Wearing the Cape 6: Team-Ups and Crossovers

by Marion G. Harmon

  “His video said 12:15,” Nightingale answered, over comms. She was currently circling the area in a military helicopter equipped with a heavy-duty sound system. “But it didn’t say anything about what direction the ships would be coming from. Also, PS? There is a surprising amount of spectators here. I guess tourism really isn’t dead in this town.”

  “Seriously. Aren’t there any more historically accurate battle reenactments scheduled for today?” Cold Front replied from across the water, on top of the Chamberlin hotel. “Guess we’ll all just have to keep our eyes peeled then. Knowing Ollie, those ships could be coming from anywhere.”

  Suddenly, Astra zoomed up and away from the bridge, angling her body almost completely horizontal. “Uhhhh, guys? Does the water look…oddly bubbly to you?”

  Leaning out as far as I could, I gripped the concrete roof with my suckers and peered at the water below. “Um…maybe? I don’t have your super-vision, though.”

  “Confirmed,” The General barked into our earpieces. “Surveillance cameras show that the water is, indeed, bubbling. Be on high alert, team.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain.” Nightingale replied, sarcastic, yet oddly upbeat.

  Astra snorted, then pointed at a specific point about 500 feet from our spot on the bridge tunnel, where even I was could see a weird spread of white bubbly water. “I think I see something coming up in the center of that circle.”

  I squinted. “Are you serious?”

  “Yep,” Nightingale confirmed. “I got it through my binoculars. He’s coming from down under.”

  “How does a seventeen-year-old kid even build a rig like that anyways?” I muttered, snapping on my battle goggles and stuffing my hair into a swim cap. “Like, seriously, what type of permit would you even need? A ‘temporary underwater super villain lab slash laboratory form 12 b or something?”

  “Probably available at the local DMV,” Cold Front quipped. “Where IS Ollie, by the way?”

  “He likes ‘melting into the crowd’ at his own events,” I explained. “Something about the artist ‘truly submerging himself into the experience of his audience, thus gaining complete understanding of his work through symbiosis.’ Or something. I don’t know, but it’s really awkward when like nobody shows up.”

  Astra growled in frustration. “Well, he’s not gonna have that problem here,” she commented, scanning the crowd of what I guessed had to be about 300 tourists, drunk college students, and news teams. “What’s the outdoor equivalent of a full house?”

  “A headache,” I replied grimly. “Anybody got eyes on the boats yet?”

  “You mean ‘ships,’” Cold Front corrected. “I got several uncles in the navy who would be pissed that you would use the word ‘boat’ to describe the Monitor and the Merrimack.”

  “What are we even looking for anyway?” Astra asked.

  I shrugged. “I’m not sure. I looked it up on Wikipedia—apparently the Monitor looked like a ‘floating cheese box?’ Whatever that means. Knowing Ollie, it’ll probably look like something out of a steampunk wet dream.”

  “More like ‘The Terminator: But Wet’,” Nightingale said. “Check it—they look like something my post-apocalyptic-death metal-cyberpunk ex-boyfriend would wear as a hat.”

  I stared at the two boats—no, ships—that had finally (and dramatically) risen to the surface of the bay. Nightingale’s description was surprisingly accurate. Both ships looked oddly hat shaped, with double layer decks rising out of a flat base. Lines of zombie robot soldiers decorated the decks—dark blue ones on the Monitor, and silver ones on the Merrimack. You could tell that Ollie had at least gotten the army colors right, because both of the ships had their names emblazoned on the side in blinking, neon red fluorescent lighting. And every robo-soldier was armed with what looked like a laser blaster—because apparently, nothing says “war is hell” better than unnecessary futuristic guns.

  “LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,” Ollie’s voice boomed across the water as he slowly ascended from the waves on a tiny platform off to the side of the ships. “…but especially the ladies!” He blew a couple of kisses into the crowd.

  I almost vomited. Nothing is quite so nausea-inducing as your evil little cousin hornballing while possibly destroying an entire ocean front. With lasers.

  “YOU ARE HERE TO WITNESS HISTORY. HISTORY IN THE SENSE OF RECREATION, BUT ALSO HISTORY IN THE SENSE OF PROCREATION. I DEMAND THE ATTENTION OF SOCIETY. I COMMAND THIS SYMPHONY OF WOE AND THE CRIES OF MY PROLETARIAT BRETHREN. LET THE BATTLE…REBEGIN!”

  “Is that ‘blending in with the audience?” Astra quipped.

  “Guess he wanted his moment in the spotlight,” I sighed, rising to my feet and stretching my arms, just as an enormous explosion echoed across the bay.

  The first fifteen minutes were uneventful enough. Well, as uneventful as 100 robot zombie soldiers shooting red and green lasers at each other, all while floating on metal ships could ever be “uneventful.” I sent a silent, hopeful prayer to St. Jude (the patron saint of lost causes) that we would just get out of here with nothing more serious than a couple of “boos” at Ollie’s terrible attempt at socio-political commentary.

  Then a group of drunk frat boys decided that the performance really needed some audience participation. Since they had already consumed the entirety of their beer stash, they decided to dispose of the cans…by throwing them directly at the battle.

  “NO!” Ollie shouted. “DO NOT PROVOKE THE CYBORGS!”

  An ominous whirring sound echoed across the water as 200 robo-sailors raised their laser cannon arms and fired a simultaneous blast at three airborne cans of Natty Light. A sonic whoomph hit my chest square on as the cans exploded in shower of red and green sparks. The crowd ooohed and ahhhed, because hey, who doesn’t love free fireworks?

  But the problem was that the cyborgs didn’t stop right there and go back to their play, like human actors would. Instead, the ships started steaming towards the spectators, guns literally ablazing. The crowd erupted in shrieking chaos as everybody tried to get away from the onslaught of lasers.

  “THAT’S OUR CUE!” Cold Front yelled over the comms. “OPERATION BATTLEHYMN IS A GO!”

  “Cold Front, see if you can hit the decks with a big wave. Aim for the soldiers, knock ‘em into the water. Make sure Ollie is out of the line of fire.” The General barked calmly. “We need him safe and able to advise. Nightingale, use the evacuation schematics I gave you to control the crowd. Astra, Typhoon, you’re in charge of neutralizing the threat. Go. NOW.”

  Astra sprang into action, grabbing me by the armpits and swooping towards the choppy water, where Cold Front had already managed to submerge several robots. “JUST DROP ME FIFTY YARDS BEHIND THE SHIPS,” I screamed up at Astra.

  “You sure?” She asked.

  “Trust me!” Somewhere in the distance, I could hear Nightingale’s calming voice directing the crowds to evacuate in an orderly, pre-planned pattern. Thank God for the General’s obsession with detail.

  Astra fell into an eye watering 60-degree dive and released me. I’d spent most of my training practicing high-speed aquatic drops exactly like this. I jack-knifed my body downwards, angling my arms in a streamlined point, gills forming over my ribs, my legs fusing together in a marlin tail. Hitting the cold water like a hot knife through snow, I sped through the waves doing my best to get a good visual of the boats’ positions through my vision-enhancing goggles.

  “Typhoon, you are directly under the Monitor,” the General advised me. “If these robots are anything like the King Neptune statue, your electric powers should be enough to neutralize them.” The General advised me.

  Tapping the mini-microphone on my goggles twice—my underwater code for “affirmative”—I zoomed upwards, arms tingling with electricity. I hit the metal hull with as big of a charge as I dared, feeling the zap echo through my muscles. The underwater propeller instantly stopped. I quickly re-formed my legs, and turned my arms into tentacles, clambering my way on board, reabsorbing my gill
s.

  Unfortunately, my creature-from-the-Black-Lagoon themed entrance must have tripped some sort of sensor in the cyborgs’ system. As soon as my head cleared the deck, the five nearest robots turned on me. The first laser blast grazed my scalp, burning a nasty-smelling hole through my rubber swim cap. Ducking down, I hardened my skin into oyster shell armor, wrapped my tentacles around the railing of the ship, and vaulted up over the deck. Landing with a crash on top of some unlucky robo-sailors, I waded through the mess of Yankee automatons, my tentacles whipping through the crowd, shocking each robot I touched.

  “Ollie says that there’s a pilot’s compartment near the cannon of each ship,” Cold Front informed me through comms. “He built it in case the autopilot function crashed. If you can get there without damaging the onboard controls, you can override the robot’s programming with an emergency kill switch.”

  I hissed as a laser blast hit the back of my neck, chipping away my oyster shell skin. The cannon was on the other end of the deck. “Seriously? Who puts the kill switch IN THE MIDDLE OF THE THING IT’S SUPPOSED TO KILL?”

  “Ollie says that he had a remote kill switch, but dropped it in the Bay when he was ‘gesturing dramatically.’ Also, he wants me to remind you that as his Ate, it is your job to protect him, not kill him.”

  I growled in frustration. Ollie was right: As his Ate, my aunties would have my head if Ollie (or anybody else for that matter) got hurt in all of this. Totally unfair, but who was I to argue with an army of elderly Filipina ladies, armed with wagging fingers and guilt-inducing glares?

  “Tell him that he owes me big time for his crappy design skills. I’m going in.”

  I risked a look to my left to see how Astra was handling the Merrimack. Ripping one of the cannons off of its mount, she cheerfully dropped it right over the ship. It punched an enormous hole in the deck, crushing several robots in the process.

  Huh. Not bad.

  Angling my path away from the edge of the ship, I cut a diagonal line through the onslaught of robo-sailors with my electric tentacle arms. I tried to conserve my energy with brief bursts instead of prolonged shocks—I had to move quickly and electricity took a lot out of me. Ducking and spinning away from suppressive fire, I managed to get to the control center—only to find that a stray laser blast had melted the door shut.

  “ARE YOU FRICKIN KIDDING ME?!” I screamed in frustration, kicking at the door. “The DOOR is melted? Ollie didn’t LASER-PROOF THE FRICKIN DOOR?”

  “On it! Stay where you are!” Astra cried into my comms. I turned just in time to see her plow a mass of robots off the tilted deck of the sinking Merrimack, then launch herself into the air.

  “Holy shit,” I murmured as she landed on the deck next to me, laser blasts ricocheting off her skin like armor.

  “Yeah, I get that a lot,” she quipped, eyeing the door. “Hey Cold Front, did Ollie say where the controls are in relation to the door?”

  “He says they are right across, about five feet off the deck.”

  “Excellent,” she chirped, as she punched an on-rushing cyborg in the head. Grabbing his laser blaster as he fell, she carved a hole through the top of the door, floated up and yanked. The door groaned off its hinges and I dove through the doorway, looking for the switch. And, of course—there were about a hundred different switches, and at least as many buttons.

  “OK, what type of kill switch isn’t bright red and covered in a glass bubble?” I complained.

  Nightingale giggled in our comms. “Have you tried turning it on and off again?”

  “Ollie says to look for the big black toggle underneath the panel,” Cold Front relayed helpfully.

  I groaned and slid a tentacle cautiously underneath the control board, finding something that felt like an enormous pinball flipper. “Got it.” I flicked it forward.

  Nothing happened.

  “Ollie says you have to do it five times in quick succession in order to kill everything—he made it that way in case he accidentally hit it with his foot.”

  I muttered a recipe for Ollie-flavored barbecue, and flicked the switch five times. In quick succession. With a beautiful sizzling crackle, all laser fire ceased. I clambered out of the pilothouse, my tentacles slowly turning back into normal arms. I breathed a laser-smoke filled sigh of relief as I was greeted by a tableau vivant of frozen cyborgs. Exhausted, I slid down to the deck, leaning against the wall, suddenly aware of the fact that I was naked from the waist down. Son of a bitch.

  Hope landed beside me. “Want a towel?” she asked, politely averting her gaze.

  “No. Give me a drink.”

  Epilogue

  “Something, something, something, feminism, something, something, yay, whoo, bad robots dead. The end.”

  Nightingale’s verbal after-action report, following Operation Battlehymn.

  The next day, Hope, CeeCee and I lounged on the sandy goodness that is Virginia Beach, lazily sunning ourselves.

  Cleanup had been relatively easy once the cyborgs had been deactivated. Cold Front had swept them up with some wind and waves. Then Astra and I had piled them onto a barge to get carted away to DSA headquarters. Officially speaking, DSA had been interested in the “ingenuity” and “creativity” of Ollie’s designs, enough to grant him a “summer internship” at some secret headquarters down south. No word on where exactly that “internship” would be, and any of Ollie’s questions about “credit for school” were met with icy, scary silence and tight-lipped military glares.

  I wasn’t too worried about the kid—he was still a minor, after all, and who knew what the DSA really wanted with his designs. Besides, “summer internship” was a magical phrase that got the Army of Aunties off my back.

  I stretched out on my towel, happily sipping an iced tea. “So… you enjoying your first real vacation in three years?”

  Hope gave a long, contented sigh. “This is bliss. A little boring…but bliss.”

  CeeCee grinned lazily, flipping through a fashion magazine. “Being bored is a luxury. Enjoy it.”

  “Oh, I am,” she reassured her, flipping over on her stomach and grabbing her soda. “Believe me, this is me, enjoying boredom. My meager, two days of boredom.”

  A football sailed towards us, knocking over CeeCee’s bottle of…something. I shrieked, my glowy, sunny reverie ruined by cold stickiness.

  “Sorry, ladies!” A blond teenage boy came jogging towards us. “My buddy made a bad pass.” He surveyed us, checking us out. “If you can manage it, would you pass that back? You don’t have to throw it if you can’t.”

  We all looked at each other and burst into giggles. Seriously?

  Hope smiled innocently, reaching for the ball. “Yeah, I’ll throw it. But I should tell you, I throw like a girl.”

  CeeCee and I grinned wickedly at each other and sat back, drinks in hand, to enjoy the show. It was going to be a fun two days.