Action Figures - Issue Three: Pasts Imperfect

by Michael Bailey

  “Do you think we’ll get lucky?” I say.

  “Us?” Natalie laughs. “No way.”

  SEVEN

  Due to my extracurricular activities, I often have to lie to Mom about my whereabouts. Call me crazy, but I don’t expect Hey, Mom, I have to go risk my life fighting a super-powered whackadoo would go over well. This time around, I got to tell her the truth — mostly. I left out the part about sitting for the Quantum Quintet’s youngest member.

  I know, a lie of omission is still a lie. Cut me some slack, huh?

  There’s a patch of woods near my house, which I use as a secret landing pad. Once I get far enough into the woods, far enough that no one can see me from the street, I slip on my headset. Once it boots up, I lay in my course to the Quantum Compound, then power up. If I wanted to, I could haul some serious ass (and let off some steam in the process) and cover the sixty-odd miles between Kingsport and Sturbridge in five minutes easy, but I choose to fly at a more leisurely one hundred fifty miles per hour.

  Upon approach, I make radio contact with the compound. “Quantum Compound, this is Lightstorm. ETA two minutes.”

  Joe replies. “Roger that, Lightstorm. I’ll meet you on the pad.”

  Joe “Rockjaw” Quentin is a startling sight the first time around, and I think he’s the main reason the Quentins don’t go in for the whole secret identity thing. He’s seven feet tall, for starters, almost as wide, and his skin is the color of desert sandstone and the texture of polished marble. I once described him as one of those Easter Island heads with a body attached. Usually, that body is not clad in a tuxedo.

  “Evening, Joe,” I say as I touch down. “Wow, check you out, all fancied up.”

  “And off-the-rack, too,” he jokes.

  “Well, you look very dapper.”

  “Thanks. Come on in.” I follow Joe into the compound, into the family’s common room, which boasts one of the largest TV screens in the northern hemisphere — which, at present, is filled with the hi-res mayhem of a heated first-person shooter deathmatch between Joe’s towheaded twins, Kilroy and Megan.

  “Hey, Carrie!” Meg says over the din of simulated machine gun fire.

  The greeting is more than a nicety; it’s a clever distraction. Kilroy, dumb ol’ teenage boy that he is, suddenly loses all interest in the game because, oh, hey, pretty girl in the room, at which point Meg blasts his avatar into pixilated red goo.

  “Hey!” he protests. “No fair!”

  “All’s fair in love and war, Monkeywrench,” Meg says, abandoning her controller to greet me properly. She’s wearing an absolutely adorable vintage cocktail dress, formal yet fun.

  “Would it be bad form on my part to rifle through your closet while you’re out,” I say, “because that dress is totally theft-worthy.”

  “Thanks! I found it at the vintage clothing store in town, along with the shoes,” she says, beveling to show off the matching pumps. “You and Sara and Missy should come over sometime, we can have a girly day.”

  “Definitely.”

  “And how do I look?” Kilroy says, doing a little catwalk strut for me. Meg rolls her eyes on my behalf. Thanks, Meg.

  “You look very nice,” I say, and yes, Kilroy wears a tux quite well, but I don’t want to encourage his rampant flirting — but, as I said, he’s a teenage boy, so the blandest of compliments is as good as me gushing all over him. He’s probably planning our wedding even now.

  “Oh, good, you’re here,” Dr. Quentin says, and the only reason I recognize her is because she’s carrying Farley. Dr. Quentin’s default mode is somewhere between dowdy lab rat and hot librarian: lab coat, clunky glasses, hair up in a bun, conservative skirt, sensible shoes. Tonight her hair is arranged in a loose updo, and she’s traded the scientist-mom look for a sleek strapless evening gown — black, with a hint of sparkle.

  “Now I really don’t want to go to this thing,” Joe says, eyeing his wife appreciatively. The twins squirm, as kids are wont to do whenever their parents hint they might be human beings with natural desires.

  (For the record: I do not begrudge them their reaction. In my reality, my parents are both virgins and they made me out of Legos.)

  “You be good,” Dr. Quentin says, trying (and failing) to hide a smile. “That goes for you too, my little man,” she says, depositing Farley on the floor. “Carrie is a guest in our house, so treat her appropriately.”

  “Okay!” Farley says, and he dashes over to give me a big smile and hello wave. “Hi, Carrie!”

  “Hi, Farley,” I say. “Ready to have a fun night?”

  “Yeah!”

  “Should you two feel the need to get out of the house for a little while,” Dr. Quentin says, “there’s a small ice cream shop at the bottom of the hill. Farley may have one small ice cream cone,” she says, directing this more to Farley than to me.

  “One small ice cream cone,” Farley confirms.

  “We should be home by eleven. I’ll call if we run late.” Dr. Quentin starts to herd her family out of the common room. “Oh, yes, there’s a panic room two floors down, accessible by stairs, elevator, and an emergency chute in that wall,” she says, pointing out a panel that looks like the door to a laundry chute.

  “Oh. Okay,” I say. Panic room? “That’s in case of a super-villain attack?”

  “Or if Farley has a tantrum.”

  Right, I forgot: Farley has super-powers too. The twins tried to describe his powers to me once, and all I know for sure is that when Farley gets angry or frightened, something really scary happens to him — so scary it necessitates his family installing a Farley-proof panic room.

  I should have asked for my money in advance.

  “All right, Farley,” I say, settling in on the couch. “What would you like to do? Play a game? Read a story?”

  “Read with me!” Farley races out of the room, returning a couple minutes later with (be still my heart) a well-read copy of The Hobbit.

  “You’re my kind of kid, Farley. Come on, sit next to me.” Farley climbs up onto the couch. I do most of the reading, while Farley recites, in a more than passable British accent, Bilbo’s dialog. I don’t care if I’m not even sixteen, this kid is pushing my maternal instincts button something fierce.

  We blow through the first four chapters, then Farley says to me, with the affected thoughtfulness and gravitas only young children are capable of, “I am feeling the need to get out of the house.”

  “Oh, you are, are you?”

  “I am.”

  “And where, pray tell, might we go?” He shrugs. “Perhaps to a certain ice cream shop?” Yes, ice cream in February. It’s a New Englander thing.

  He shrugs again. “Mmmmmmmaaaaaaybe.”

  Real smooth, Farley. “Go get your coat.”

  The compound sits near the top of a large hill overlooking the town of Sturbridge. The Quentins own the entire hill, so they’ve thoughtfully installed a convenient concrete stairway leading all the way down to the main road. A series of overhead lights pumps out an impressive amount of heat, which means we stay nice and toasty warm. Farley, in his comically bulky winter coat, works up a light sweat during the walk.

  The ice cream shop is a little mom-and-pop deal, with a take-out window and a small indoor seating area. Looks like we aren’t the only ones indulging an ice cream craving this evening; the parking lot is about half-full.

  We head inside, and the girl working the counter greets Farley by name. “How’s my favorite guy?” she says, peering down at the boy.

  “Hi, June. I’m good. This is Carrie,” he says. “We’re getting out of the house.”

  “Hi, Carrie. What can I get you two?”

  The menu boasts a staggering fifty flavors of ice cream, twenty of those available in soft-serve or frozen yogurt. It’s an overwhelming selection, yet I immediately zone in on mocha swirl. Mocha detection is my other super-power.

  “Mocha swirl cone for me, double scoop. Farley?”

  He pretends to ponder his options. “
Mocha swirl cone for me,” he says, “one scoop, please.”

  “Kid’s a charmer,” June says to me, then she’s off to grab our snacks.

  We sit inside with our cones and talk about The Hobbit, which Farley has read almost as many times as I have. He definitely inherited his mom’s brains, because he remembers everything about the story: he can name all twelve of the dwarves, he knows The Song of the Lonely Mountain by heart, he knows every riddle Bilbo trades with Gollum. I don’t think I’ve ever had a more engaging discussion about The Hobbit with anyone except my dad. It’s a perfectly delightful little outing.

  ...So, of course, some ass has to go and ruin it by crash-landing in the middle of the parking lot.

  When things like this happen, people react in one of two ways: They run screaming in the opposite direction, or they whip out their cell phones and start taking video. This shop’s clientele is an intelligent bunch; they choose to make themselves scarce. June, with admirable aplomb, shoos everyone out through a rear exit.

  “You call the police,” I tell her, “I’ll run up to the compound and see if I can get hold of the Quantums.”

  “Right,” she says. I let June guide me outside, and then Farley and I get the hell out of Dodge — rather, we run far enough up the hill to make a good show of it.

  “Farley, you listen to me,” I say. “You run home and lock yourself in. Let me take care of this, all right?”

  “Okay,” Farley says. He’s young, but growing up in a super-hero family means he knows exactly what’s going on, so I don’t have to worry about him staying out of the way.

  I slip on my headset, power up, and shoot into the sky. I swoop around, and my heart leaps into my throat when I see a monstrous mech rising from the wreckage of several cars. At first glance it looks like a Thrasher, but once I get a better look, I realize it’s not a Thrasher but some second-rate, low-budget cousin. It looks like it’s been cobbled together from scavenged parts; I swear its chest plate is the hood from a school bus. There are exposed hydraulics, crude welds and, no lie, pump-action shotguns bolted to its arms. It’s a Transformer filtered through Larry the Cable Guy. I’d laugh if it hadn’t just caused several thousand dollars in damage simply by landing.

  The mech sways on wobbly legs, its hydraulics hissing like an old radiator. The man inside, his head encased in a football helmet and surrounded by a dented roll cage of thick steel pipes, swears under his breath.

  “Excuse me! You, in the suit!” I shout. The pilot’s eyes pop when he sees me. “Hi. Could you do me a favor and deactivate your, uh...this thing, before you cause any more damage?”

  “I didn’t do anything wrong!” the man says. “And you’re not a cop, so you can’t arrest me!”

  What the huh? Okay, the guy is on-edge, but I suppose that’s understandable, what with the crash landing and all.

  “I didn’t plan to arrest you, sir,” I say in my most soothing tone. This is what police call de-escalation, an effort to put a jittery suspect at ease so he doesn’t do something stupid and potentially harmful, to himself or others. “I do want you to power down your suit, though. I don’t want anyone getting hurt here.”

  He eyes me, more than a little suspiciously. “I don’t want to go to jail,” he says. Nervous sweat rolls out from beneath his helmet.

  “Then I think you should deactivate your suit and come on out. I’m thinking this was some sort of accident, yeah?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I didn’t — the fuel mixture in the rockets — I didn’t think...”

  Oh, no kidding. “It’s all right. No one got hurt, and that’s the important thing, right?”

  He nods. Okay, Carrie, he’s calming down. Seal the deal; get him out of the suit before —

  A trio of police cruisers screams into the parking lot. The cars skid to a halt, the drivers jump out. Please, please do not pull your guns and scream at the guy.

  “DOWN ON THE GROUND! NOW!”

  Well, crap.

  Whatever Zen we’d established goes right out the window. Mech-man swings his suit around to unload his shotguns on the cruisers. The cops dive for cover. Windshields shatter. Tires blow out.

  A headshot would take him out fast, but that would require a degree of control over my powers I don’t have yet; I’m more likely to blast his head clean off his neck, and one thing I am not is a killer. I go for the legs instead, hoping to take out a knee joint.

  Have I mentioned that my aim is not spectacular?

  My blast goes a little high, connecting with the mech’s thigh. It reels from the impact. Some kind of reddish fluid spurts from the limb but it doesn’t go down. Worse, it reminds the pilot I’m still here; the mech pivots to face me again.

  When I’m powered up, I generate an aura that is solid enough protection against energy-based attacks, but I have no clue whether it could stand up to buckshot. Rather than find out the hard way, I zip around behind the mech, easily avoiding his shot. I blast him in the back — nice, wide target that it is — and the mech stumbles, throwing its hands out to catch itself. Some poor dope’s SUV cushions its fall.

  Aesthetically the thing looks like a lumbering hulk, clumsy and slow. In reality, it’s clumsy and fast; the mech whips around, hurling the SUV at me. I fire instinctively, expecting to deflect the makeshift missile.

  Instead, I blow up the gas tank. D’oh.

  It’s not a big, flamey Hollywood explosion. It’s more like a giant camera flash going off, bright and quick, but the fact remains: A gas tank exploded in my face. The fireball cascades over me harmlessly (thank you, glowy aura), but the noise and the shockwave rattle my teeth. I spiral out of the air and land hard on the roof of a minivan.

  I roll onto my back to see a blurry gray mass stomping my way. I’m too dizzy to properly take aim. My best bet — my only bet is to fire wide and pray I nail him.

  “HEY!”

  Oh, God, no.

  The mech stops, turns. My visions clears enough to make out a small object standing at the far edge of the parking lot, bundled up like Ralphie’s little brother in A Christmas Story. I yell at Farley, tell him to run, to get away, but instead, he charges the mech.

  When I first met the Quantum Quintet, Meg and Kilroy introduced Farley to me as Final Boss. I never got the connection between adorable little Farley and the nickname, which refers to the biggest, ugliest, nastiest monster at the end of a video game.

  I get it now. Oh, boy, do I get it.

  With each step, Farley doubles in size. He rips out of his clothing as his skin turns into scaly armor, like a crocodile’s hide. Claws like butcher knives spring from his fingers, and horns, curled like a ram’s, sprout from a head that no longer bears any resemblance to anything human. He roars, revealing a mouthful of jagged fangs, and I swear I can hear Mr. Mech losing control of his every bodily function. I can’t blame him.

  The transformation complete, Final Boss plows into the mech with the force of an avalanche, lifting the machine off its feet before body-slamming it into the asphalt, cratering the thing. It’s not getting back up any time this decade.

  I stand up on the minivan as Final Boss faces me, his blood-red eyes level with mine. I now understand why the Quentins have a panic room in their house. I wish I were there.

  “Farley?” I squeak.

  He — it — he glances back at the mech, then flashes a monstrous grin.

  “Smooshed him good,” Final Boss says, his voice the deep rumble of an approaching thunderstorm.

  “Yeah, buddy,” I say, “you smooshed him real good.”

  Real good; it took paramedics, armed with hydraulic cutters and the Jaws of Life, an hour and a half to extricate the man from his suit. He was a mess, but he’ll live to see his arraignment, as well as the countless civil lawsuits that will no doubt be filed against him.

  As it turns out, our troublemaker is a local resident well-known to police — although it wouldn’t be quite accurate to call him a criminal (well, until today). Marvin Belcher, owner of Belcher’s Scrap Y
ard and Used Auto Parts, likes to spend his spare time making experimental vehicles, everything from rocket-powered roller skates to motorized barstools (I swear, I am not making that up) to personal hovercrafts powered by lawnmower engines. Sturbridge police regularly catch him testing his unlicensed creations on public roads, which typically result in the confiscation of his latest toy and maybe a citation for some minor motor vehicle violations.

  He won’t get off that easy this time around, and not just because of the rampant destruction of public property; during the extraction, the first responders discovered the suit’s power source: A pair of nuclear micro-cells. They’re strictly regulated by the federal government (because, duh, nuclear), which means there is no way an average guy like Marvin could get his hands on them legally. He’s in neck-deep doo-doo, as is whoever was stupid enough to sell that kind of tech to a civilian for use in his giant robo-suit.

  That, however, is a mystery for another time, and not my most immediate concern, because there’s a naked little boy sitting in the back of a police cruiser I need to get home.

  I don’t think the Quentins are going to ask me to babysit again.

  The Quentins return, as promised, at eleven on the nose, and the first words out of Dr. Quentin’s mouth are, “Carrie, do you know what happened at the ice cream shop?”

  I slide out from underneath Farley, who fell asleep in my lap as Bilbo and the dwarves arrived in Lake-town in their barrels. There’s no sense in trying to cover it up, so I lay out the sequence of events in detail, then brace for the fallout.

  The conversation does not go as I expected. “You mean Farley didn’t try to eat you?” Kilroy asks.

  “Eat me?” I say.

  “Kilroy. Farley has never eaten anyone,” Dr. Quentin says. “My son is not a cannibal.”

  “What about that one time he —?” Kilroy begins.

  “You know bloody well Farley only bit him...and he spit him right back out.”

  They’re messing with me. They have to be.