Wearing the Cape 6: Team-Ups and Crossovers

by Marion G. Harmon

  “What was that?” the girl asked, smiling when Sydney turned back to her.

  “What?”

  “That.” She gave a small hop, lifting her arms a little. As solemn as she’d sounded accusing Sydney of being herself, now she looked ready to laugh.

  “My anti-ninja stance.”

  “Do ninjas attack you often?”

  “Always. Expect. Ninjas.”

  The girl’s laugh broke free. “Smart thinking! I’m Astra.” She held out her hand.

  Sydney took it, shook hard. “Not Halo. Because, obviously.” And couldn’t let go.

  Really, she couldn’t, which was just nuts—the girl in front of Sydney was almost exactly her height, maybe a smidge taller but hardly any curvier; if they’d been roomies she and Sydney could have raided each other’s closets, but her grip had less give than a marble statue’s.

  “Don’t panic,” the fiendishly harmless-looking girl said, sighing when Sydney automatically reached down to try and pry herself free. Wrong move—the Astra’s other hand joined hers and now they were holding hands like a couple of lesbians. Stupid, stupid! She should have gone for Pew Pew.

  But what the hell? Seriously, what the hell? Super strength—but not built like a super. Android? A Sydney-sized Illusion cast over a stone golem? Or over a giant, talking spider with grippy spider hands? The possible talking spider-thing was talking to her, breaking in on Sydney’s building eruption of fight, flight, or crippling-case-of-the-willies.

  “The video files I saw showed you holding your orbs to use them? So if I let go, that means I’m handing you your guns back, right?” She let go. Hands-free, Sydney raised them high and then yanked them back down before she completely blew her cover, tried not to hyperventilate. What. The. Hell?

  “Hey! Cool!” A con guest already loaded with two stuffed cloth bags of swag and overpriced action-figures stopped beside them. “Halo and Astra! Can I get a picture?”

  “I— Um— Sure!” Sydney nodded spastically. The Astra shrugged and straightened into a one foot forward, hand-on-hip pose like she’d done it a million times. After flapping her hands indecisively, Sydney chose Maxima’s fists-on-hips pose and the guy enthused enthusiastically as he took a bunch of shots, bags swinging from his arms as he held up his phone. A half dozen other booth browsers took advantage of the girls’ team pose to get their own pics.

  “Awesome!” Their fan tucked his phone away. “Thanks, I’ll cheer for you guys at the contest!”

  “Yay!” Sydney cheered weakly, giving him two thumbs up as the crowd broke up and everyone resumed the usual convention-walking Brownian motion. “Whew! That was close!”

  “Right?” Astra was laughing. “Like they’d believe that Halo was masquerading as…Halo?”

  “Right— Hey!” Sydney jumped back again, but kept her hands and foot down this time. “You’re not going to trick me again!”

  The Astra looked around. “I hope not. Listen, there’s an empty booth the next aisle over. I’ll keep my hands to myself, promise, but let’s get out of traffic? Please?”

  The empty booth sported two tables, a trash can, and four folding chairs, but whoever had rented the space obviously hadn’t arrived yet. Squeezing around behind the tables, they put their bags down. The Astra took off her mask as well, shaking out her bobbed platinum-blond locks.

  Sydney stared. “You’re the actress?” She’d DVR’d the Sentinels’ first eight episodes so far, watched them all at least three times to list all the superhero tropes and clichés the series used, and the girl in front of her looked just like the actress playing Hope Corrigan, new Sentinel and teen sidekick. “And a super?”

  Smiling wryly, the girl shook her head. “No, it’s so much worse than that. I’m Astra.”

  “…right.” Smile. Smile and nod... Sydney looked the crazy girl—crazy super—over. Everyone had at least one body-double somewhere, and obviously—what was her name? Stacia-something, yeah Stacia had hers right here. In an Astra costume that looked like she’d stolen it right off the studio set. And a super. That was too crazy. Wait—

  “Ahhh! I get it! It’s like Last Action Hero! You’ve come out of TV-land to catch a supervillain who’s escaped from the story! This. Is. So. Cool!”

  Astra opened her mouth, shut it. “That’s— Huh. Surprisingly close.”

  “Are they all here? I so want autographs! I should introduce Chakra to Dabbler— No, no reason to do that, ha ha. Is that Atlas guy as much of a tool as he is on the show? How about—wait—shake my hand again!”

  “Okay. Why?”

  "Seeing if you vibrate differently than me."

  "You vibrate?"

  "No, I don't. Dimensions vibrate. At least in all the sci-fi stories. I just thought maybe we'd be able to feel the difference if we touched."

  Hope laughed again. "Right. Well, good thing I’m not from an anti-matter universe or we would have both exploded."

  Sydney snatched her hand away and froze, casting unblinking eyes around. It was only after several explosion free moments lapsed that she uncoiled, nodding her head smugly. "That was a close one. High five! WAIT!" She yanked her hand back again, narrowly avoiding another non-disaster. "You won't get me that easily!" she yelled at no one in particular, shaking her fist at the sky. And now Astra was looking at her funny.

  “What? Have I got something in my teeth?”

  “Um, are you sure you’re a federal agent?”

  “In training! They need me for my vast genre-savvy!”

  “Okay. Are more of them coming?”

  “Yeah, we’re—crap on a cracker! I’ve got to go!” Sydney almost vaulted the tables before realizing that a.) despite all of Peggy’s drill-sergeant work with her she was still a spaz and likely to face-plant comically, and b.) wire baskets or not, the move would probably send her orbs everywhere. Instead she edged undramatically around the booth tables.

  Astra followed. “Are you meeting them?”

  “Not yet! Special mission! Incognito! Mask!”

  “Oh! Right.” The girl pulled her half-mask back on. “Where are we going?”

  Sydney froze. “Wait. Swear you won’t tell anyone. Swear it by Grabthar’s hammer! Say it!”

  “I…swear by Grabthar’s hammer I won’t tell anyone where we’re going?”

  “Excellent!” Sydney looked left and right. “Screw it. Memory blows.” Pulling out The List, she turned to the page where she’d written the booth number. “D-12. No more distractions—let’s go!”

  Astra followed gamely as Sydney did the best she could to imitate a meth-hopped ferret without assaulting strolling convention-goers with her orb rack. Three requests for pictures got shut down with a “Can’t!” Two aisles over, she found it.

  “Yes! Come to me, my pretties!”

  Hope watched as Halo rushed the table of a…My Little Pony booth? Stopping just before collision, the other girl leaned over the table, pointing and waving like a kid calling for that one and completely ignoring the other customers at the table. She wasn’t being intentionally rude—at least Hope didn’t think she was—she just didn’t seem to see them. She waited until the booth’s owner finished with the purchases they were making before grabbing his collar and pointing again.

  Hope almost apologized for her, but the guy was obviously used to interesting patrons; he verified the pony Halo was pointing at and got it down. It was…

  Okay, it was kind of clever. The booth was dedicated to everything MLP, but pride of place had been given to a couple of shelves of obviously handmade special items, not-canon ponies of fictional characters (Hope spotted a Captain Kirk pony and a Sherlock Holmes pony). And apparently ponies of very real people; she’d only watched a few minutes of news footage, but with its purple mane, gold-chromed hide, and—was that a mushroom cloud cutie mark on its rump?—the one Halo pointed to was obviously a Maxima pony.

  “Eeeeee!” the superhero and federal agent bounced on her toes while the man carefully wrapped and boxed it. Thrusting a black credit c
ard at his face, she looked hilariously stumped at how to cram the box into her backpack—which was still on her back while it supported her halo-rack.

  “I’ve got it,” Hope said, taking the box and gently deposited it in her own bag. “You wouldn’t want it bouncing against your rack, anyway.”

  “Thanks! Remember! Grabthar’s hammer!”

  “Grabthar’s hammer,” Hope replied gravely.

  “Right!” The other girl relaxed as they walked away from the booth. Or got less wound up, anyway—Hope wasn’t sure she could do relaxed. “We go this way! The team—the part of it coming with Maxima and Arianna—will be here any minute and Arianna threatened to dock me more than I used to make in a month if I’m not at the event stage to meet them.”

  “Great—I mean, that’s fine. So, this whole…not-Halo thing was so that you could get your…pony MacGuffin? Without anyone on the team knowing about it?”

  “Obviously! I’ve been tracking this guy’s stuff online for ages—he makes hilarious one-offs for sale at conventions. One of Max?” She cackled gleefully. “Hey! How did you penetrate my fiendishly clever disguise, anyway?”

  Hope fought bubbling laughter as Halo scowled at her suspiciously. The other girl might be a little older than she was, but Halo was worse than Shelly had ever been—hyperactive and seriously ADHD. “Master Chief? And then when I looked at your spheres they weren’t there.”

  “Huh?” Sydney tipped her head up, squinting at her orbiting friends. “They don’t do that!”

  “Not to you, maybe, but super-duper senses? When I look at them they’re there, but they’re not there, there. My visual resolution scale isn’t quite microscopic but it’s way better than 20-20, and I see more of the electromagnetic spectrum than other people—near-ultraviolet and into the infrared bands. Let’s just say that they’re not really emitting light? It’s like they’re faking it. And—”

  Hope sneaked another look at the spheres, trying to find better words than they freak me out. “The more I focus on them the harder it is for me to say where their edges are? Or even that they’re right over your head and not, I don’t know, a few miles closer to my visual horizon. And they’ve got more depth than their radius should allow. Looking at them is like looking through holes in a wall—there’s a lot more on the other side? They give me a headache.”

  “That’s—so cool!”

  She shrugged. “Non-Euclidian, anyway. Hyper-dimensional? They’re not the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen, but they’re close. So no, your wire hanger setup didn’t quite fool me. Where did they even come from?”

  "Maybe they're really from another dimension.” Sydney’s eyes widened. “Maybe they're from your dimension! Ooh! Maybe your dimension is in one of these orbs!" Hope didn’t think the girl’s eyes could get any wider, but they did as she whispered, full of awe, "Maybe my dimension is... or..."

  “We’re all on Orion’s belt?” Hope laughed. “I don’t think we really need to go all Men in Black. Anyway, I suggest covers next time? Some cheap plastic balls would work, just open them up and slip the orbs in? Even lit up they’d be a lot less noticeable.”

  “Thanks! I’ll remember that.” Halo pulled a notebook out of her uniform jacket and wrote something in it, snapped it shut. “So—hey wait! You’ve just started! Eight episodes in! When did you see weirder stuff?”

  “Um, I’m actually two seasons ahead of you?” Hope couldn’t believe she was saying this. “What happened in the last episode?”

  “You yelled at Atlas and stormed out after he let a supervillain fight go down so you could arrest everybody. And met a vampire at the hero-club.”

  “Oh,” she said weakly. For one, absolutely insane moment, she wanted to watch that show. “Well, a lot’s happened since then.”

  “No spoilers!” Sydney frantically flapped her hands and Hope blinked.

  “Uh, sure.”

  “Unless…” Her eyes narrowed deviously. “Does Vegas take bets on what happens in TV shows?”

  Hope stared at the girl. “Um, I’m not really sure it works that way. In fact I spotted two changes in the pilot episode recap.”

  “Hmm, yeah. Stupid rewrites! Still they’re bound to get the big things right. Okay, one spoiler, like can you tell me what the season-ender cliffhanger’s going to be?”

  “Um, no. So when are—”

  “There!” Halo waved and Hope spotted the group headed their way. Only in a place like this could they not stand out like hippos dancing the Nutcracker Suite. A swirl of convention goers and assorted press followed, taking pictures, asking questions, but none quite coming within an arm’s length of the group, almost as if Maxima was projecting a fear aura with her glower. All but two of the group wore tailored fatigues like Halo’s, dark urban camo with black collars, Arc-SWAT patches on their shoulders. They looked more like US Army supersoldiers than superheroes to Hope, but then they had sounded more military than government-agency from what she’d read. They even kept military ranks and discipline; Halo snapped to exaggerated attention with a salute in front of Maxima.

  “Sir!”

  Maxima’s eyes narrowed. “What did I tell you about that Scoville!?” she barked.

  “Sorry!” Sydney grimaced dramatically, repeating the salute. “That’s how they do it on Star Trek! Ma’am!”

  Maxima returned a far less formal salute, dropped into a more normal voice. “Who’s your friend, Sydney? And what is that?” She pointed to Sydney’s orb carousel.

  “My disguise! Cool, right? And this is Astra. Shake her hand!”

  Cameras swung towards the two of them, making Hope glad she had her mask on; her similarity to Stacia would not have gone unnoticed. She also decided that Maxima had had a lot more exposure to Halo than she had; the gold-skinned and intimidatingly tall Amazon looked at the girl’s improbably innocent grin and a crease appeared in her forehead.

  “Alriiight… And take that thing off.”

  “Got it, boss! It’s served its excellent purpose, anyway. I went totally incognito!” She pulled her pack off her shoulders, twitching her head at Hope and mouthing Go on!

  Hope sighed. This was not how she’d wanted an introduction to go. On the other hand, what would a good introduction look like? She held out her hand.

  Maxima took it, enveloping Hope’s small hand with the obvious care but ease of practice of someone who knew just what she could do to a non-super. They shook. And Hope held on.

  “What the hell—” Purple eyes drilled into Hope’s, the crease in Maxima’s brow crinkling into deep scowl lines.

  “Maxima? What’s going on?” The crisp office-dressed blonde beside Maxima—one of the two party-members not in a uniform—looked between the two of them.

  “She’s strong.” More cameras focused on Hope along with the blonde’s full attention. She knew what the lady was seeing; now old enough to drink, she still looked like a teenaged pixie in her skirted outfit. Add to that the apparent Adonis or Amazon figures that went with superhuman powers in this world and…

  “Is this a joke? She can’t be a—”

  “Shut up, Arianna. Squeeze, kid.”

  Hope squeezed helpfully and Maxima grunted, shifting her hold. “Grip strength says she could match Stalwart or Super Hiro.”

  An explosion of questions came from every direction but Maxima cut them all off.

  “Why are you asking...?! We literally know as much as you do right now!”

  Sydney grabbed the now carousel-free blue orb and floated up to cover the height differential between herself and Maxima to whisper in her ear, easily heard by Hope. “Told you! She’s the real Astra!”

  Maxima released her and she flexed her fingers; the golden super hadn’t tried to win the knuckle-crushing contest, just to see what she was capable of, but her hand still felt hot and tight. The Arc-SWAT leader’s eyes drifted to one of the many publicity banners advertising the Sentinels booth—and apparently an actor panel tomorrow. Hope winced.

  “Okay, now we know more than
you do.” Maxima grinned slyly as the cavalcade of shouted questions resumed. Then she ignored them, to the office-blonde’s obvious consternation. “Right.” She started walking and everyone fell in around her moving center of social gravity. “Let’s take this back to the green room, we’ve got a few minutes before today’s dog and pony show.”

  “Max,” Office-Blonde protested. “We were going to mingle.”

  “Sorry, Ari. Safety first.”

  The designated “green room” behind the stage was a tight space for the group—obviously doubling as a storage space although now it held a fridge, a single table, and half a dozen folding chairs. Hope, Halo, the office-blonde Maxima introduced as Arianna, and five other Arc-SWAT members made it almost claustrophobic, more so because they were all looking at Hope while Halo loudly expounded her TV Land theory.

  “Astra?” Maxima cut Halo short. “The TV show?”

  Hope had no idea what to say to that, but Sydney took a deep breath as if ready to regurgitate an entire wiki on the subject. “It was an indie comic first. Actually before that it was—”

  “What else can you do?” Her scowl had faded a bit, but the set of her mouth told Hope that she was still assessing her as a possible threat she needed to get the measure of.

  “I can fly.” Hope helpfully raised herself a foot, keeping her feet flat so it was obvious, and set down again. “And I have expanded and sharpened senses. Pretty vanilla, really.”

  One of the uniformed ones, a goth-girl with purple streaks in her raven hair who reminded Hope of Kindrake, laughed hard. “Only you, Syd! Whoosh out here on a super-secret mission and meet a fictional superhero? Really?”

  “Doubter! We’re superheroes! We’ve got an al— We’ve got a mad scientist on the team! How could we not run into heroes from the comic-books! It’s practically destiny!”

  Maxima ignored her. “Dabbler?”

  The other out-of-uniform member of the party shrugged. A statuesque blonde with a deep copper tan and swirling tattoos covering her face, she wore a gold bustier to show off her generous figure. Tight pants and high boots completed an outfit made only marginally less stare-worthy by an open coat. It was a costume that would fit right in with the fashion-hero clubbing scene back home, but Hope stepped back when she raised her hands.