply, rupturing water mains and causing hundreds of millions of dollars in damage. Suddenly Silver Striker faced a foe that he couldn’t fight with speed and solar power – a class action lawsuit. He incorporated and created Silver Striker Enterprises shortly thereafter just to defend himself from all the bullshit.

So you can see how I’d be anxious. I’m fighting Parka, an “A” list villain who regularly throws down with Silver Striker – and I’m near a river. Smart.

All right, back to me in mid-air: I jump out in a high parabolic arc, an easy fifty meter leap for me, and come down almost on top of Parka. I see him look up – even under the parka hood and behind the ski mask and goggles I can tell he’s surprised – and then I’m engulfed in a fucking blizzard.

An icy invisible hand of super-cooled air catches my body and tosses me hard against the frosted façade of the Cardiff apartments.

The chill sinks down past my insulated body armor, into my bones. My lungs ache with cold. I pull myself into a crouch, sucking air.

“Who the fuck you supposed to be?” Parka says, walking closer.

“Y-yuh… yuh…” I gasp.

“Speak up,” he says, bending down.

“Your mama,” I snarl, springing to my feet. I catch him with an open hand in the chest, and shove as hard as I can. Parka flies back into the air across the street. Just before he crashes into the café, Parka spins in mid-air and hoses down the landing area with a cold blast. He lands in a big mound of soft, fluffy snow, uninjured.

He’ll be on his feet in seconds. I don’t even have enough time to chastise myself for the horrible “your mama” line. Jumping over to the two fallen cops, I dig in my utility belt.

The cops look bad. They’re both covered in a thin glaze of ice and they’re not even shivering.

I find what I’m looking for: one of the new Solar Flares from My Guy. Haven’t tried these out yet, My Guy says they burn brighter and hotter than my old magnesium flares. I guess we’ll see. I pop the top off the flare, which instantly fizzes to life.

About 50 yards away, Parka rises out of the snow pile. Spindrift and icy fog swirls around him like a ghost.

“You!” he yells, stabbing a thick gloved finger at me. “You’re a fucking dead man!”

The Solar Flare practically explodes in my hand, bursting into a white hot incandescence in my hand. The heat feels blistering when compared to the chill air around me.

I need some time, so I throw the flare at him. Parka waves his hand, and the Solar Flare explodes harmlessly against a big concave crystalline barrier.

“I’m just here to get my boy – my boy – from that bitch, and you fuckers have to get in the way!”

Pfsshhht! Keep talking, dickhead. I pop another blinding Solar Flare and drop it between the two freezer-burnt cops. Hopefully that will start to thaw them; I don’t know what else I can do. The sirens are getting louder, so hopefully paramedics are on the way. Of course, if I don’t take Parka down…

The crystalline barrier comes crashing down, and Parka throws something at me.

Instinctively I roll to one side as a deadly swarm of icicles screams through the air above me, smashing out all the windows on the ground floor of the apartments behind me. I hop across the street behind some cars, hoping to draw his fire away from the two cops.

It works. A blizzard of ultra-cold air whips across the street after me. I cower behind a car, one of those little Scions. I couldn’t have picked a bigger car?

“I’m going to show you what happens when you fuck around in something that’s none of your fucking business!” Parka screams.

The air around me turns into a pretty little sparkly fairy land, and that intense cold settles down on me. My goggles start to fog up and my head goes light. The air is so cold it burns my sinuses, my throat. I can see feathers of ice growing on the body of the Scion, spreading in a fractal pattern. My limbs feel stiff. This is not a good thing.

I’m vaguely aware of sirens, and the sound of Parka raving about his son, and my ringing ears.

Dizzy, I lean against the Scion. My fingers dig into the frozen metal of the car.

Where is he? Jesus, it’s cold. I hope Liz Hellman and her kid made it out the back of the Cardiff.

Through my foggy goggles I see him, a dark shape coming towards me, the center of a spinning vortex of snow. Behind him I see flashing police lights. More cops for Parka to kill. I gotta do something.

So I push as hard as I can on the Scion, flipping the frozen little car into the street. I’m pretty fucking strong even when I’m half frozen; the car rolls and tumbles end over end into the street, flattening Parka. Instantly the deep freeze lifts and the temperature shoots up a good thirty degrees.

My head is killing me – I’ve got some major brain-freeze going on.

“Freeze! Freeze!” somebody’s screaming. Sounds like cops. Even in my frost-adled state, I find it ironic. Because, you know, they’re yelling “freeze!” and it’s very cold. Irony.

I pull myself up to my knees and realize that some of the cops are yelling at me. Two Paracrime Unit troopers are advancing towards me with MAC-10 submachine guns, yelling and pointing at me. I think they want me to get back down on the ground.

Ignoring the cops for a minute, I try to clear my head and find Parka.

Ah. There he is, under the car. A pair of boots stick out from under the frozen, overturned Scion, like the Wicked Witch of the East.

The ringing in my ears is starting to go away, replaced by the screaming of the cops.

“Down on the ground! Face down!”

I wave them off. “I’m fine, really. Thanks for asking.”

“Down on the –“

Enough of the yelling. I drop a sepia bomb on the street and smile as the inky blackness billows around me. The cops are yelling, but not shooting. With all my strength I leap up out of the cloud, hopping like a drunken frog on to the roof of the café. They keep screaming for me to stop – very optimistic of them.

I glance over my shoulder before I split – a bunch of cops are gathered around the overturned Scion and flattened supervillain.

Holy shit, I think I just killed Parka.

Drat

2005-04-14T22:57:00.000-07:00

So the cops in the Paracrime unit finally found the bug I planted.

You may recall that during my last altercation with the Paracrime Unit, Evergreen City’s own jack-booted anti-parahuman squad, I planted a needle-sized listening device called a KOMA probe on the flak vest of one of their troopers. (see posts Paracrime in your face Part One and Part Two, 2/23/05) Any audio feed from the bug got converted to an MP3 file which I could listen to at my leisure in the Secret Chamber. Most of the feed from the bug was garbage, but I’d occasionally glean some useful intelligence from it; enough to keep me from stumbling into anymore police dragnets anyway.

Well, those days are over. Tonight after work I’m kicking it in the Secret Chamber, listening to the latest feed from the bug while I surf the Web, and I hear the following exchange:

COP: Captain. Captain, take a look at this.

(Then a voice I recognize as Capt. Solomon Sledge comes on.)

SLEDGE: What’s up, Sergeant?

COP: I did that counter-surveillance sweep like you asked and I found this on Lucas’ vest.

SLEDGE: Let’s see… What the hell? This a bug or something?

COP: Yeah, I’m pretty sure it is. I think it’s KOMA technology, powers itself by absorbing ambient heat. It’s very high end – NSA uses them.

SLEDGE: It transmitting right now?

COP: Uh, yeah, I don’t see why it wouldn’t be.

SLEDGE: That son of a bitch… The Velvet Marauder must have planted this on Lucas at the Masonic Temple. That was in – shit, that was the end of February.

COP: So he’s been listening in on us the whole time?

SLEDGE: Tag it. I want the lab to look at this, Bobby.

COP: No problem, Captain.

SLEDGE: Wait a second.

(Then I hear Sledge’s voice very loud and close to the probe. He’s talking to me now.)

SLEDGE: Okay, Marauder. You’ve had your fun. But know this: play time is over. Don’t doubt for a second that we are going to run your ass down, because we will. And I’m going to be smiling when I ship your ass off to The Catacombs.

And that’s it. Oh well, it was good while it lasted. Now I have to go back to looking over my shoulder every time I patrol at night.

“Play time is over?” He’s got the tough guy clichés down pat, doesn’t he?

The Velvet Marauder begs the Goo Goo Dolls to please, for the love of God, stop making music

2005-04-13T10:16:00.001-07:00

I've had it with the Goo Goo Dolls. Have you heard their cover of Supertramp's "Give A Little Bit?" Well, I have, and I wish I had not. I'm not even a Supertramp fan, and I find it blasphemous. It sounds like a session band from a Ford truck commercial screwing around.

Don't get me wrong, I don't hate the Goo Goo Dolls, I just hate their music. I'm sure the band are all nice fellas, and if their tour bus flipped over on 101 and was on fire, I would rescue them.

I just wouldn't be in a big hurry.

Shopping for Mauraderangs and Magnesium Flares

2005-04-11T16:12:00.000-07:00

I’m ready to place another order with My Guy, my anonymous weapons and gadget maker(s). As per usual, secrecy is the order of the day with My Guy: I send a postcard to a P.O. Box, and then receive an encrypted email which I decode with My Guy’s customer software. The decoded email provides me with the URL for a one-time-only chatroom where I log in and place my order.

I call him My Guy, but really I have no idea what his/her gender may be, or whether it’s a big group of Monster Garage type guys or what. “He” works by referral only, and supplies superheroes such as myself with customized armor, weapons, and gear. I know that he makes stuff for Wombat (who referred me to him), Kestrel, Night Hunter (dick), Dark Archer, and Major Domo, and probably lots more. I have a sneaking suspicion that My Guy might also provide gear to supervillains, but I can’t be sure.

Anyway, I log in and place my order. Here’s an excerpt of our chat:

X9: How many Marauderangs?

VM: Do I get a discount if I buy in bulk?

X9: No.

VM: OK. Four dozen.

X9: Do you need any shurikens?

VM: I actually have never used the shuriken gun. Seems too lethal, throws off my balance.

X9: Would you like to return it? Have client in Far East who could use it.

VM: Would I get store credit or something?

X9: Yes. Will send UPS Call Tag label to retrieve it this week. What else?

VM: Two dozen sepia bombs, four KOMA probes, 6 magnesium flares.

X9: Out of mag flares; we have new Solar Flare incendiary bombs instead.

VM: That sounds cool, give me a dozen. Anything else new?

X9: We have pocket sized radio jammers, micro-GPS tracking devices, and water-breathing pills.

VM: Water-breathing pills? No shit?

X9: Lemurian technology, brand new. Each pill lasts 2 hours.

VM: I’ll take two, and a radio jammer.

Wow, water-breathing pills? That sounds awesome. Who knows when that will come in handy? I can put them in the pouch on my utility belt where I keep my cobra anti-venin. Because really, there aren’t any cobras in the Pacific Northwest. It just seemed like the thing to get at the time…

"Vomitable Material"

2005-04-09T13:11:00.000-07:00

Well, that was unpleasant. I was -- how you say? Ah, yes: sick as the dog.

For about 36 hours I lay around my house, periodically gripped with the urgent need to vomit whether I have vomitable material in my stomach or not. I’m spared any serious problems of the bowel variety, but that’s about the only good thing I can say about the whole experience.

At about 3 AM I lay shivering and sweating in my bed, unable to sleep, and I think: maybe I’ve been poisoned. Maybe Interbionics slipped something into my drinking water or had an assassin transmit a deadly virus via a handshake, like on that one episode of 24. Maybe I’m not just sick, maybe I’m dying of some advanced retrovirus.

This may sound paranoid, but bear with me. A few months ago, after my Christmas battle with the elf at the Interbionics Holiday Ball (see post, The Interbionics Thing, 12/24/05), somebody broke into my house and stole some evidence from the Secret Chamber. I beefed up my security and haven’t had a problem since, but I never did figure out who broke in – clearly somebody that knew my secret identity. Nothing bad has happened since then, so I kind of forgot about it. But what if somebody like Interbionics came into my house and painted a clear, odorless poison on my remote control or a keyboard or something? I’m just saying, I think I have a more legitimate reason for paranoia than the average person.

So anyway, I’m gripped with nausea and sweating, irrational fear for a few long hours until I go to sleep. I dream of watermelon and Hydrangea.

When I wake up the next morning, Wendy is in my kitchen with groceries – watermelon, ginger ale, rice, apple sauce, and Eggo waffles. I stagger into the kitchen in my bathrobe, haggard and surprised.

“Wendy, this is awesome,” I say, cracking open a ginger ale. “Thanks so much. That’s weird, I was thinking of watermelon all night. How did you even know I was sick?”

“You called our house at 3 AM asking if we had any watermelon you could borrow,” Wendy says.

“Oh. All right, then.”

“Connor, your fridge is disgusting,” Wendy says, rooting around noisily in the fridge. “What is this? Are these asparagus spears? I’m cleaning this out, this is gross.”

“Knock yourself out.”

“You would think that somebody like you, who is so obsessed with their appearance, would have a really clean fridge.”

“Do I look like I’m obsessed with my appearance?” I say, wiping gunk from the corner of my mouth.

“Not right now, no,” Wendy says.

Apropos of nothing, I say, “Hey, have you talked to Emma?” Emma, the Emmanator, is Wendy’s hot cop cousin, and a member of the ECPD’s Paracrime Unit. I slept with her once and we haven’t spoken since. Actually, I think she slept with me.

“No,” Wendy says, unconvincingly, burying her head back in my disgusting fridge.

“Come on, what’s the deal?” I say, knowing that I’m whining but not caring.

Wendy sighs. “Connor, I think you should just let that one go. Emma’s really into her work, you know, she doesn’t really have time—“

“Woah, woah,” I say, indignant. “I’m not making a big deal about this, I’m not trying to steer this boat into relationship land.” My lame metaphor hangs heavy in the air.

“Okay,” Wendy says. “Then you’re okay with you guys just having that one-night thing and that’s it?”

“Of course. Please. I’m me.”

“Good. Because I think for Emma it was just sort of a conquest thing. She’s very alpha, you know.”

“A conquest thing,” I say. “Like a sport fuck.”

“That’s kind of a crude term, but that’s accurate. Oh my God, look at this. I think this was spaghetti sauce once.”

Wendy continues disemboweling my fridge as I gently sip ginger ale.

I feel sick.

Illin' and chillin' just like a snowman

2005-04-07T04:31:00.000-07:00

Okay, I'm sick. It's like a stomach bug or something. I made it home from patrol last night and violently vomitted up the contents of my stomach. We've established earlier that involuntary bodily functions can be dangerous, or at the very least messy, when you have super strength like I do. (see post The unique hazards of super-powered sneezing, 2/8/05)

I've discovered that throwing up with super force into the toilet can make a huge mess in the bathroom. When I feel better I'll clean the walls and ceiling off.

Shoot me, somebody.

Patrol Report

2005-04-06T01:29:00.000-07:00

Uneventful patrol tonight. I hopped around Midtown for an hour and then called it quits. I'm starting to feel a little wonky; I hope I'm not getting sick.

Kraken like Dokken

2005-04-05T17:21:00.000-07:00

More Kraken rampage!

This time the giant mutant squid monster ate most of a Japanese tuna fleet. The combined Japanese-American fleet that’s hunting the beast is still being shadowed by an Ocean Steward ship full of hippies who want to spare the ship-eating monster. They released a statement yesterday that said that they think The Kraken’s rampage may have been caused by high-frequency active sonar used by the military.

I call bullshit on that. I think it’s a weapon of mass destruction sent by evil undersea aliens, or a Cthulhu-type elder god or something.

Where the hell is Sea King? Shouldn’t he be taking care of this? I’d be embarrassed if I was the planet's main underwater superhero and this shit was happening on my watch.

Golf Report

2005-04-04T13:19:00.000-07:00

Mitch and I go golfing at Emerald Greens today and he reads me the riot act for not visiting him and Lisa and their new baby recently. I feel kind of bad – upon reflection I realize that I may have Kid Issues, which I won’t go into here. Let’s just say that it’s a combination of Peter Pan Syndrome, a feeling of inadequacy, and the fact that I could crush a child’s skull with my bare hands if I lost control. Kids make me nervous.

So I apologize to Mitch, but I still kick his ass at golf.

My Trophy Room

2005-03-31T17:58:00.000-08:00

One thing I think a proper superhero should have is a trophy room. It’s part of the culture. In the comics Batman has trophies and relics in the Batcave; a huge T-Rex , a giant penny, dead Robin’s suit, etc. How exactly did Batman get the big dinosaur in the cave, I wonder? I guess he has as a Batforklift or something. Anyway, in real life Silver Striker has that museum that keeps getting blown up, and the Minutemen have Liberty Plaza. I’m sure the Midnight Rambler has a trophy vault somewhere, and I’d love to see all the crazy shit the Storm Riders have up in the Weather Center. My point is, everybody has a trophy room.

Space is an issue for me, so I have to settle for a trophy wall inside the Secret Chamber, which I really need to air out; it smells like a wet yak in there. So far I only have three items in my trophy collection: the stake I used to kill that vampire in Turbine City, a fancy gold dagger from one of Baron von Blitzkrieg’s officers, and the Insekt III claw. I mount the dagger on the wall and put the stake in a metallic picture frame next to it. The display for the robot claw is really cool; I mounted the claw on a black pedestal and put a large bell jar over top of it.

There. I step back and admire my trophy wall.

You know, I could make little plaques for each trophy that explain what the item is and the story behind it…

Okay, I need to stop. Getting a little too Martha here. Who’s going to read the fucking plaques? It’s a Secret Chamber.

Media Report

2005-03-30T14:16:00.000-08:00

The fight with the robot played really well on TV. I Tivo all the local news and later that night I sit in the Secret Chamber in my bathrobe, eating Tom Kah Gui and watching the coverage. The KORN helicopter got a really great shot of me cartwheeling away from a toppling stack of steel containers, and another cameraman got a quality shot of me holding up my prize, the robot’s claw.

They interview a Burlington Northern official who says, “It could have been a lot worse if the Velvet Marauder hadn’t intervened.”

The Paracrime Unit’s Capt. Sledge is not as charitable. He stares into the camera and says, “The ECPD has both the training and equipment to deal with situations like this. We were cordoning off the area when the Marauder illegally interfered in a police situation. People could have been killed.”

What an asshole. People could have been killed while Paracrime sat on their asses, he means. I can’t help it if I’m a super-fast crimefighting machine and beat his goons to the punch. Dick.

I make the front page of the Times and the Inquisitor (both in color), and I come off like a stud. The Inquisitor has a little article about the Insekt III robot, complete with a neat picture of the thing and some more background information. Apparently there were four of those things on the derailed train, but only one of them went apeshit. Experts speculate that the impact triggered a self-defense protocol in the robot. Fortunately its chain gun wasn’t loaded and its “electro-field” wasn’t online. The Insekt IIIs are the latest in a series of security robots designed by PomTech, a Pomeranian arms and aerospace company. They’re designed for perimeter defense – the Pomeranians use them to guard their nuclear plants. The four Insekt IIIs on the train were bound for Spokane. The buyers?

Interbionics.

Robot fu

2005-03-29T16:44:00.000-08:00

I’m in my office working on nothing in particular when I hear on NPR about a train derailment down at the docks. At first, I don’t think anything of it. What am I going to do? I’m not strong enough to pick up train cars, and it’s the middle of the day. I rule the night, etc. So I sit on my parahuman ass and drink my coffee and don’t give it a second thought.

A few minutes go by and I hear what sounds like an explosion. I peer out the window; my office has a good view of most of the harbor. Can’t see anything, but a column of greasy black smoke drifts into view.

Suddenly our regular NPR program – I think they were talking about soil acidity or something equally gripping – is interrupted by the local public radio news guy.

“We’re interrupting our regular programming with this breaking news: a train has derailed in a rail yard near the docks, causing a series of explosions and a fire. Emergency units are on their way and are blocking off 1st Avenue at Oyster Bay Road. And… we’re getting reports now that… i-it appears that there is some kind of robot in the rail yards that is reportedly causing some of this damage –“

Robot.

That’s the magic word.

I rush out of my office and run down the hall into Margo’s office, which is on the north side of the building – she’ll have a good view of the whole thing. Margo is pressed up against the window, cupping her hands against the glare.

“What’s going on?” I say.

“Giant robot or something,” Margo says. “I can’t really see anything – too smoky.”

She’s right, the rail yards, which are about half a mile away, are obscured in a thick haze of smoke. I can see police lights and fires burning intensely among the shadowy hulks of container cars. I see some railroad workers running. Something’s moving around down there…

Then a cop car flips through the air, flying out of the smoky gloom like it was launched from a catapult.

“Did you see that?” Margo says. “That was a cop car!”

I’m already out the door.

My suit is in the trunk of the Saab, which is in the parking garage. I run to my car and pop the trunk. How am I going to do this? I can suit up and be there in no time, but somebody might see me leaving the building. On the other hand, I’m parked on the fourth floor of the garage and I’ll probably waste five minutes going down and around and down and around the ramps, then wait while the fucking garage security gate slowly creaks open… and by then the robot or whatever may have killed a bunch of people.

Another explosion shakes the parking garage. I can hear police and fire sirens, and news helicopters thrumming in the air overhead. Fuck it, I’m suiting up here.

Within two minutes I’m pulling the cowl over my head, snugging my goggles into place, and checking to make sure my gauntlet-launchers are loaded with Marauderangs. It’s go time, baby.

I drop out of the parking garage into the alley below, sprint the 200 yards to the rail yard fence, and then launch myself over the barbed wire in one huge leap. I land like a cat on top of a container car and slide into Pose #1: Vigilant Dragon, surveying the scene. God, what a strutting peacock I am.

Here’s the situation: I’m at the edge of this vast rail yard, a series of tracks that feed into the Port of Evergreen City’s container terminal. As usual the yard is crowded with container trains and stacks of big steel cargo containers. Big red cranes looming like dinosaurs in the background. The smoke from two fierce fires burning in the center of the yard obscures much of the scene, but I can clearly see two derailed trains. It smells like oil. Cop cars and fire engines gather at the edge of the rail yard. News helicopters circle overhead. Over the sound of the helicopters I think I hear gunshots. I think I can see the robot or whatever, moving around in the smoke. When I zoom in with the binocular setting on my goggles, I see it. No shit, it’s an honest-to-God rampaging robot.

Oh, hell yes. I am all about berserk robots.

I better do this quick before the Paracrime Unit shows up and takes it down. Still, no sense going in half-cocked. I switch to the scanner on my suit’s audio system. My cowl’s headset crackles to life.

A guy on Paracrime’s frequency says, “…according to the manifest it’s being shipped to Spokane. Made in Pomerania. We’ve got the manufacturers on the phone, stand by.”

A Pomeranian robot. Figures.

I hop from container to container, drawing closer to the scene.

The guy on the radio says, “Panda units, be advised that robot is an area-defense model. Manufacturer believes that the train accident may have damaged the unit and triggered a self-defense mode. Let’s see, uh, the robot is called an Insekt III. There are up to nine different modular weapons configurations, but most commonly it is equipped with a chain gun, flamethrower, and a 40 mm multi-purpose weapon – whatever that is.”

I turn the radio off as I hop up on to a stack of containers that will give me a good look at it.

The Insekt III strides into view and I can’t help but be disappointed that it’s not a little bit bigger. I was hoping for a giant robot, and this one’s just… large.

It looks like a big mechanical fiddler crab to me. It’s body, which is about the size of a small car, is held up by six double jointed grasshopper legs with big round feet. One long articulated arm sprouts from the top of the torso, sporting a mean looking claw-type appendage. The robot’s “head” is a sensor pod on top of the torso that looks like a motorcycle helmet. The whole thing is painted a handsome forest green.

(I couldn’t find a picture of the Insekt III online, but it looks and moves very similar to this thing: click here)

The robot sidesteps on its grasshopper legs and stops, as if it’s listening. Then it swivels around and its big crab arm points up at me. Well, it definitely sees me. I’m about twenty yards away and thirty feet up on a stack of containers. Suddenly I wonder if that’s too close.

I leap off my perch just as the Insekt III fires.

The shockwave catches me in the air microseconds before I hear the deafening explosion. Out of control, I bounce off a container and fall on to the concrete of the rail yard.

What the fuck was that? I think it shot something from its arm – maybe that’s the 40 mm multi-purpose weapon the cops were talking about. Whatever it was, it put a big smoking hole in the side of the container I was sitting on and made my ears ring.

Okay, where is it? I can hear it moving nearby, hidden by a container train and black curtains of smoke.

I hop up on top of the container train for a better view –

--and the robot’s big clawed hand looms suddenly out of the smoke. The crab pincers gape wide and close around my waist. Before I can do anything it has snatched me off the top of the train and is raising me into the air – the serrated vice claw squeezes with amazing strength and I feel my breath leave my body. Little tiny motes of light dance in front of my eyes and I feel lightheaded.

Okay, I take back what I said about hoping for a bigger robot. This one’s fine.

In a moment of weird lucidity I notice that the big claw that’s crushing me is just part of a more complex tool mounted on the end of the Insekt III’s arm. It has a chainsaw, several lights and camera lenses, a flamethrower nozzle, and a wide-barrel grenade launcher weapon. I briefly wonder who ordered the robot – somebody in Spokane? I can’t believe they were shipping it in a container on a train –

And then it throws me into a train head-first.

I’m pretty sure I black out. Yes, because the next thing I remember I’m face down in the dirt, tasting my own blood in my mouth. My ears are ringing. Is my head bleeding? Squinting with pain, I look around. A fuel truck burns nearby. Everywhere I look I see derailed train cars and toppled containers. I cough. The smoke is choking, thick.

With measured mechanical steps, the Insekt III crawls on its grasshopper legs out of the smoke towards me.

I try to get up, but the horizon tilts crazily when I do. If I could just clear my head for a second.

The robot stops and turns around so that its fiddler crab arm is facing away from me. What’s it --? A panel slides open on the top of the robot’s torso. A black apparatus rises from the torso and snaps into a horizontal position. It looks like –

A gatling gun. It’s the aforementioned 20 mm chain gun.

The chain gun swivels until its pointing directly at me.

I wish I could move; I’m bulletproof, but not against shit like this. I wish I could move –

The Insekt III fires. The chain gun barrels spin. Nothing happens. The gatling gun just spins, whining like a drill. I smile with bloody teeth. The chain gun’s not loaded.

Suddenly inspired by my near-death, I pull myself to my feet. The Insekt III is adapting, the big arm is swinging around again fast. I rush towards the robot and grab on to the barrel of the impotent chain gun.

Fwoosh! A tongue of flame from the claw shoots overhead and splashes against a fallen train car.

Okay, I’m thinking more clearly now. I figure the best way to beat this thing is to stay close and try to fuck it up from the inside, which is why I’m still hanging on to the chain gun. I squeeze hard, crimping the multi-barrel gun. From here I can see inside the hatch in the fuselage and into the robot. Maybe I could drop a grenade in there…

The claw is back. It snaps at my head, which I am attached to, so I let go of the chain gun. Dropping under the torso of the robot, I roll out from under the stamping grasshopper legs, then leap behind a stack of containers. A blast of flame chases me.

My ears are still ringing, so I almost don’t hear the stack of containers falling until it’s too late. The Insekt III pushes the top few containers of the stack over, which tumble down towards me. I cartwheel out of the way as the huge steel boxes crash down. That’s right, I cartwheel. Again: not gay.

But now I’m out in the open and the robot has me in it’s sights. The big clawed arm swings around, rearing up like a cobra ready to strike.

I jump towards the machine as the killing arm comes down. It digs into the earth like a pick, narrowly missing me. I skid under the thing’s belly again and pop back up the other side.

Like I figured, I damaged the chain gun enough that it couldn’t retract back inside the armored fuselage. I grab the bent barrel and dig around in my utility belt. I hear gears and servos whine as the robot’s arm swivels around, poised to attack again.

Score -- I find the grenade I’m looking for. I pop the pin and stuff the grenade inside the chain gun hatch. I hear it rattle around inside, a satisfying noise.

I launch myself backwards, away from the robot. I smack hard against a steel container thirty yards away.

The Insekt III takes a step towards me, crab arm raised high. Then there’s a hollow boom from inside the robot. It shudders and slumps a little. The big arm slowly droops to the ground. The mechanical beast spasms and burps smoke, then is very still.

Having seen far too many movies, I don’t believe it’s dead. I creep forward, waiting for the limp arm to spring to life. It doesn’t.

New helicopters beat the air overhead. I hope the smoke wasn’t too bad and they got some decent footage of the fight. I hear sirens. God, I almost forgot, this place is surrounded by cops!

I rush over to the arm and inspect the claw.

“Freeze!” somebody shouts behind me.

I kneel down and grab on to the robot’s claw. It’s really well constructed, but I bet I can pull it off. I pull.

“Get your hands up!”

I glance over my shoulder. Two Paracrime troopers in black body armor and hockey masks walk towards me, aiming MP5s at my head. They’re twenty yards away. I pull harder.

“Marauder! Get your hands up or we will shoot!”

It’s starting to give. I pull harder.

“Marauder--!”

The big serrated pincers tear free from the mechanical arm. They’re pretty heavy. Satisfied, I stand up and turn around. I can’t tell because of the spooky hockey masks and all, but these cops seem pissed.

“Guys—“

“Drop the claw and put your fucking hands up!” one yells.

“It’s my first robot,” I say. “I just want a souvenir.”

Then the wind shifts and smoke billows between the cops and I. Not being stupid, I get the hell out of there, back flipping up and over a train. They hold their fire.

I’m laughing as I run at about 40 mph through the rail yard with the Insekt III’s claw tucked under one arm.

I fucking rule.

Blogger, why you hate me?

2005-03-27T08:00:00.000-08:00

Why you hate me so much, Blogger? Why you eat my posts? You make Marauder cry.

Patrol Report

2005-03-27T01:44:00.001-08:00

Another boring patrol. I break my recently imposed rule and listen to some music on my suit’s audio system – Scissor Sisters and Panjabi MC are in the mix. It was either that or The Little River Band. I’m serious.

Anyway, there’s nothing going on. No muggings, no supervillains, no cops hunting me – yawn. At least it’s raining; we could use the rain here in the E.C, after our dry winter.

My current nemesis (Nemesi? What’s the plural for nemesis?) the ECPD Paracrime Unit have been pretty low-profile lately and seem to have turned some of their focus away from hunting the Velvet Marauder to training and other tasks. Maybe they realized that I don’t go out on patrol every night because I am a lazy bastard, and moved on to prey with a more developed work ethic.

Weeks ago I planted a KOMA bug on one of the Paracrime troopers, which has allowed me to glean some valuable intel about the unit and keep me one step ahead of them. They currently have 24 hour surveillance on some woman’s apartment in South Bend near the river – I have no idea why. That’s the frustrating thing about electronic eavesdropping: nobody speaks clearly into the mike and handily summarizes all of their plans for me. You actually have to interpret the bits and scraps of information that dribble in. Every other night I listen to the audio feed from the bug in my Secret Chamber and I always feel slightly sheepish and stupid. The Midnight Rambler would be able to collate, interpret, and organize all this random info into something useful, then concoct a brilliant plan. Me? I just sit in the Chamber in my sweats eating pizza and wondering what the hell Paracrime is up to.

That reminds me, I need to email My Guy and order some more KOMA probes and some more Marauderangs – I’m almost out.

Kraken huggers

2005-03-25T21:01:00.000-08:00

The Kraken strikes again! This time it wipes out a Japanese whaler – all hands lost.

A U.S. Navy task force is en route towards the Sea of Okhotsk, where the attack took place. Some Japanese destroyers are joining the hunt.

I guess the Navy task force is being shadowed by an Ocean Stewards ship, which is full of hippies who want to stop the military from killing the Kraken. I’m not really sure what the Ocean Stewards propose to do with the thing - give it a big snuggle?

Random Christopher Walken Quote

2005-03-23T14:03:00.000-08:00

That Chris Walkman guy got me thinking about Christopher Walken, who I love more than Gary Busey and John Lithgow combined. I know. That's a lot of love.

Anyway, here's a random pearl of wisdom from the man himself:

"I wear a lot of black because I think it’s attractive, but also because it looks neat and clean and sensible. Hundreds of millions of Asians wear black - they know what they’re doing."

That is so true.

Nosy reporter

2005-03-22T13:54:00.000-08:00

I get a call at work today from Christopher Walkman, a reporter from the Evergreen City Inquisitor.

“I’m sorry, did you say your name was Christopher Walken?” I say.

There’s a pause on the other end, and a little sigh. “Walkman. Like the portable stereo. Christopher Walkman.”

“Oh,” I say. “You must get that a lot, huh?”

“You have no idea.”

“Well, what can I do for you, Chris?” I say.

There’s another little pause – I guess he prefers to be called “Christopher.”

“Mr. Mackenzie, I’m doing a story on the Velvet Marauder and I’m wondering if you wouldn’t mind answering a few questions.”

I swear to God, my heart skips a beat. Shit, how did this guy find me? Does he think I’m the Marauder? Is he recording this? “Uh, what kind of story?”

“It’s about how car insurance rates have gone up in Evergreen City because of the Velvet Marauder,” Walkman says.

“Wh-what?”

“Yeah, certain policies have gone up as much as 5% in the past year because of all the cars he’s destroyed in his fights. I understand that your car was totaled last August by the Marauder.” (see post EXPLODER, 8/25/05)

“Well, not really,” I say. “My car got blown up by Exploder.”

“Yeah, but it was during a battle between Exploder and the Velvet Marauder, right?”

“Well, yes, but…”

“How did you feel about that? Your car getting blown up?”

I say, “First of all, my car was stolen that night. Second of all, I had a piece of shit car. Third, my insurance covered it. Fourth, Exploder blew my car up, not the Velvet Marauder.”

“So you don’t mind paying more money for insurance?” Walkman says.

“I’m not aware that I am paying more money; I’d have to check my policy. But you know what? I don’t really care all that much, no. I mean, that guy saved the city from what’s his name, the blimp guy.”

“Baron von Blitzkrieg.”

“Right,” I say. “I can’t believe people would bitch about a few trashed cars when the guy saves the city from getting firebombed. And the Jet Pack Mafia, he stopped those fuckers, didn’t he? And that zombie thing last Halloween…”

“So you’re okay with all the destruction and property dam –“

“Yes.”

“It doesn’t bother you at—“

“Nope. I’m fine with it. Big deal, a few cars get trashed – he’s a superhero. Property damage is part of the deal, they’re always whacking each other with lamp posts and shit. Nobody ever complains about Silver Striker or –“

“Actually, there’s a class action lawsuit against him from victims of the Vertigo-Go hostage standoff last year,” he says. “It’s one of the reasons he incorporated, to protect himself from bankruptcy –"

“And I think that’s more of a reflection of our overly litigious society than it is an indictment of his tactics. Look, Mr. Walken –“

“Walkman.”

“Right. Look, Chris, I don’t think I’m going to be able to help you. I gotta get back to work.”

He says, “Can I quote you on –“

“No. Bye-bye.”

Asshole.

Pride and vague guilt

2005-03-21T11:07:00.000-08:00

I’m sitting in my office staring out at the Bay and all the container ships, doing absolutely nothing. The only item on my agenda is a meeting with the girls from Creative to go over a proposed print teaser ad campaign for QuantumWorks. I feel like a thief, sometimes. The Company pays me an indecent salary to just sit around and play Game Boy Advanced and hunt around on Amazon.

I can see how a limbo situation like this would be maddening to a hard-charger like Margo, somebody whose identity is wrapped up in her work, but I’m not that ambitious, and my identity issues are a little more complex, if you know what I mean.

I’m not calling Emma Casperson. She can call me if she wants, but I’m not doing it. It’s been over a week since we slept together, and I haven’t heard a thing from her. I called JC and Wendy to “check in” yesterday and Wendy didn’t even mention Emma. Either Emma didn’t tell Wendy we slept together, or she did tell her, but told her not to mention it.

Whatever. I’m not calling Emma.

Not going to do it.

Maybe I should buy some shoes.

Smells like bacon

2005-03-18T09:18:00.000-08:00

The microwaves in our break room on the Ninth Floor aren't working, which pisses me off. Chad does a Starbucks run and returns with an Americano and a raspberry croissant for me, but as usual I find their croissants a little dry, so I go into the break room to nuke the thing for like, ten seconds.

But no. There are four microwaves, and none of them work. I check to make sure they're plugged in - they are. Maybe there's a problem with a fuse? I unplug one of the microwaves and plug a toaster into the same outlet - it works fine. How can four microwave ovens all stop working at the same time? This might not seem like a big deal to you, but damn it, I want my raspberry croissant warmed up!

"Work, you fucking cocksuckers!" I snarl at the microwaves.

Aaron Clarke, one of the QuantumWorks project vice presidents, stops in the hall outside the break room. He regards me with that judgmental English professor face of his.

"Problem, Mr. Mackenzie?" Clarke says.

"Yeah, the damn microwaves are all broken. All of them!"

He nods, as if this makes perfect sense. "Ah, of course. I'll have them replaced."

Just then Margo, who is walking down the hall, stops beside Clarke. She's wearing a cute 3/4 length black cashmere sweater and a pleated plaid skirt. She's beautiful. "You guys smell that? That bacon smell?"

Clarke sniffs the air, then says, "No, I'm sorry, I don't."

Now that she mentions it, I can smell the faint aroma of cooking bacon. I've noticed that smell several times in the past few months. "Yeah, what is that?"

"It's driving me crazy," Margo says, then moves on. Clarke nods to me and walks away.

Shit, I guess I'll have to go down to Eight where the microwaves work and it doesn't smell like bacon.

Patrol Report

2005-03-16T11:05:00.000-08:00

I get wet on patrol tonight. A storm front has rolled in off the Pacific, bringing high winds and rain squalls, and sheets of rain douse me as I leap around the rooftops of Queen’s Row. I like the rain. I always feel like a proper urban crimefighter when I patrol in fog or rain or snow – it adds to the whole ambience. You know what I’m talking about. You never see the Midnight Rambler skipping through a park on a bright sunny day with the birds singing and kites flying. No. He’s the Midnight Rambler, he belongs to the night, etc. Plus, I don't think he skips. Anyway, I feel cooler patrolling in the rain.

We can use the rain, too, we had a really dry winter. The snow pack in the Olympics is at 25% of normal, something like that. There’s going to be a big drought this summer. Fortunately, Shetfield waters their fairways with their own well water, so I have nothing to worry about. See? I have my priorities in order. As long as I can golf on pretty green grass, I’m happy.

Right, back to patrol. The ECPD Paracrime Unit is taking the night off, so I don’t have to restrict my patrol route. Still, I maintain situational awareness – I haven’t listened to music on my suit’s audio system for a while, and I make a habit of stopping every few minutes and just watching. I’m not going to get nailed by Paracrime because I’ve got Ministry cranked up on the suit’s audio and I’m not paying attention- that's just unprofessional.

Speaking of Paracrime, I haven’t picked up much of interest lately from the bug I planted on the trooper’s body armor. (see post Paracrime in your face Part One and Part Two, 3/05)From what I can gather, they’re spending the week training in Raymond and are doing some surveillance on an apartment that belongs to some woman named Hellman. I have no idea who that is or even if it’s of any significance. Although you would think if the Paracrime Unit is involved, this Hellman chick could be superhuman. Maybe a supervillain?

I stop an assault in Midtown – two drunken rednecks beating up on some poor guy who was probably just trying to stay dry and get home. Shit like this pisses me off, so I drop down and slap the rednecks around a little bit. After tossing BillyBob and Joe Joe against a wall repeatedly I flexcuff their wrists together. I’m checking on the guy to make sure he’s okay when two bike cops roll up. Time to split.

By the way, props to those cops for riding around on bikes in this shitty weather. That shows dedication.

Aside from the mugging, that’s about it, another uneventful patrol. I shouldn’t complain, sometimes the most exciting thing that happens to me on patrol is scaring sleeping pigeons on rooftops. Stopping a mugging is a respectable crimefighting thing to do. Plus – and this might not be a cool thing to say – it feels good to beat people up. Bad people, of course.

The Kraken

2005-03-15T13:28:00.000-08:00

I’m not an expert, but I’d say it would take a pretty fucking big sea monster to sink the Singapore Express.

Nearly three football fields in length, the Singapore Express is an absolutely massive container ship. It has a dead weight of 67,145 tons, and that’s before you add the weight of fuel and the hundreds and hundreds of steel cargo containers that it lugs around the Pacific Rim.

I’m trying to convey how fucking huge the ship is so you can appreciate what a big deal it is that it went down like it did and, by inference, how powerful the Kraken must be.

From what I gather, the Singapore Express had left the Port of Evergreen City and is about twenty miles out in the Pacific heading south for Oakland when the Kraken attacks. Giant tentacles burst from the deep, coiling around the vessel. Containers topple from the deck like toys as the creature violently throttles the helpless ship. Huge suckers rend the hull and sea water gushes in. The captain sends out a last panicked mayday as the Singapore Express breaks apart and sinks, leaving a vast debris field of oil and bobbing steel containers. With a whirl of tentacles, the Kraken returns to the black depths. The whole thing takes twelve minutes.

So the Kraken is basically a huge mutant squid beast, hundreds of yards long, with six big thick main tentacles and an inner ring of smaller tentacles around its beaked mouth that snares and tears the beast’s prey. Nobody knows where it came from or why it does what it does – all we know is that it comes out of nowhere, fucks shit up, then splits.

The Kraken, you may recall, was last seen eating the Canadian hero Northguard on TV. Remember that? It followed a NOAA research vessel to Vancouver, BC and thrashed around in English Bay, destroying sailboats and tugs with its massive tentacles. Then Northguard flies in with his Lightlance – remember this? I have it on tape. I know that sounds ghoulish, but I do. I have all the major televised superhero battles on tape or disc.

Anyway, Northguard. He rockets in with his shining white armor and his lightsaber-looking weapon, flying right at the Kraken’s tender eye… then he gets batted out of the air by a big tentacle and drops into the water, stunned. And then, on live television, the Kraken surges forward and spreads open its huge jaws. A host of smaller tentacles shoot out and grab Northguard and then glump! The fucking thing eats him, right there on TV. It was shocking and – this is horrible – almost funny.

That was nine months ago. Nobody has seen the Kraken since then – until yesterday.

I have to hand it to them, the military responded really quickly to this incident -- they clearly have a game plan. Since yesterday the Coast Guard has placed a maritime travel restriction on a big swath of coastline and parked a cutter at the mouth of Willapa Bay to control boat traffic. Some Navy warships are en route from Everett and San Diego to hunt for the Kraken, and P-3 Orion anti-submarine planes from Whidbey NAS have been flying over the EC all morning.

The Navy clearly has a plan for dealing with sea monster attacks, which is really cool if you think about it. It’s probably a result of those Congressional hearings in 1996 (or 97?) after Volcanus the Living Volcano destroyed half of Grand Rapids, MI. The original lineup of the Minute Men destroyed Volcanus, but the battle burned up a huge chunk of the Great Lake State and cost team member The Patrioteer his life. Congress was growing increasingly uneasy about having to rely exclusively on parahumans for national defense against giant monster and UFO attacks, so they demanded that each branch of the military draft contingency plans for defense against LHCs (Large Hostile Creatures) and UFOs. The Navy, naturally, was in charge of dealing with threats from alien submarines and LHCMs (Large Hostile Creature, Maritime).

Anyway, I just think it’s cool to think of Navy flag officers sitting around in the Pentagon talking about what forces to deploy against giant radioactive crayfish.

I’m content to let the military worry about LHCMs. I didn’t get into the superhero business to get killed fighting giant monsters and shit.

Afterburned

2005-03-13T10:33:00.000-08:00

Emma takes me back to her place - a chic brownstone walk-up in Raymond with a rviver view -and we have sex. Good sex.

I don't want to get into explicit detail here, but I will say that Lt. Emma Casperson looks really good naked, is very um, expressive about her needs, and has absolutely incredible stamina. Seriously, it's like she's in training for the Sex Olympics or something. I felt like Tommy Lee.

Emma runs me into the ground at about three-thirty and I pass out in her bed. When I wake up, she's not in bed, but I can hear her clanking around in the kitchen.

"Emma?"

She pops in the bedroom, smiling. Emma's wearing an ECPD sweatshirt, Lycra jogging shorts, and Reeboks. She hands me a glass of orange juice and gives me a quick kiss.

"Good morning," she says. "Sleep okay?"

"Yeah, great. You're up? What time is it?"

"Almost eight." She takes a fanny pack from her dresser and buckles it around her slim waist. "Listen, I gotta get going. You can sleep for a while if you want."

"Where you going?"

She bends over a gun safe in the corner of the bedroom and works the combo lock. I shift in bed a little so I can see her Lycra-sheathed butt. "I'm going for a run, then I'm off to the firing range." She transfers a wicked nickel-plated automatic from the safe into a foam-padded carrying case.

"You don't want to... you know, hang out?"

She turns and smiles, brushing a wave of auburn hair from her eyes. "I'd love to, but I gotta go. Listen, I had fun last night. You're a real tiger."

"Ditto."

"There's French Toast in the fridge that you can heat up if you want," she says. "Help yourself to anything in the kitchen. Take your time, sleep, hang out. The door will lock behind you when you leave."

"Okay, but... you sure you don't want to hang out?"

She sits on the edge of the bed and runs her hand down my torso as she leans in for a kiss. Her hair cascades down around my head. She smells like lavender and coconut oil. "I'll have to take a rain check. Thanks, Connor."

Then, with a little wave, she takes her gun case and her perfect body and leaves.

"Call me," I say lamely.

What, am I in Bizarro World or something? I'm supposed to be the one leaving her in bed, wondering if I'll ever call her. This ain't right.

That's it: I'm going on patrol tonight and I'm going to beat somebody up.

Showdown at King Putt

2005-03-12T13:41:00.000-08:00

I win.

I get my date with Wendy’s cousin, the hot Lt. Emma Casperson. It’s a double-date, really; Wendy and JC are tagging along. Our destination: King Putt.

King Putt is an expansive 18-hole miniature golf fantasy land full of giant monkeys, sphinxes, windmills, shit like that. I couldn’t detect any overriding theme – you would think with a name like King Putt they’d go with an Ancient Egyptian motif or a royal/medieval thing, but no.

Emma is wearing a green off-the-shoulder cashmere sweater with tailored jeans, black boots and a matching belt. Her auburn hair is down; one side is swept back behind her ear while the other side cascades down like a luminous auburn waterfall. Her red lips seemed poised between a snarl and a smile. Emma is hot. I don’t recall what JC and Wendy are wearing.

Young, acne-afflicted King Putt employees in yellow Izods set us all up with clubs, and we’re golfing, baby.

“You ready to get your ass kicked, Connor?” Emma says, grinning.

“Me?” I say. “My golf kung fu is tops. You cannot defeat me.”

“I hope you don’t mind getting beaten by a girl,” she says.

“We are talking about golf here, right?”

We carry on with the adolescent flirting as we golf, accompanied by much eye-rolling from JC and Wendy. Turns out Emma is even more competitive than I am – we’re both shooting one below par by the ninth hole – and our friendly date slowly devolves into a struggle for supremacy.

Emma’s putt gets blocked by a giant monkey tail on the 12th hole and she falls behind by one.

I whistle sadly. “That sucks, Emma. Do you want to quit now? Because you can; we’d understand.”

“Mackenzie, how would you like to ‘crank it up a notch?’” she says, idly swinging her putter in a way that makes it seem like a weapon. When she calls me ‘Mackenzie’ it makes me think of Margo suddenly. Margo always calls me that. It sounds different when she says it. “I’ll bet you fifty bucks that I beat you.”

“Beat me? How about twenty? You’re on a civil servant salary.”

“You a little gun-shy, Mackenzie?” she says.

“Nobody’s ever used my name and the word ‘gun-shy’ in the same sentence before. I’ll take your fifty dollars.”

Emma looks at me like I’m cake. “Bring it,” she says.

“Oh, I’m bringing it all right.”

JC pantomimes vomiting. Wendy throws her hands up. “You guys are killing us with the corny flirting thing!”

On the last six holes of the course our game is loaded with competition and sexual tension. I miss a putt in the dragon castle and Emma pulls even with me. She does this thing every time she putts that I think is very sexy: she wiggles her butt and hums a little tune, then – and you can actually see it – then she gets very still and focuses like a lens on the ball. You can almost feel her concentrating. Then she putts and snaps back into the real world, brushing her hair out of her eyes and grinning.

We’re dead even by the eighteenth hole, a par two where you have to shoot into the mouth of a giant alligator whose mouth slowly opens… then shuts… opens… then shuts. A curved ramp in the belly of the beast guides your ball down on to the green. Easy.

Emma goes first. Wendy and JC have grown weary of our battle and are playing the hole behind us.

“Man, I hope you don’t totally miss, Emma,” I say as she does her little putting shimmy and knocks the ball up towards the alligator’s relentlessly moving jaws.

The jaws open…

Then shut…

They open… and Emma’s ball rolls into the mouth, down the ramp, and on to the putting green, coming to a stop within a foot of the eighteenth hole.

She smiles smugly.

I set up for my shot. The trick, I think, is to watch the alligator jaws and shoot as they are coming down and about to close. I watch the alligator’s mouth.

The jaws open…

Then shut…

I shoot, but too hard. My ball bounces off the alligator’s teeth and rolls slowly, sullenly back to my feet.

I lose.

Emma easily sinks her ball into the eighteenth hole and looks up at me, beautiful, triumphant. “I think I saw a cash machine in the lobby.”

We finish up and I give Emma her money. I hate losing, but losing to her is kind of exciting. “The least you can do is buy me a drink with your winnings,” I say.

“Uh-uh. Loser buys. Guys?” she says invitingly to JC and Wendy, who both shake their heads.

“No, you kids go do your thing,” Wendy says.

We drive in Emma’s Audi to Lemieux’s, an ancient bar that smells of smoke and old leather, full of The Same Damn People every night. I swear, there are two old people at Lemieux’s, a guy and a gal, who I have never seen move from their barstools. They could be animatronic mannequins for all I know. Anyway, we find a booth, drink gin and tonics and banter.

“Thanks for not gloating when you won, by the way,” I say. “Big of you.”

“I’ve learned that the male ego can only sustain so much punishment,” she says.

“I’ll bet you learned that from experience.”

She smiles. “I think we both know a little something about that.”

There it is. I knew this would come up: years ago in college I made a cruel remark about Emma that she overheard. I was drunk, I was an asshole, what can I say? (see post A birth, a wedding, and a hot cop, 1/19/05) Apparently it was a big deal for her at the time, and Wendy says for years I was the focused target of all Emma’s metaphysical rage. Sometimes I imagine I can see anger in her green eyes when she looks at me and I wonder if she’s just sitting there, smiling, hating me. I’ve completely forgotten my ulterior motive for hooking up with her: to get more information about the ECPD Paracrime Unit.

Man, should I say something, or blow it off? How bad am I supposed to feel about something that happened a decade ago?

“Yeah,” I say lamely. “Umm…”

She’s looking at me. I can’t tell what she’s thinking.

“Let’s go,” she says, finishing her drink with a big gulp. Emma rises and holds out her hand. I take it.

“Where to, boss?”

Emma smiles. “My place.”

She’s looking at me like I’m cake again.

Disturbing imagery

2005-03-11T16:28:00.000-08:00

Warning! Warning! Disturbing imagery alert!*

I'll get back to my usual pattern of self-absorbed narcissistic posting shortly; this week I haven't been posting a lot due to a) Blogger melting down, and b) laziness.

*Don't worry, it's disturbing but work-safe at the same time.

Looking for Mr. Sidebar

2005-03-08T13:32:00.000-08:00

Through the chaos magic of Blogger I have somehow managed to move my sidebar, which has links to previous posts, etc. If you're looking for the sidebar, scroll alll the way down to the bottom of the screen. There it is.

I think I'll have to call an exorcist or something to fix this...

Supervillains made this

2005-03-08T05:47:00.000-08:00

I think this is some sort of mind control experiment or something.

A conversation with Wendy

2005-03-07T13:24:00.000-08:00

I have a great idea, one that may a) get me some inside dirt on the Paracrime Unit, and/or b) get me laid: a double-date with me, JC, Wendy, and Wendy's hot cousin, Lt. Emma Casperson of the Paracrime Unit. Am I brilliant? Yes, I am.

I call JC and Wendy's house. Wendy answers. Here's a transcript:

ME: Hey, Wendy. It's Connor.

WENDY: Hi Connor.

ME: So I'll cut to the chase. I've got this great idea: King Putt.

WENDY: The mini-golf place?

ME: Right.

WENDY: I didn't think King Putt was your speed. Don't you and JC usually go to Shetfield...?

ME: Yes, and as a serious golfer I wouldn't be caught dead going into King Putt unless I was taking a niece or something, or if I had... a date.

(silence)

ME: You still there?

WENDY: Yeah, I'm here. Where are you going with this?

ME: A double-date! I think you, me, JC, and Emma should all go out. It's supposed to be nice all week. We could do some mini-golf then go out for dinner or drinks or something.

WENDY: With Emma.

ME: Yeah.

WENDY: You want me to hook you up with Emma.

ME: Yeah.

WENDY: Look, Connor, I don't know how to say this. Actually, I do: Emma hates you.

ME: No, she doesn't.

WENDY: Yes, she does.

ME: We were totally flirting the other night, at your party!

WENDY: You were flirting. Besides, you were hitting on everything with breasts at our party. Like my mom...

ME: Uh, yeah. I sent her a little apology card.

WENDY: I should hope so. I mean, God, Connor - grabbing her ass...

ME: Who? Emma?

WENDY: My mom!

ME: I didn't grab her ass.

WENDY: You so totally grabbed her ass. You go, "Stairmaster's been treating you right, Judy!" and just grabbed her. I mean, my mother, Connor. Emma's aunt.

ME: Well, she does have a nice butt for a gal her age...

WENDY: I don't need to hear that.

ME: OK, Wendy, let's get back on task here: King Putt.

WENDY: Yeah, I don't think so, Connor.

ME: Why not? Can you just ask her at least, see if she's interested?

WENDY: You do realize that this is a woman who, for years, hated you because of that one night in college, right? I mean, she went to a therapist, Connor. [see post A birth, a wedding, and a hot cop, 1/19/05]

ME: Well, I'm a different person now. That's all water under the bridge and shit. Come on, Wendy! She's a police sniper, for God's sakes!

WENDY: Sharpshooter. She doesn't like it when you call her a sniper.

ME: Okay, sharpshooter. My point is - and I appreciate you defending your cousin, it's sweet - my point is, Emma's hard core. She's tough. I'm sure she's over something that happened over ten years ago. And she's an adult. Why don't you ask her if she'd be interested and get back to me? Is that too much to ask?

WENDY: I don't know. Probably.

ME: Do you want me to stay a pathetic bachelor my entire life? Come one, I'm trying to grow and evolve here.

WENDY: (sigh) Fine. I'll ask. But no moping or whining when she says no, okay?

ME: You're the best, Dubya!

WENDY: Yeah, yeah...

And there it is. She'll say yes.

Man, did Emma really hate me...?

Media Report

2005-03-05T13:16:00.000-08:00

I made the front page of The Inquisitor again: "Marauder helps police catch serial car thief." There's a grainy photograph of me standing in front of the wrecked Subaru with a shit-eating smile on my face, waving at the camera. I think one of the college girls who witnessed the incident took a picture of me with her cell phone.

Oooh, and there's an editorial coming in the Sunday Edition about the Paracrime Unit! I guess some rank-and-file ECPD cops are pissed that this sexy new unit gets all the funding and cherry-picks talent from SWAT and Homicide - and to what end? They spend thousands setting up dragnets to catch me on one side of town while at the same time I'm helping cops on the other side of town catch bad guys.

I can't wait to read that.

Flipping off the wall like Lucy Ball

2005-03-04T09:45:00.000-08:00

After work I eat some leftover Indian food, brush and floss, then suit up and go on patrol, ready to crush evil and protect my city.

Tonight’s soundtrack: 3rd Bass. I may be showing my age, but I loves me the 3rd Bass, particularly The Cactus Album, which I think is genius. That’s right, genius. MC Serch and Prime Minister Pete Nice always spent too much time dissing other white rappers, but they had an inimitable style, mixing Serch’s bombastic rhymes and Pete Nice’s hyper-articulate Mafia rap with clever 70’s pop samples.

Anyway, I rock the 3rd Bass as I leap and run through the big superhuman jungle gym that is Midtown. I’m content with the knowledge that I won’t get hassled by Paracrime tonight, because they’re all wasting their time staking out the rooftops of Chinatown.

How do I know this, you ask?

You may recall that during my encounter with the ECPD Paracrime Unit in the Masonic Temple I planted a needle-sized bug in the armor of one of the cops, as well as stealing his radio and headset. ( see post Paracrime in your face, 2/26/05) I had been frustrated by the lack of information I’ve gleaned from the bug, which spent most of its time shut in a locker at police headquarters – cops generally don’t suit up in body armor for briefings. Go figure. Each night I would go into the Secret Chamber to review the MP3 recordings from the KOMA probe, the bug I had planted in the body armor, and each night I would be disappointed about the lack of good audio. I did manage to gather that the owner of the bugged armor, Officer Lucas, got a couple days medical leave after I roughed him up a little. Apparently I broke his nose in two places. But Lucas eventually comes back to work and when I get home today I have a veritable gold mine of information.

I won’t burden you with a complete transcript, but first there’s audio of Officer Lucas and his comrades putting on their armor and gearing up for an “op.” Then it sounds like they proceed into a briefing room, where Capt. Sledge says a few words. There’s going to be a Police Action Shooting Competition on the 18th, and don’t forget they still need volunteers for the Disaster Preparedness Seminars at area senior centers. There haven’t been any volunteers yet from Paracrime, and it would reflect well upon the unit, et cetera, et cetera. From what I can gather, Sledge “volunteers” the two most junior members of the team. Laughter. Sledge urges the assembled team members to be careful and take care of each other out there – it’s very Hill Street Blues – then turns the briefing over to Lt. Casperson – Emma.

Some quick background: Emma is the cousin of Wendy, who recently married JC, my best friend from college. Emma looks like Rita Hayworth spliced with T2 Linda Hamilton. I knew she was a cop, but I just recently found out that she was on the Paracrime Unit. She’s a trained sniper, too, which makes her even sexier.

Anyway, Lt. Emma Casperson briefs the team and, indirectly, me about tonight’s plans. They know I have one of their radios, so they’re changing frequencies every 15 minutes tonight. She kindly tells me the frequency and sequence, which I write down, thank you very much. I learn that they are planning a series of dragnets in several key areas of the city where I have been sited. Emma keeps referring to a map of the city, which I imagine has little colored map tacks all over it. They spread out in different fire teams in rooftop “hides,” armed with exotic weaponry like Bore Thunder concussion rounds and WebShot nets, waiting for the Velvet Marauder to enter their perimeter. Tonight they’re trying out a new laser tripwire system that their stringing across the roofs of Chinatown in an effort to catch me.

Chumps.

So here I am, feeling smug and on top of things for the first time in recent memory, bouncing around Midtown about a mile away from the Paracrime dragnet. I bounce off a billboard and skid down the shingled roof of an old water tower, flip, then land like a cat in Pose #4, Wary Mongoose.

I turn off MC Serch and look out over Evergreen City at night, suffused in the amber glow of the streetlights and the cold sparkle of the skyscrapers. I breathe in the salty low-tide smell and listen to the sounds of my city, the traffic and the music and the sirens and the background white noise of the freeway. My city. Jesus, I’ll stop before I break into “We Built This City on Rock ‘n Roll.”

I hear sirens coming from the Queen’s Row area.

Switching over to the scanner, I bound and leap across rooftops, moving west towards the sirens. According to the scanner the ECPD are in pursuit of a stolen green Subaru sedan that’s heading north towards Waterfront Park. If I cut across the Diamond parking garage and leap across Oyster, I may be able to catch them…

I spot them, the Subaru and two police cars, racing the wrong way up Oyster Ave. Unless they turn, they’ll pass under me in about five seconds.

I jump four stories down to Oyster, landing lightly in a crouch on the sidewalk. I scare the shit out of a group of college-age girls, who scream as I drop out of the sky in front of them. I hold up my hand in what I hope is a reassuring gesture as they clutch each other and cower, but I’m not really concerned about them. My attention is focused on the green Subaru racing my way, horn blaring, cops in tow.

The Subaru swerves to avoid oncoming traffic (Oyster is a one-way street) and sideswipes a parked car with a tremendous shower of sparks. The stolen car jerks back into the center of Oyster – it’s almost here…

Ignoring the screaming girls I break from my crouch and sprint out into the street, staying low. The Subaru and I meet in the center of the street. Just before impact I put my shoulder down and slam into the front quarter of the speeding car like a torpedo.

Bam!

The front end of the car lifts up and the force of my blow sends it careening across Oyster. Briefly I catch a glimpse of the terrified driver - then the airbag erupts from the steering wheel and into his face. The Subaru slams sideways into a tree, does a half-spin and comes to a stop backwards on Oyster, smoking and steaming. Well, he’s facing the right way now.

I pick myself up from the middle of the street, dusting my suit off. The two cop cars skid to a halt about twenty yards away.

The girls on the sidewalk are cheering and yelling now, fully psyched. “Ohmygod! Velvet Marauder! Velvet Marauder!”

I give a jaunty wave to the girls, then, with a little salute to the cops I jump up and away.

Paracrime is going to be so pissed.

I want a hovercraft

2005-03-02T08:14:00.000-08:00

This is pretty much the coolest, geekiest thing ever: the JL421 Badonkadonk Land Cruiser/Tank. Only twenty grand, too.

I want a tank, a real tank. Wouldn't that be cool? A hovertank, like that guy in Minnesota, Panzer. Or maybe that would be overkill. How about a sleek, high-speed hovercraft, painted black with my logo on the side. It would have a stealth mode, and a whisper mode, and a high-speed mode... you gotta have modes and shit like that.

I wonder how much that would set me back, a hovercraft? I should look into that.

Hung over

2005-02-28T08:29:00.000-08:00

If you have super powers you have to drink a lot to get hung over. A lot.

I remember doing more shots with Emma, and forcing people to limbo, and those little paper drink umbrellas, and kissing Wendy's mom (no tongue), and losing my sandals.

And I'm not sure, but I think Emma punched me in the ear.

So I'm just sitting here at work holding my aching head with my tongue feeling like steel wool in my mouth and wishing that I would die, die, die.

The good thing is that I just need to ride this out, drink some water, and in a few hours my super-metabolism will drive this evil from me like an exorcist.

I think I might have to call Wendy's mom and apologize...

The Emmanator

2005-02-27T12:01:00.000-08:00

I reluctantly drag my ass over to JC and Wendy’s house for their Hawaiian party, dressed in the coolest floral-print camp shirt I could find, flip-flops, and cargo shorts. If it weren’t for my superhuman physiology, I’m sure I’d be freezing my ass off. Judging from the looks of the other guests as they arrive in tropical garb, teeth chattering with cold, I’m not the only person who thinks that having a Hawaiian theme party in February is sort of a lame idea. Really, the whole thing is a framing device for JC and Wendy’s slideshow about their honeymoon in Maui.

Having said that, I have a good time. They crank the heat and the Don Ho music up and ply their guests with food and blended drinks. I follow my modus operandi for parties and hang out in the kitchen near the booze, and end up getting drafted for blender duty.

I begin sampling the wares: one drink for you, one drink for me. Soon I’ve got a nice buzz going and I’m Chatty Guy, the Frickin’ Life of the Party.

“You making margaritas?” a familiar woman’s voice says. “’Cause I could use a margarita.”

Wendy’s cousin Emma the hot brunette cop stands in the kitchen, wearing a short spaghetti strap dress in a blue and white floral print that clings nicely to her cocked hips. She arches her eyebrow like The Rock and smiles at me – like a cat smiles at a mouse it’s about to eviscerate. Yeah, I know cats don’t smile. It’s a lame metaphor, sue me.

“Hey. It’s Emma,” I say weakly. She scares me. “I, uh, I don’t think I have any mix…” I make a big show of looking in the liquor cabinet. “Nope. Just tequila.”

She taps the counter. “Well, set me up with a shot, barkeep.”

She doesn’t seem hostile, so I relax a little. “Yes, ma’am.” I produce two shot glasses and fill them with Cuervo.

Some background: JC and I were roommates in college and one weekend I treated Emma rather shabbily when she and Wendy came down to visit. In my defense, I think I was drunk at the time, but still, I was mean to her, and the last time I saw Emma she raked me over the coals a little. (see post A birth, a wedding, and a hot cop, 1/19/05 for gory details)

Reasonably assured that she’s not going to knee me in the nuts, I hand her a shot glass. We salute each other, then down our drinks. Mmm, tequila.

“So you’re not going to kick my ass?” I ask.

“Haven’t decided yet,” she says. “I could, you know.” I believe her. Her shoulders and arms are smooth and sculpted.

“And I would deserve it. No jury would convict you. For what it’s worth, I’ve grown a little since college.” And she’s grown a lot since college.

“So Wendy tells me. She stopped referring to you as ‘JC’s asshole friend’ years ago.”

“Gosh, that makes me feel warm inside,” I say.

“I think it’s the tequila. Another shot?”

“Are you trying to get me drunk?” I ask.

“No, I’m trying to get me drunk before JC’s slideshow.”

We laugh and down a couple more shots.

Wendy checks in on us. “You guys playing nice? Em, you have permission to beat him up if he gets lippy. She could, too, Connor.”

“We’ve established that,” I say.

Wendy pats me affectionately on the cheek. “Careful,” Wendy says. “Em hunts supervillains for a living, you know.”

What? I almost cough up my tequila. What?!

Emma rolls her eyes as Wendy leaves the kitchen. “Wendy never misses an opportunity to mention that.”

Holy shit, I can’t believe I didn’t put this together.

“Panda 6 calling Panda 4, come back.”

No wonder Emma’s voice sounds familiar. She’s Panda 6, she’s on the fucking Paracrime Unit!

“Umm, what do you do at the police department, anyway, Emma?”

“Oh, I’m in the Paracrime Unit,” she says. “Used to be SWAT. Sharpshooter.”

“Damn…” I say.

“You okay?” She’s looking at me funny.

“Yeah, yeah, fine. It’s just a little hot in here. Another shot?”

Emma smiles. “You’re speaking my language.”

I should have seen that coming. I should have pieced that together. Wendy’s cousin is a Paracrime trooper. Of course. The relief I feel knowing Emma doesn’t want to knee Connor Mackenzie in the balls is sort of overshadowed by the dread I feel knowing that she wants to shoot The Velvet Marauder in the head.

A sharpshooter. That is so hot.

Shopping

2005-02-26T14:31:00.000-08:00

I'm feeling ineffectual and stupid today, so to cheer myself up I go shopping. (Again: not gay.)

I pick up a kick-ass pair of black calfskin Cesare Paciotti loafers and a Hawaiian shirt. No, I'm not wearing the shoes with the shirt.

I know what you're thinking, a Hawaiian shirt? JC and Wendy are having a post-honeymoon luau theme party tonight and want everybody to dress up. Gag. I don't own a Hawaiian shirt because I don't enjoy looking like a tool. No offense to the folks out there who own and enjoy wearing Hawaiian shirts, but unless you're going to a Jimmy Buffet concert or something, it just looks fucking goofy.

Pomeranians

2005-02-26T02:04:00.000-08:00

On patrol tonight I decide to go down to the waterfront and check out the Pomeranian warship. (see post Fog, 2/25/05) I'm naturally suspicious and think the Pomeranians might be up to something - who's going to trust any country with a head of state named "Diabolik?" -- but I also think their ship is damn cool and want to take a closer look.

I lurk behind some vents on a seagull-shit splattered building on Pier 52 and take a look at the ship through the binocular setting on my goggles. It's a sleek French designed frigate (those guys will sell weapons to anybody) that has been built for stealth. The hull has been coated with radar absorbent paint, all outer surfaces are sloped at ten degrees to minimize its radar signature, and all the little bits and bobs common to a ship its size have been internalized or smoothed out.

The few Pomeranian sailors that aren't out drinking prowl the decks with AKs. I'll bet the crew is psyched to get out on a blue water cruise; international sanctions have until late kept the Pomeranian Navy bottled up in the Baltic where they got their kicks by intimidating Estonian fishermen with their high-tech warships. Now that Diabolik (pronounced Dee-ah-bo-leek) has renounced his country's plans to develop anti-matter weaponry, relations have thawed a little and their navy finally gets to come out and play.

Am I boring you? You probably know all this shit already.

While I'm checking out their ship, a black Lincoln Town Car pulls up at the base of the Pier. This catches my interest, so I zoom in with the goggles.

A Pomeranian officer steps out of the back of the Town Car, straightens his overcoat, and dons his hat. He's carrying a briefcase. Climbing out of the car behind him is Ingrid Vanderwaal, the Ice Queen from Interbionics. She's wearing a low-cut black cocktail dress - I zoom in on her chest. Ingrid says something to the officer, strokes his cheek, then gives him a soft kiss on the lips. With a smile she climbs back into the Town Car and is gone.

Okay, what the hell is going?

The officer salutes a couple guards and strolls down the Pier towards the vessel with the briefcase.

You'll recall (or not) that the Interbionics company is run by a cabal of supervillain-types and has some sinister agenda. (see post The Interbionics Thing, 12/24/04) Ingrid is the hot second-in-command of their new West Coast office here in the E.C.. I have no idea what they're up to but it's nothing good. The fact that they're in bed with the Pomeranians is a cause for concern. Or is it? I mean, are they doing anything illegal?

What do I do? Should I mug the officer before he gets to the ship and take the briefcase? Or do I let him go? I mean, he hasn't done anything wrong, right? I can't just ambush everybody I don't like. Or can I? Shit, I don't know what to do...

Too late. The officer makes it to the gangplank and walks up on to the frigate, returning the salute of the guards on board.

I slump back amongst the seagull shit, confused and discouraged. I am really no damn good at this detective shit. Seriously, I don't know why I even bother. I should just focus on what I'm good at: beating people up. All this other stuff - I don't think I'm bright enough, frankly. I feel like there are two or three big conspiracies swirling around - Interbionics, the Quantum Project - and I'm just not smart enough to put the pieces together. Every time I try, like with the KOMA probes, I fuck up and just end up more confused than when I started.

Shit like this would never happen to the Midnight Rambler.

Surveillance Shmurveillance

2005-02-25T09:10:00.000-08:00

Planting the bug on that cop was a total fucking waste of time. (see post Paracrime in your face, Part Two 2/23/05) I don't know what I was thinking, that all the Paracrime Unit cops would huddle together after the fight in the Masonic Temple and helpfully review all of their plans for capturing me and maybe do a quick recap of all their weapons and resources while they're at it.

No.

No, I get none of that.

What I do gather from the audio is that they send the two cops I beat up to the Bayview emergency room for evaluation. The guy I planted the KOMA probe on is named Lucas, and the other guy is Harding. Lucas has a broken nose and they think the other guy has some cracked or maybe broken ribs. Looks like it's desk work for Officer Harding for the next month or so. That's what you get for firing a shotgun at me.

Genius that I am, I planted the KOMA probe on Lucas' armor, which they take off before he arrives at Bayview. Before they do, I get a snippet of conversation that sounds like this:

COP #1: ...taking him over now.

COP #2 (female): Okay. (sigh) So we learn anything tonight?

COP #1: Well, Bore Thunder rounds have little to no effect on him. Harding said he took a round at near point blank range, and it barely staggered him. I don't know if it's the armor, or he's just tough.

COP #2: I don't know why we even bother with non-lethal ammo on paras. Sledge... [unintelligible] ...waste of time.

COP #1: Because we're good guys, remember? We didn't know how much damage Marauder can take, what his power range is. We don't want to fucking kill the guy, E.

COP #2: Speak for yourself.

COP #1: Jesus, what a hard ass. I pity that guy if you ever get a hold of him.

(Laughter)

I do a little online research and find out that "The BORE THUNDER is a 12 gauge cartridge which produces a concussion wave similar to a diversionary grenade. This round is designed to be aimed at the floor or ceiling at a 45° degree angle and never intentionally at a subject." I feel a little better knowing that Capt. Sledge and his goons don't want me dead.

Well, not all of them anyway.

Fog

2005-02-24T11:18:00.000-08:00

The entire city is fogged over today, as if dawn never came. I sit in my office staring out the window at the Bay and the big ghostly cargo ships that float through the mist. I yawn. It’s almost noon and I’ve already done everything I needed to do today and visited all of the blogs and websites I usually go to in a given day. I’m thinking of busting out the laptop and playing some Age of Mythology to kill some time.

I’m sort of keeping an eye out for the Pomeranian warship that’s due in Evergreen City today. The U.S. has lifted sanctions against Pomerania and is now allowing their ships to dock in U.S. ports for the first time in 12 years. I guess they promised not to invade Denmark again. Never trust a country run by a supervillain, that’s what I say. Anyway, it’s due in port today and I want to see it. I might take a long lunch and go down to Pier 53 if it comes in. What can I say, I like military hardware; I’m a geek.

Speaking of hardware, back at home in the Secret Chamber my audio suite is recording telemetry from the KOMA probe I planted on that cop last night. I’m looking forward to picking up a gyros from Ravi’s on the way home and kicking it in the Chamber (see post The Batcave II, 9/1/04) and listening to the Paracrime Unit cry about how badly I schooled them. Shit like that makes me feel warm inside.

Lacking anything better to do, I go get more coffee, say hi to Margo (who is wearing a low-cut black knit sweater with pearl buttons over a cream colored blouse), then head over to one of the little lounge/informal meeting areas on the Ninth Floor. This one has a view looking north to the Bay, where I can see the Pomeranian ship drifting in through the fog.

I can’t remember the name of the ship, but I do know that it’s a French-made La Fayette frigate that’s been modified for anti-submarine warfare. It’s a sleek futuristic looking warship, designed for stealth with smooth surfaces and very little clutter. It’s kind of cool seeing a Pomeranian ship –the Cold War enemy- in port. Maybe they’re here to annex Evergreen City. Actually, that’s not that improbable, given recent events. Maybe I should snoop around tonight…

Aaron Clarke, one of the mysterious directors of The Company’s QuantumWorks project, walks down the hall towards his office with a cup of coffee, talking to a guy in a bright yellow radiation suit.

“Mr. Mackenzie,” Clarke says in greeting as he walks by. I nod.

As they pass I smell… what is that? I smell bacon cooking. And fabric softener.

I watch Clarke and the guy in the hazmat suit go into his office and shut the door.

Hey, I think to myself, a guy in a radiation suit just walked through your office. That’s not normal. I look around. Nobody else seems disturbed, or even looks like they noticed.

I take my coffee and go back to my office.

Paracrime in your face - Part Two

2005-02-23T22:49:00.000-08:00

I give the driver a twenty and slide out of a taxi in an alley behind the Masonic Temple. The cab rolls away while I crouch in the deep shadows between two dumpsters, letting my eyes adjust to the dark. After a few minutes I look around. No cops. I flip to infrared on my goggles for another look. Nothing.

I look up at the Masonic Temple, a dark art deco tower of dirty brick crowned with chimneys and gargoyles and huge lightning rods. The building is dark, except for a few windows halfway up on the ninth or tenth floor, glowing like jack o’ lanterns. Somewhere up there is Panda 4, a team of heavily armed cops from the ECPD Paracrime Unit lurking in the dark, waiting for me like hunters in a deer blind.

Or so they think.

Feeling smug, I hop up to a second story window. With one last look around, I smash the glass with my elbow and enter the Masonic Temple.

I’m in a dark billiard room. The pool tables are laid out like graves before me. Okay, enough of the spooky metaphors. It’s dark; there are pool tables. There.

I switch on the scanner to the channel Paracrime is using.

“Panda 4, this is Panda 6. A silent alarm has gone off at your site. 2nd floor. Do you have anybody down there?”

“Panda 6, that’s a negative. We’ll check it out.”

Time to move.

I dash through the billiard room, check the door, and then slip out into a hallway. My rubber grip soles make no sound on the marble floors as I sneak to the elevators. I hit the “up” button. In the elevator shaft ancient mechanisms groan to life. I can hear the elevator car rattling down toward my floor.

I know what you’re thinking: why not take the stairs? Because that’s the linear thing to do. I’m being all unconventional and shit, thinking outside the box, shifting my paradigm, et cetera. These SWAT guys are tactically-minded, precise, and logical. I am none of those things – and that is my greatest strength!

What a load of crap, I sound like Tony Robbins. I’m insane; I’m going to get myself shot.

Since I have a moment, I look around. I’ve never been inside the Temple before, and it’s really nice. I’m standing in the lobby, a large domed chamber with a huge chandelier hanging from a gilded bas-relief ceiling depicting… what is that, dragons? It’s hard to tell in the dark. The floors are a marble mosaic, and on the walls intricate bronze panels gleam in the dark woodwork. The lobby is majestic and sepulchral in the dim light.

Ding!

The mahogany doors slowly rumble open and I enter a small, elegant elevator car. Damn, they made them small back in the day. I hit floor 27 and wait for the doors to shut.

And wait.

From somewhere up above me in the elevator shaft I hear machine noises: whining and clanking. The other elevator is coming down.

The door still isn’t closing.

“Come on,” I say, stabbing the button again. Isn’t there a fucking “close door” button in this thing, like a normal elevator?

I can hear the other elevator sinking closer. I’m sure there’s at least one guy with a machine gun in it.

“Jesus, come on,” I mutter, hopping up and down like I have to pee.

Then, slowly, as if it is a great effort… the elevator door slides shut. Then the lift lurches to life, pulling me up towards the 27th floor. I hear a Ding! noise as the other car reaches the 2nd floor. I don't know what I was freaking about - of course they're going to the 2nd floor. Dumbass. Safe, for a moment.

I have a plan. As usual, I have no idea if it’s a good plan or if it’s utter shit, but it’s the plan I’m rolling with. I guess the results will determine the plan’s merits or lack thereof. I’m a little hesitant about the beating-up-cops part of the plan, but it’s too late to turn back now. I believe I believe I believe I’m falling in love.

Sorry.

The elevator ride takes like, forever. I’m starting to get psyched up, ready to bust a proverbial move. I shadow box a little bit, take some deep breaths, visualize success, shit like that. Then –

Ding!

The elevator door opens on the tenth floor.

A cop in tactical armor stands in front of me with a shotgun. He looks up at me. He’s chewing gum.

There’s a second where we both just look at each other, before our brain processes this new information and translates it into action. That second stretches forever and we just look at each other.

I look at him.

He’s a young guy, early twenties, Hispanic, with a crooked nose. He’s wearing black body armor over a black jumpsuit capped off with a black hockey-style helmet. He’s miked, and a wire runs from a small two-way radio on his chest plate up to an earpiece. He’s got a pump action shotgun and a 9mm strapped to his thigh. A patch on his chest plate says: POLICE.

He looks at me.

I’m a big dude in a weird costume who is not supposed to be standing in the elevator. I’m wearing form-fitting black Nightsalker armor with heavy boots and armored gauntlets, a utility belt bristling with gadgets and weaponry, a tight black skull cap and shiny goggles, all topped off by a fireproof coachman’s topcoat. A shiny hubcap-style emblem on my chest says: VM

I clear my throat. “Going up?”

The cop’s eyes go wide and he moves. He starts sliding to his left, bringing his shotgun barrel up. Gloved hands go for the trigger.

Too slow. I jump out of the elevator and stuff my fist into his face. The guy drops, stunned, clutching his nose.

In my ear I hear a male voice quietly say, “Panda 4 point 2, come back.”

The cop groans and fumbles for the radio on his chest. Damn, I think I broke his nose.

I bat his hand out of the way and lift the cop by his vest’s collar up to a standing position. The guy’s nose is bubbling blood and his eyes are glazed with pain, but he’s clearly not afraid of me. I pull the radio off of his vest and throw it down the hall.

“Listen –“ I say, and then he punches me in the ear.

It doesn’t really hurt, but it startles me, and I drop him. Reflexively my hand goes to my ear. “Oww! Damn.”

The cop drops down low and drives his boot right into the side of my knee. That hurts. My leg almost crumples and I hop back, smarting. If I were a regular guy, my leg would be broken now.

The cop goes for his sidearm, and that’s when this game has to end. I don’t mind taking a punch or the occasional kick, but I don’t like getting shot. I whup him upside the head with a roundhouse kick that smashes him into a wall. The cop collapses, out cold. It’s a good thing he’s got that helmet on.

I rub my knee a little.

“Panda 4 Point 2, come back.”

They’re going to come looking for this guy in a minute. I’d better do my thing. I squat over the unconscious cop and open a pouch on my utility belt. I take out a KOMA probe, a tiny listening device the size of a sewing needle, (see post The KOMA Probe, 10/1/04) and I slide it into the back of the cop’s body armor, parallel with a seam in the Nomex outerlayer. It’s barely visible, flush against the back plate.

“Panda 4 Point 2, come back.”

Using the audio system in my belt, I activate the KOMA probe. No, I have no idea why it’s called that. Anyway, now the bug will transmit with stereophonic sound quality any and all conversations within say, 50 feet, and my audio system will record it in handy MP3 format for my listening pleasure. Capt. Solomon Sledge’s Paracrime Unit will reveal its secrets to me – they’ll no longer be the unknown quantity, Michael Myers in the closet.

“Panda 4 Point 1, this is Panda 6, report.”

A man’s deep voice: “This is Point 1. We have a forced entry down here on two. Broken window.”

“Roger that, Point 1. All units switch on. Repeat switch on. Converge on location Echo.”

I run down the hallway a little and grab the trooper’s radio. I slip the earpiece on my ear and put the mike in place.

Ding!

A SWAT trooper in a black facemask steps out of the elevator about twenty feet behind me. This guy’s got a shotgun, too, and most importantly, his barrel is pointing in the right direction. He steps over his fallen teammate and fires his shotgun right at the floor in front of me.

There’s a huge thunderclap and a shockwave blasts up into me, knocking me back. I stumble and sink down to one knee, ears ringing. What kind of ammo was that?

The faceless cop works the pump on his shotgun, chambering another round. Fuck that, I don’t let anybody shoot me twice. I spring like a leopard on him.

Beneath his helmet and behind his face mask I see the cop’s eyes go wide as I slam into him. I catch him square in the chest with my shoulder. The shotgun goes off --another thunderclap-- as he bounces off the elevator doors.

“Freeze!” Two more cops pile into the hallway from a stairway door, each carrying MP5s with tiny mounted flashlights. “FREEEZE!”

I crouch down, digging in my utility belt. Flashlight? Cobra antivenin? GPS? Where the fuck are these things?

“Put your fucking hands where I can see them!”

Ah, here we are.

“Put those fucking hands –“

I throw a sepia bomb down in the hallway between us. Instantaneously the two fallen cops are engulfed in an inky blackness, a boiling cloud of darkness that expands and expands…

Time to split.

One of the cops opens up with his machine gun as I sprint down the hallway towards a window.

I hear a woman’s voice screaming, “Check your fire! You’ll hit Lucas! Check your fire!”

And then I hit the window headfirst and I’m out of the Masonic Lodge and into the fresh night air, soaring out and down. I twist around in mid-air until I’m falling feet first towards the roof of an adjacent building. Skylights and power lines and vents zoom up towards me and then I hit the roof and roll roll roll. I skid to a halt on crunchy tar paper then spin around and look back up at the top of the Masonic Lodge.

Backlit by the city, I can see the silhouettes of two armored cops up on the roof of the Lodge, each holding weapons. The shadowy cops look down on me from the edge of the roof, flanked by gargoyles. It looks like one of the cops raises binoculars to his eyes.

I switch the goggles to infrared and zoom in.

In vivid greens and blues I see Capt. Solomon Sledge himself looking down at me through a nightscope. A trooper with a shotgun stands at his side, vigilant. Sledge and I study each other through our respective visual enhancement devices for a second, two male lions sizing each other up from the opposite sides of a river.

Then I flip him off.

Sledge puts down the nightvision scope and I swear, he almost smiles.

I don’t want to push my luck, so I trot down the roof of the building I’m on, leap across Sixth, and lose myself in the canyons of Old Town. I’m feeling pretty chuffed.

And hey, not even ten o’clock yet. Maybe I’ll be on the news!

Paracrime in your face - Part One

2005-02-23T13:52:00.000-08:00

(This is Part One of my battle with the the ECPD Paracrime Unit.)

Early patrol tonight.

Some impulse sends me out just after sundown. I start in the South End, warming up by hopping around the dilapidated warehouses of the industrial district before heading into Chinatown to start my patrol proper.

No music for me this evening; I just listen to the scanner and keep my eyes open. I move deliberately through the clotheslines and hissing rooftop vents of Chinatown, keeping clear of any windows or exposed areas where I might be spotted. It’s still early; the streets are crowded with the end-of-day exodus. Every few minutes I pause and scan my surroundings with the different settings on my goggles.

My hope is that if I vary my schedule and patrol routes and just keep my eyes open, I might be able to spot Capt. Sledge’s Paracrime Unit before they spot me. Call me paranoid, but I think they’ve been staking out my usual haunts in hopes of capturing me. I haven’t seen anybody, it’s just a feeling I get. And really, how paranoid is too paranoid if you’re in my line of work? I mean, there’s no harm in taking precautions, right?

Have you ever been alone in your house or apartment at night and you hear a noise or something? Suddenly, a shadow of irrational fear falls over you. Maybe somebody’s hiding in your house – a burglar or an escaped convict or something. They could be in the hall closet. I mean, probably not, right? But the possibility exists. It happens. People get murdered in their own home all the time. There’s that noise again. Shit. What if it’s Michael Myers, waiting in your pantry with an ice pick? The only way to ease your mind is to grab a baseball bat or a knife and begin a systematic sweep of the house, looking in all the closets, under the beds. Only then can you relax. You have dispelled your irrational fear with rational thought, by proving to yourself that no threat exists. Michael Myers isn’t hiding in your pantry, silly.

Okay, my point with that whole thing is that my precautions are sort of like searching the house for intruders with a baseball bat, only my house is the size of Evergreen City, and my fears are a little more tangible than Michael Myers. I’m afraid of cops.

Seriously, this paranoia is starting to take the fun out of patrol for me. It’s starting to feel like work, and that sucks.

I crouch in the shadow of a dripping A/C vent on the roof of the Pang Building, taking a breather. I eat a Clif Bar and drinking some Gatorade from the little Nalgene water bottle I keep on my utility belt. The smell of roasting chicken floats up from a restaurant below me, and my stomach grumbles. I slowly surf through the frequencies on my scanner, listening for anything unusual.

Then I hear it: Channel 57.

A soft voice on the radio says, “…Panda 5 in position.”

Then silence. Maybe it’s nothing; some truckers or ship traffic in the Bay. Maybe –

“Panda 6 online,” says a woman’s voice.

Silence.

“Panda 2 in position,” somebody mutters.

The woman’s voice again: “Panda 6 calling Panda 4, come back.”

Silence.

“Panda 4, come back.”

I move to the edge of the roof and peer out at the high rises of Midtown, glistening beyond the steaming rooftops of Chinatown. Toggling to the binocular setting on my goggles, I slowly scan the roofs of the smaller buildings. Nothing.

A man’s voice breaks the silence. He sounds out of breath. “Yeah, this is Panda 4. We can’t get access to our roost; the frickin’ door’s locked.”

Silence again. I keep searching.

The woman’s voice returns. “Panda 4, breach it. We’ll send the Masons a bill.”

Gotcha. Whoever Panda 4 is, they’re in the Masonic Temple, a big old brick building on the edge of Midtown. It’s my usual rendezvous spot with Wombat, and it’s the place where I first met Hydrangea. I should have guessed they’d stake it out.

I rise, ready to bounce over to Midtown and… and… and do what exactly? Beat up a bunch of cops? I sit back down, suddenly not sure what to do. If I approach via rooftop, chances are good that Panda 4 and all his Panda Buddies will spot me a quarter mile away. Despite their cute call signs, I have a feeling they're not fucking around. And even if I do make it to the Mason’s Temple without being seen, what then? Just beat the shit out of a bunch of SWAT guys? To what end?

“Shit,” I say to myself, as I often do. What do I do? I’ll bet the Midnight Rambler never has problems like this. He’d have a plan all doped out, and a back-up plan, and a back-up plan for his back-up plan. I need to think strategically here. What would a professional superhero do in this scenario? What would the Rambler do?

He’d go non-linear on their ass.

Finishing off my Gatorade, I hop over the edge of the building and down into a filthy wet alley. I walk out on to Occidental and flag down a passing cab, ignoring the stares of the passerby.

“Taxi!”

It’s time for a little reconnaissance-by-fire.

(Continued...)

The Restricted Zone

2005-02-21T06:51:00.000-08:00

What a big hassle this anti-life meteor has turned out to be.

You’ll recall last month the Storm Riders saved the world (again) from an “infection” of anti-life that was deposited via meteor in Canada’s Yukon Territory. Of course you do, how would you have missed that? Space zombies and shit? Anyway, the undead apocalypse was narrowly averted, but now we’re left with a huge black cordoned area in the Yukon that is saturated with anti-life radiation, sort of a Lovecraftian Chernobyl. (see posts Yes! Space Zombie Apocalypse 1/05 and How the Baron Escaped/Space Zombie Update 1/05)

The newly created Restricted Zone extends from Inuvik in the Northwest Territories on the Beaufort Sea to Dawson in the Yukon and even into a bit of Alaska. It’s a huge swath of land, made even larger by the buffer zones between the actual radioactive area and the troops who are enforcing the cordon. The Canadian military is competent, but not large, and maintaining the quarantine isn’t cheap. The Canadians have asked for help from the U.N., who I believe are scheduled to begun debating whether it’s appropriate to refer to the phenomenon as “anti-life.” They'll get right on it. The U.S. has already shuffled an assload* of troops up to eastern Alaska to man their section of the Zone, and I think they’re supplying air cover. Nobody knows how long this is going to go on, and Earth’s go-to guy for shit like this, Dr. Quark, the Surgeon of Reality, hasn’t made any public statements to ease anyone’s minds. He’s sort of the Alan Greenspan of the supernatural world; if he’s not talking, something’s wrong.

Oh. I forgot about the caribou.

Environmentalists from around the world are gathering in White Horse, Yukon to protest the Restricted Zone, which apparently covers the winter range of the migratory Porcupine caribou herd. The Canadian government plans to enforce the quarantine and keep the herd out of the Restricted Zone until they know if it’s safe to enter. They don’t want 150,000 zombie caribou rampaging across their country, and I gotta say, I can see their point. The environmentalists are pissed because neither the Canadian nor American governments have publicly released any data on the anti-life phenomenon. I can see their point, too. I mean, really, what the hell is going on? Is there still space zombie dust up there or what?

The political and social ramifications of a space zombie meteor are both profound and pathetic. The blogs are going crazy with it; I’m sure you’ve read some of the conspiracy theories, like: The Storm Riders did it, they’re taking over the world. Or: The Restricted Zone is just a huge land grab by U.S. petroleum companies. My favorite: Canada was testing super-nukes in the Beaufort Sea. Occult scientists, nuclear physicists, retired generals, and Shirley MacLaine blather and speculate endlessly on the talk shows. College students in Canada have started wearing “No U.S. Troops in Yukon” t-shirts. A religious cult in Idaho has begun a barefoot pilgrimage north to the Restricted Zone for spiritual rebirth and frostbite. In Florida, senior citizens have fallen prey to a scam involving a fake charity to victims of the space zombies. And of course, they did a sketch about the space zombies on Saturday Night Live. It wasn't funny.

The world is such a wonderful, fucked up place.

* ‘Assload’ is an accepted military term. It means a large unit of soldiers, brigade-level or higher.

Patrol Report

2005-02-20T00:09:00.000-08:00

Another boring patrol. I bounced around Old Town listening to Rammstein on my suit’s audio.

I know what you’re thinking: Rammstein? How can somebody listen to Kylie Minogue and Rammstein without their head exploding? I think one aspect of my super-powers is the ability to integrate a love of scary German dance-metal and vapid bubblegum shit – all in the same psyche!

Still no sign of the Paracrime goons – but that doesn’t mean they’re not out there. ( see post The Paracrime Unit, 2/14/05)

Du…
Du Hast…
Du hast mich…

Things Superheroes Shouldn't Say, Part Two

2005-02-19T10:50:00.000-08:00

Some things shouldn't be said because they make you look like a dangerous pervert.

- “Look at the ass on that nun!”

- “POOORN!!!”

- “Hey, kid. I’m stronger than your dad.”

- “Ha ha! I just took a big dump on the roof of that building!”

- (cough) “Nice to meet you. They call me Anthrax Man!”

- “John Byrne!”

- “I want to lie down on the floor and make love to your shadow.”

-“I dig old chicks!”

- “I farted.”

- “You wanna party?”

Things Superheroes Shouldn't Say, Part One

2005-02-19T10:44:00.000-08:00

Some things shouldn't be said because they are cliches and make you look like a dickhead.

- “Full moon tonight. A hunter’s moon.”

- “Cowabunga!”

- “I’m the best I am at what I do, and what I do ain’t pretty.”

- “Your choice. Your funeral.”

- “FAAATHER!!!”

- “C-can’t…breathe…”

- “I am the night!”

- “It’s quiet. Too quiet.”

- “Fear me!”

- “How can something so big move so fast?!”

Margo Report

2005-02-17T15:16:00.001-08:00

Margo is wearing a ¾ length black wool coat today and mod little bangle earrings. She got a haircut, which if possible makes her even more beautiful, like a cross between Ann Margret and the Dick-Van-Dyke-Show-era Mary Tyler Moore. She comes into my office unannounced and slumps heavily in a chair with a deep sigh. And I thought I was dramatic.

"Mackenzie," she says. "I am bored."

"You should develop an Ebay habit like me, it sucks up a lot of time," I say. "I just got a kick ass clock last week."

She’s slumped back in the chair, looking up at the ceiling. "I’m bored on a more profound level than that." She looks up at me suddenly. "Mackenzie, you ever get the impression that this QuantumWorks thing will never launch, that we’re running through the motions here? I mean, I’ve been doing stupid busy work for the past two months. It’s driving me fucking crazy."

I don’t think I’ve ever heard her swear before.

"Hey," I said. "You swore."

"I mean, the job pays well and everything, I’m not complaining about that. But I mean… I mean… fuck!"

"You swore again."

"Yes," she sighs. "Yes, I swore. Are you hearing me, Mackenzie?"

"I am. I hear you. I don’t have shit to do either. It’s like, why bring me up here unless there’s something for me to do?"

"Exactly," she says, and goes back to looking up at the ceiling. Her neck is smooth and graceful. "It’s like they just want to have us around on retainer or something. Clarke and Bradbury keep telling me that they’ll have more for me to do once the beta testing is done, but they won’t give me a time frame. The whole thing is very weird. And where is John Quentin? What does he do, anyway? I’ve seen him a handful of times and he’s supposed to be the VP in charge of the project. Nobody outside of the Project has even heard of him."

"It’s cause they’re a bunch of fucking supervillains," I say, then instantly regret it.

Margo’s head snaps up. "What? Why would you say that?" She seems suddenly intense.

Crap. I try to pass it off as a joke, waving my hand dismissively. "Ah, you know. They’re all secretive and shit." I turn a little in my chair, taking a keen interest in the container ships offloading at the docks.

She lets it go. "Right," she says. "I don’t know, maybe I should just count my blessings. I mean, they’re paying me, and it’ll look great on my resume. Still…"

I look at Margo for a while as she stares up at the ceiling. She closes her eyes. I sit in my chair, enjoying the sun coming through the window. We just sit there for a few minutes in a warm, comfortable silence.

Again, I want her to be my Lois Lane.

Comments? Questions?

2005-02-16T22:08:00.000-08:00

Hey, kids! Blogger changed the way you enter comments on to blogs; you no longer must have a Blogger account to leave a comment, which is great. So please, if you have any questions or anything you'd like to say, I invite you to leave a comment.

Think of the children, please. It's for the kids.

Patrol Report

2005-02-16T02:31:00.001-08:00

I half-expect to get ambushed by Ryczek's new SWAT team when I go on patrol tonight, but no dice. As a matter of fact, nothing much is going on at all tonight. I bounce around Old Town and Queen's Row looking in vain for somebody to beat up, er, a citizen to save while listening to Electric Six on my headphones.

I occasionally stop and scan the surrounding rooftops with the various settings on my goggles. Nothing. Remember back in December, I spotted a SWAT guy up on a rooftop with surveillance gear near a warehouse fire? (see post Patrol Report, 12/9/04) At the time it seemed to me like the cop or whoever was staking out the fire, maybe hoping I'd make an appearance. Some time went by and I never saw any more cops, so I didn't really think twice about it. But what if the Paracrime Unit has been operational already? What if they have footage of me, or a recording of my voice? I mean, if I were Capt. Solomon Sledge* I would put guys on the rooftops at night and wait for me to come by on patrol. Somebody could be taking pictures of me right now from a dark room on the 37th floor of the Olympic Hotel.

In these circumstances, I think a little paranoia is appropriate.

*That's a fun name to say, isn't it? Say that out loud: "Solomon Sledge."

The Paracrime Unit

2005-02-14T23:18:00.000-08:00

Police Chief Ryczek holds a press conference today outside the South Precinct. It’s on all the channels. Ryczek, who I would charitably describe as grim, is introducing the new head of his special task force, who is, if possible, even more grave and stoic than his boss. Here’s a transcript:

Chief Ryczek:

“When I became Chief of Police recently I made a promise – a solemn promise – to the mayor and the good citizens of Evergreen City that I would do everything in my power to ensure that this stays a stable, law and order town, a place where folks could feel safe raising a family. We’ve already made great strides in reducing street crime, and I know that with the support of the community we’ll continue to make progress on that front. However, recent events in our city have highlighted the need – the urgent need – for a more effective police response to extraordinary threats to our great city.

To that end I am pleased to announce the formation of a new police task force – the Paracrime Unit. Combining the investigative resources of our Robbery/Homicide division and the field capabilities of our SWAT team, the Paracrime Unit is Evergreen City’s newest and best defense against superhuman-level crime.

It is also my pleasure to introduce to you the leader of the Paracrime Unit. He’s had an exceptional career in federal and local law enforcement. Most recently he served – served with distinction – as the head of the El Paso Police Department’s anti-gang unit. I am honored – greatly honored – to be working with him on this exciting project. Ladies and gentlemen, the new leader of the Paracrime Unit, Captain Solomon Sledge.”

I know, I thought the same thing: who the hell names their kid Solomon Sledge?

Captain Sledge takes the podium, and you know what, the name actually fits. He’s a thick necked black guy in his mid-40’s with a gleaming bald head and a bad-ass moustache. His keg shaped torso strains against his dress uniform. He adjusts the mike at the podium with a monstrous hand, glaring out at the assembled press and bureaucrats. How come bald black guys with moustaches look cool, but bald white guys with moustaches look like gay bikers? Anyway, Capt. Sledge reminds me of Ving Rhames.

Captain Sledge:

“Thank you, Chief.

It’s an honor to serve the men and women of Evergreen City, and to work with the fine officers of the Paracrime Unit.

I’ll be brief, because my goal is simple and doesn’t need a lot of explaining. You know, I was a patrol officer in Turbine City in the 80’s. I’ve seen what happens when cities don’t take a proactive, aggressive stance against parahuman crime. Evergreen City isn’t going to degenerate into another superhuman battleground where normal folks don’t feel safe going out at night or sending their kids off to school. That’s not going to happen here. The Evergreen City Police are not going to become impotent in the face of parahuman threats and rely on illegal costumed vigilantes to defend the city. That’s not going to happen here. The goal of the Paracrime Unit is simple: We’re going to make Evergreen City safe from parahuman crime.”

Well, that’s just what I need, a bunch of cops after me. Although it worked for Midnight Rambler, didn’t it? Sort of enhanced his brand, made him a true rebel. All the kids dug him after the TCPD issued a warrant for his arrest. Remember that one rap song about him? “Straight Ramblin’” God, that was awful. I can’t think of the name of the guy who did that.

This doesn’t bode well, this Paracrime thing.

Biker rampage and golf epiphany

2005-02-13T20:35:00.000-08:00

Sorry I haven't posted in a few days. It's just that I'm so damn lazy.

What's been going on? I go on patrol Friday night and bust up a bar fight in Queen's Row. A bunch of stupid frat boys think they can take a couple of old bikers, tough-as-leather types with faded tattoos and miles of hard road etched in their faces. They are wrong. I have to stop the old guys before they permanently disable these kids. The bikers are very good natured about my intervention and they offer to buy me a drink. One of them looks like Kris Kristofferson. I politely shoo them away before the cops show up.

What else? J.C. and I go golfing at Shetfield, where I realize that if I didn't have superpowers, I would probably suck at golf. Really, my putting is for shit.

That's about it. Back to work tomorrow - Valentine's Day! Boy, I love Valentine's Day. It's just like New Year's - it reminds me of how desperately single and starved for sex and companionship I am. I can't wait!

(I refuse to use "emoticons" or even make little winky faces with semi-colons to indicate irony, so let me just say that the preceding paragraph is intended to be sarcastic.)

Superman is a Dick

2005-02-11T12:23:00.000-08:00

This is really funny: Superman is a Dick by Mike Miksch, a pictorial essay of surreal old DC comic book covers with one thing in common: a psychotic, abusive Superman! You'll be amazed at how many DC Comics featured Superman acting like, well, like a dick. It is a laff riot.

The Velvet Marauder

Table of Contents

Is this the end of The Velvet Marauder?

A series of awkward but heartfelt metaphors

Back in the E.C.

Vaya con dios

I hate bugs

The Boardroom, Part Two

The Boardroom, Part One

Oh, my aching everything

It's Off

It's On, Part Three

It's On, Part Two

It's On, Part One

My stupid/brilliant plan

Patrol Report

Margo Report

The calm before "it's on"

An Adventure in Babysitting

Climbing skyscrapers for beginners

Care package - suction cups and incendiary flares

My new enemy: Singing Guy

Patrol Report

Shanghai'd

Placing another order with My Guy

Patrol Report

Margo Report

Damn that mask!

The Nerd Zone

I suck

Giddy vigilante

Green Dragon, Part Two

Green Dragon, Part One

The Sensitivity Review Panel

The Velvet Marauder Meets Margo

Psyching myself up

Slacking

Emmanator II: Judgment Day

Patrol report

Fun with the voice changer

These stupid-ass ball things

Placing an order with My Guy

Patrol Report

My Dinner With Margo

Media Report

Patrol Report

Mo' Margo

Back at work

A Tense Conversation, part two

A Tense Conversation, part one

Still on vacation...

Why you no post, Marauder?

Media Report

Parka Down

Drat

The Velvet Marauder begs the Goo Goo Dolls to please, for the love of God, stop making music

Shopping for Mauraderangs and Magnesium Flares

"Vomitable Material"

Illin' and chillin' just like a snowman

Patrol Report

Kraken like Dokken

Golf Report

My Trophy Room

Media Report

Robot fu

Blogger, why you hate me?

Patrol Report

Kraken huggers

Random Christopher Walken Quote

Nosy reporter

Pride and vague guilt

Smells like bacon

Patrol Report

The Kraken

Afterburned

Showdown at King Putt

Disturbing imagery

Looking for Mr. Sidebar

Supervillains made this

A conversation with Wendy