I warmed up my throwing arm with a couple of quick shoulder rotations then grabbed the changeling by the throat. Mimix gulped and his puckered butthole whistled a piccolo pitch that only my ultrasonic ears could detect.
“What do you want from me?” he asked, squirming like a worm on a hook.
Birdy laid it out. “Tell us what Professor D’eath’s up to or you’d better know how to mimic a parachute.”
“We know for a fact that you and him are still partners,” I added. “We even have photographs of the two of you talking.”
It was a bluff but it was worth a shot.
“That ain’t true,” Mimix protested. “The Prof always sweeps for cameras.”
His hand went to his mouth as he realized what he’d said. For a guy as slippery as a greased rainbow, Mimix sure could be a goober.
I tightened the thumbscrews some more. “Tell us where the Professor is right now or I bowl you into the nearest black hole.”
The guy wasn’t giving up jack though. If I was going to get answers I’d have to lay on the full Gitmo treatment.
“Have it your way,” I told him.
I started out nice and gentle – a little memory-prompting tap to see if that jarred anything loose (assuming memories are located in the groin) but that was as far as I was allowed to go. Before I could move on to anything more persuasive Birdy shut me down, spouting some junk about “due process” and “human rights,” like I’m supposed to remember all the laws!
Out of options, I dragged Mimix up, tossed him into a cell and cursed our bleeding heart legal system. Guess you’d better invest in some lead pyjamas, citizens of NY, because Professor D’eath and his plutonium remain at large. Thanks a bunch, you pinko liberal yogurt knitters. I scrunched the interview room’s steel table into a ball, aimed it out of the skylight and pitched it into the sky.[27]
January 8th
Me and Birdy have ourselves a tradition. At the end of the working week we head up to C.H.A.M.P’s rooftop, look out across the city and drink a toast the people we’re sworn to protect. The weather this evening was perfect for it too. The moon shone like a polished silver dollar and a cool breeze lashed at my cape, making it snap like a pirate flag cutting into a stiff crosswind.
Ordinarily I’d be popping a major B in my trunks, but I just couldn’t get down with it tonight. As I clinked Birdy’s glass all I could think of was Professor D’eath up to God knows what with his pile of radioactive glow sticks. I tossed down the scotch but it tasted like a stomach ache. I turned to Birdy to see he looked as miserable as I felt. I refilled our glasses in silence.
We were about to send our second round down the hatch when a woman’s scream cleaved the night air. I scanned the circuit board of the streets below and zeroes in the source of the alarm. There, in a back alley five blocks over, I found a security guard in the midst of being robbed. She was up against four attackers doing their utmost to relieve her of a lock box, and from the looks of things she was losing the fight. Finally, something I could get my hands on. Something to destroy.
I strapped Birdy into the man hammock and made off so fast we practically outran our shadow. Normally I leave muggings to the part-timers but since D’eath’s playing peek-a-boo I was more than happy to cut in on this dance. Besides, there was something about this woman’s scream that caught my ear. Without wanting to sound like a creep, there was a certain... sexiness to it. A sort of tenderness beneath the terror. No doubt about it, this was one erotic cry for help.
I arrived at the alley in a caffeine heartbeat. I recognized the bag-snatchers right away, a bunch of skeevy Z-list goons in carny costumes. It seems the circus had come to town, or more accurately, the Murder Circus.[28]Hoods of that calibre, they’re like mosquitoes; they contribute nothing, attack for no good reason and the whole world wishes they’d just f*ck off. Ordinarily I wouldn’t dirty my gloves on them, but I figured what the hell, I’d flip them a mercy beating this one time.
“The jig’s up, bozos,” I said as I hovered before them, all business.
I didn’t have to expand my thesis beyond that – before I’d even touched the ground and decoupled from Birdy they’d scattered like leaves in the wind. All except for one. Acro-Bat had managed to separate the security guard from her lock box and he was staying put. He held the case tight, like a woman on her period clutching a hot water bottle to her belly. It was adorable.
“You want it, you’re gonna have to take it,” he said.
How about that? Balls the size of Boston cream donuts, this guy.
“Son, I’ll take your wallet, your watch and your wife if I want to. Now give it up.”
I waited for Acro-Bat to drop a pile of guano and scram, but he stood his ground. What was he thinking, fronting with me? I’ve been in this game since he was wearing his panties on the inside.
I was about to clean his clock when Birdy whispered a note of caution in my ear.
“Remember what we talked about; weigh up the situation and don’t step in until you’re sure of all the angles.”
As well as being my brother, partner and pit crew all rolled into one, Birdy also functions as my coach. Not that I can always be counted on to accept his advice. I mean, take this situation – I’m the guy that can snuff out a five-alarm fire with a whisper – why I gotta worry about some joker in a leotard dressed like a flying mouse? Way I see it I’m better off jumping in both feet than wasting time pontificating. The fact that Acro-Bat landed Birdy with a sucker-punch while I was busy listening to his advice only backed me up on that.
Playtime was over. Without breaking eye contact I hooked a finger in my navel, plucked out a ball of lint and snapped it at Acro-Bat with a hypersonic flick. It landed between his eyes and sent him skidding on his ass like a dog with a case of worms. The guy was down – lights out, no lullaby. Dude can count himself lucky, if I’d sent anything more substantial his way – even so much as a crumb of fingernail grit – he’d be wearing a new head hole.
I didn’t relish the notion of spending the rest of my evening tied up with paperwork, so I hung Acro-Bat from a telegraph pole by the seat of his pants and left it at that. I figured he’d learnt his lesson, plus the sight of him screaming “Police brutality!” while his skinny legs pedalledthe air would be a good warning to any other budget supervillains with ideas above their station. It’s sad, but some guys need reminding they’re not even good at being sh*tty.
I returned the stolen lock box to the security guard and gave her the default speech about keeping off the backstreets at night and blah blah blah. After I was done I gave her a friendly handshake and made off home. No need to take things any further than that. Nice scream and all... shame about the face.
January 10th
This morning Birdy told me he was done with the man hammock.
“We need to switch things up,” he said. “If we’re going to catch Professor D’eath we’re going to have to cover more ground.”
“So what’s the plan?” I asked.
“The plan is I buy a Hero-Wing.”
A Hero-Wing. A jump jet aircraft with 30,000 lbs of thrust sheathed under twenty feet of sleek, black titanium alloy – all the rage with the vigilante playboy set I’m told. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. The guy nickel and dimes me over the cost of my statue and now he’s talking about dropping five mill of C.H.A.M.P change on some substitute wang?
“It’s time I was able to operate independently,” Birdy argued. “Time I started acting like my own man.”
And what kind of a man is that exactly? Sitting under the hood of something that looked like it slipped out of Wesley Snipes’ underpants? I can’t think of a better way to show the world your balls waved the white flag.
It’s like those losers you see tooling around town in their Hero-Mobiles. I see some turkey perched at the wheel of one of those things and I feel sorry for the guy. Just picture him there, taking a dirty great huff of leather as he slips inside the cockpit... sliding his key in the ignition,
just the tip at first, then swivelling deeper to really fire her up... getting those pistons pumping hard as he plows his throbbing hot rod through the moist tunnel of some secret cave... finally coming to a shuddering halt as he shifts down the stick and blows his ejector seat.
Gross. You wouldn’t catch me showing myself up with some counterfeit penis. No need, I got a dick so big it won’t take James Cameron’s calls.[29]
January 13th
Dr Rune was an enemy of mine, a powerful magician with a mind for mischief and a hard-on for havoc. He went by many titles: The Great Conjuror, The Master of the Occult, The Grand Warlock, He Who Walks Backwards. Now he has a new one. As of this moment, Dr Rune is better known as ‘The Deceased.’
Yep, God went and did a recall on the guy. Adios, amigo. It’s a shame, it really is – not just for the deceased and his widow but for yours truly. Dr Rune was a quality villain, and quality villains are hard to come by these days. I’m not saying Rune ever troubled the top tier of my rogue’s gallery, but compared to most of today’s snack cake villains the guy was the devil incarnate.[30]
Rune’s was a public funeral, so I stopped by to pay my last respects. Not that there was much of him left to pay respects to, what with his body not having a top half. Nothing to show from the waist up – Rune really was dead as they come.[31] I approached his coffin and laid a wreath. It felt weird saying goodbye to a pair of legs, but that’s just the world we live in I guess.
According to the patrol that found Rune’s remains, the legs were found on the spike of the Empire State Building, skewered like a shish kebab. No one knows what happened to his top section. All our forensics department can say is that the dividing cut had been made at a separate location, and that it was so clean it’s likely Rune hadn’t even felt it. Chances are the only clue he had that something was wrong was the fact he suddenly found himself eye-level with his killer’s crotch.
This had Professor D’eath’s name written over it in big bastard letters. I started wondering if the widow might have any ideas about her husband’s killer, so I went sniffing for clues. I started out by giving her my condolences, but she surprised me with a total lack of sympathy for her husband’s fate. The way she told it, Rune had spent the last years of his life drinking himself stupid in some wizards’ dive bar. It was only a matter of time before he showed up dead of something, she said. I acted like I didn’t know what Rune would have to be depressed about but we both knew that was a crock. Seeing as I’d ripped the guy’s arms off and all.
To be fair, he was asking for it. A little hocus pocus is one thing, but open a dread portal to Dimension 666 in the middle of Times Square and steps will be taken. It was a grim call to make but it was either cloven feet clip-clopping down Seventh Avenue or arms-out-of-the-sockets time. It’s not like I wanted to maim the guy. Hell, even Birdy couldn’t lighten the mood after that stunt.
“No tricks up those sleeves,” he joshed. I laughed obviously, but I felt bad about it right away.
Dr Rune was a piece of work, but when you laid it all out it was hard not to feel sorry for the guy. First he loses his arms, then his legs, now his whole life. Poor schmuck. It’s like he was a Barbie doll in the hands of some evil kid brother.
I asked the widow outright if she had any idea who might have wanted her husband dead, but if she knew she wasn’t telling. I started to wonder if maybe she’d offed him for his money, but it turned out Rune died pretty much destitute. The only thing he owned that might have been worth a damn was his magic crown, and that had gone missing along with the rest of his top half.[32]
January 14th
Family dinner at Mom’s. Tonight’s dish was leftover Thanksgiving turkey, which suited me just fine. I’m not some high falutin’ snobbo when it comes to food. Sure, with the kind of money I pull down I could spend my evenings dining at The Union Club with a bunch of rich old white dudes dressed like Mister Peanut, but that ain’t me. You’ll never catch me wearing a suit, mark my words. I’m a down-home, blue-collar guy, always have been. Well, a blue-collar guy with a personal line of cologne and a rooftop pool cut into the shape of his own face anyway.
Mom tucked a napkin into my collar, then Birdy’s. She dished up the turkey without a word, banging the serving spoon against the porcelain like she was hammering nails. There was a fourth place set at the table, the seat of which was empty.I could tell from Birdy’s face he knew he was about to catch some sh*t.
“Why are you not inviting your mystery date to dinner?” Mom demanded. “Is fancy clever woman too good for this family? Or do you make her up like last one?”
Mom was referring to the time Birdy got her off his case by telling her he was dating some long-distance Canadian chick. I don’t know what he was thinking with that one. In our line of business invisible would have been more believable.
The oven timer pinged and Mom took off like a prize fighter summoned to her corner by the boxing bell. When she returned to the table she came bearing a tray of trimmings, which she hammered onto our plates. Leaning across Birdy to dole out his portion, she screeched suddenly and dropped the tray, sending candied yams bouncing everywhere. She’s had caught sight of Birdy’s shiner; the one he’d gotten when Acro-Bat popped him in the puss the other night.
“What is this here?” she wailed at me. “Why do you not look after your brother, fathead!”[33]
Mom always did wrap Birdy in cotton wool. You’d think he’d be grateful, but he doesn’t see it that way. Never did. Back when we were kids he’d get all mad at Mom for holding his hand to cross traffic and stuff. At least it showed she cared I told him – she cut my leash the second I got my superpowers. Forget about hand-holding, I could wander outside the solar system and get blown up by an exploding quasar and she wouldn’t even notice. Being a superhero gave me a lot of things, but it took away its share too.
By the time I finished convincing Mom I’d take better care of my brother the turkey had gone cold. I tried saving the day by re-heating it with a blast of my eye beams, but I overcooked it and disintegrated the thing. In the end, all that was left of our main course was a bird-shaped shadow on the dining room wall. It’s just as well I’m indestructible really, because Mom must have broken the best part of a Cuisinart set over my head before she tired herself out.
Sigh. Why couldn’t I be one of those superheroes whose mother got gunned down in a back alley mugging gone wrong? Some guys get all the luck.[34]
January 15th
And the hits keep coming! My lawyer just gave me the results of that sexual discrimination suit, and apparently the court ruled in favor of the plaintiff, Miss Transit. Now my name’s even deeper in the mud just because some money-grubbing broad says the company I’m Chief Officer of has ‘A long-standing policy of discrimination in its hiring practices as evidenced by a workforce comprising of only 4 percent females.’
Not only do we have to make a major payout to Transit, C.H.A.M.P’s looking down the barrel of a serious policies overhaul. Thanks to the court’s edict, female costumes will no longer come with a mandatory cleavage-window, and staff can pucker up and kiss goodbye to our ‘cash to flash’ scheme– even if it was instituted on a Yes vote from a staggering 96 percent of our workforce!
The court also insisted we hold a microscope to some of our other equalities policies. They took particular issue with the codenames we’d assigned some of our ethnic staff, namely Blackbird, Blackball, Black-Man and Black Magic.[35] Despite some admittedly dubious historic choices, I’d like to state for the record that C.H.A.M.P is not the seething hotbed of inequality you’re being led to believe. In fact, the only ‘ism’ we tolerate around here is ‘professionalism’ (and possibly Buddhism).[36]
Sometimes the system just sucks. When Professor D’eath fries the Brooklyn Bridge with his lava cannon it’s the taxpayer who foots the bill, yet I make one little screw-up and get my titties tied in a bow. Where’s the fairness in that, you tell me.
January 17th
I had this day pegge
d as a winner the second I saw a C.H.A.M.P signal go up over the Federal Reserve Bank. A hit that size, it could only be the work of one man – my big bad – Professor D’eath. Finally! Boy, I couldn’t wait to feed that guy through the spanking machine.
I’d have taken Birdy along for the ride, but since he was tooling around town in his fancy new jet I had no choice but to go solo. I bounced to the crime scene and bee-lined straight for the vault. It being a gold reserve, there were obstacles along the way, but when you can hit the speeds I can, four floors of security-reinforced sub-level become kind of negligible.
I touched down in the basement just in time to catch D’eath ordering his Mandroids to tear off the vault’s tibonium door.[37]
“Hands in the air, Professor,” I said (like a boss).
D’eath offered a pantomime sigh. “Why don’t you make me, you insignificant crumb?”
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