Oh, well. Might as well check it out.
Shrugging, I told Lab Rat and Red Eye, “Her shininess calls.”
“Yes. Yes! Lab Rat will get to work. Find new laboratories. Will be such tasty fun!”
“And I'll try to get him to cut back on his caffeine.”
The nearest entrance to Spider's office was… there, a dull push-bar door in an alcove, still labeled 'Parking.' Steeling myself for the literal and figurative web I was walking into, I crossed over to it and reached out to push the stairwell door open.
Someone opened it from the other side, just before I could. Someone brown and hairy, so big he had to hunch down to fit his head through. Someone in an old fashioned pair of grey slacks and greyer button shirt, sleeves rolled up past the elbows.
I gaped at Bull. He gaped at me.
“That conniving bug,” he grunted at last. “She knew you were here already.”
He got down on his knees, and was still taller than me. Huge, leathery hands took mine as gently as if he were praying. “Bad Penny. I need your help. Yours and yours alone.”
A million questions flew into my mind, like, what could a middle school girl do for the strongest man on Earth? Physically strongest, in a very literal 'how many trucks can you lift' sense. But that hesitant, Irish accented voice made only one answer possible. “Sure. What do you need?”
“Irene is living in LA, now. I have her address. Her and Cat's. I'm ready to retire, to live with my wife and daughter, but I need someone who… can make sure I don't run away.”
I looked into those huge, dark eyes, and filled in the missing piece. “Someone Cat's age.”
He grinned, and an awkward grin on a bull's rectangular face is seriously, seriously awkward. “When you get old enough, Bad Penny, you learn that sometimes you can't stop being weak, so you look for a way to force yourself to be strong.”
I shook my head, wondering if it would float off. This was definitely one of the more surreal moments of my supervillain career, being asked by a sixty-year-old world famous bruiser to give him the courage to meet his long-lost daughter.
“It's an honor. If you're worried about cold feet, I guess we should go now.”
Finally, I had a chance to start a sentence with 'So, there I was.'
So, there I was, in the passenger seat of the world's ugliest, oldest convertible pick-up truck. There couldn't be many of those to compete with. Someone had ripped the roof off, moved the seats to accommodate an eight-foot tall wall of muscle, and widened the pedals for use by hooves. We were out around West Hollywood, maybe getting towards Culver City. It was that part of the city where the roads got weird and twisty, and there was a lot of construction, and little one-story condominiums or little one-story shops stretched in endless rows, creating the illusion you could see down to the shore.
We couldn't be all that far from the beach. A few miles, probably.
I looked at the street addresses. “2617, 2621… there!”
There was plenty of parking around here. We pulled up in front of a neatly kept stucco house that blended with all the others around it, except it didn't seem to be divided into apartments.
Bull didn't get out immediately, so I gave him a push. That was what I was here for, right? The support was purely moral. The guy weighed, like, four hundred pounds. Maybe more. There was no way I could budge him with physical strength.
He got out, and I joined him on the sidewalk. He'd stopped moving again.
My shoulder bumped against his elbow encouragingly. “Bull, I love my dad. I would never trade. But if I had to, you would be a great next choice. You will be more than Cat ever hoped for, I promise.”
Oversized fingers settled on my head, and ruffled my bangs. “Thank you, Bad Penny. Nothing could comfort me, but every time you speak, my heart aches to see my own daughter again.”
“Worst comes to worst, you pick up the building and shake it until she falls out,” I suggested.
The joke had no effect. Or maybe it did, because he walked up the short lawn to the door, and pressed the doorbell.
We stood side by side, in that terrible moment of truth.
The door opened.
Claudia stood on the other side. I got a surprised, suspicious, angry glance. Then she looked up at Bull.
She hit him in the stomach so hard that just the noise felt like a slap. As he went flying across the street, she yelled back into the house, “Supervillain attack! Vixxy, Mom, run! I'll hold him off!”
Bull hit the opposite sidewalk, cracking it. Claudia launched herself past me. I tried to turn around, teleport over there, say something, but she was just too fast. By the time I could even look, Claudia's fist was smacking into Bull's jaw.
He took the blow, which rocked even his head back, but his arms were out. One of them caught Claudia around the middle, pinning her body and her left arm. She punched him in the shoulder, but in that awkward position, the blow was merely loud. It might not have shattered a car, even.
He caught that wrist.
They were still for a moment, long enough for me to teleport across next to them.
As I got there, Bull laughed. I could hear the creaking as she strained to pull herself out of his grip. Muscles bulged on his giant arms from the effort of holding her still. And he laughed, and laughed, and in a much thicker accent crowed, “My Cat! Who would've imagined t'at my own little Cat could hit so hard?”
Claudia snarled. “Don't call me that!”
“And fly! You can fly! Cat, do you know what a great power t'at is?”
“I said don't call me that! Only my parents call me Cat! My name is Claudia! Claudia!” She jerked from side to side, giving up pushing and trying to wriggle free, instead.
A woman's voice dragged my attention back to the house. “Bull? Bull, this is wonderful! What are you doing here?”
“I'm back. I should never have left. Not with a little girl as strong as my Cat turned out to be.”
Claudia stopped struggling. We all stared at the woman in the doorway of Claudia's house. So many, many questions were answered. This was a woman who could be Bull's wife. She was big. Not Bull size, but certainly over six feet tall, and strongly built. She had animal features like his, but she looked like a fox, with orange fur and a fluffy tail and a pointed, black-tipped nose. She was the right age to be Claudia's mother as well. Not that I could be sure, but I got an impression from the solid shape and hints of ragged fur around the muzzle that she was about forty. That would make her twenty years younger than Bull, but that wasn't too bad.
My sense of closure was tossed unceremoniously out the window as the fox lady declared, “I have to get Irene!” and darted back into the house.
Things were suddenly still again. Claudia stared up at Bull, open-mouthed with shock. He just smiled.
“You… you both have the same accent,” I said, in case that helped.
“Who do you think taught her to talk?” Bull asked. His joy didn't fade, even as Claudia started to kick and struggle again.
She fixed me with a glare. The kind that made me worry she might have eye lasers she'd been holding in reserve. “Penelope Akk. You brought this-”
“BULL!” shouted someone else, at the top of her lungs.
Claudia's little sister ran out the front door of her house at a dead sprint. It took her just long enough to cross the street for me to figure out she couldn't be Claudia's younger sister. They had the same dark skin and hair, but this was a fully grown woman, just a tiny one. A tiny, tiny one, shorter than either me or Claudia. And pretty. My best guess was college age, with a cherubic, full-lipped face Claudia certainly didn't have. A furless, mouse-like tail broke free of her belt and waved behind her frantically as she ran.
Claudia slumped to the ground as Bull let her go, arms open instead to receive this miniature beauty. She threw herself into his embrace, her arms going around his neck.
“Bull!”
“Irene!”
They kissed. There was nothing chaste
about it, either. They looked like they wanted to swallow each other's tongues. I wasn't sure I should be seeing this.
The kiss broke. They pressed their noses together instead, while Bull murmured, “I can't believe you got your figure back.”
“Immortality is a kick, Bull. You should try it.”
They went back to kissing. Claudia and I stared. I wasn't sure which of us was more poleaxed. Bull was twice Irene's height. She was shorter than Claudia. How…?
No. No, no, no. A couple of questions I didn't want answered had become a hundred questions I did not want answered.
When they broke the kiss, Irene changed color. Her hair turned a sleeker, deeper black than Claudia's South-American tint. Her skin went white, almost paper white, not a color I associated with any location or ethnic group anywhere.
“How long?” Irene asked Bull. Her voice was barely above a whisper, but there were no other sounds to compete.
“Forever. Cat needs a father. I need you both. Ten years I've wasted, Irene. I'm so sorry-”
She cut him off by pressing her fingers to his mouth. Those fingers turned pink, a deep, almost red shade that flooded over the rest of her body and turned her hair burgundy. “You're aging slowly for a human. We had thirty years. We'll have at least thirty more. You came back just when Cat needs you most. These last ten years will become a funny story we tell our grandchildren, I promise.”
They embraced again. This time not a kiss, just a hug, with her squeezing him so tight that her arms shook, and Bull wrapping her up gently.
Eventually, one of her hands came loose, snuck down to her pants pocket, and pulled out a quarter. She flipped it up in the air, and when it bounced off Bull's head, she lifted her face to his and whispered, “Goodnight.”
Something snapped. One of Bull's hands came loose with half of Irene's belt. “Oops,” he whispered back.
They started to cry. Tears rolled down Bull's face so fast that they left his fur matted, and fell onto Irene's shoulder. Bull's sobs were harsh, animal. Irene's high pitched and feminine.
Both of them looked up, holding out their arms to Claudia. With a bewildered, almost blank-eyed expression, she stepped up and was enfolded into their embrace. She started crying, too.
The fox woman scurried out of Claudia's house, holding a phone to her face and chattering, “Mom. Mom! Look!”
She held the phone out at arm's length, aiming the camera at Bull and his family. I swear I could hear the squeal of glee that came out of the phone from across the street. When the fox woman brought the phone back to her ear, she said, “Uh huh. Uh huh. Hey, Bull! Foxxy says she told you so!”
Bull, Irene, and Claudia were too busy crying to answer. She didn't mind. Black furred fingers stabbed at the buttons on the phone. “I've got to go, Mom. Everybody's going to want photos of this.”
I couldn't believe it wasn't dark yet when I pushed the door of my house open and stepped into the kitchen. Claudia had flown me to an expo line station that wasn't far away. She hadn't wanted to talk, and I hadn't known what to say.
Mom descended on me immediately. “Penny, are you okay?” I guess I couldn't hide my expression. How do you control your emotions when you don't know what you're feeling?
Dad called out of his office, “She's safe, Beebee. Bad Penny was all the way over in Pasadena.”
I blinked. “What?”
“Bad Penny stole a room full of high end stereo equipment while you were out, Pumpkin. More than high end. The kind of equipment pop stars wish they could afford.”
My hand waved vaguely at the Pumpkin jar. Mom knelt down, brushing back my bangs to study me up close. “Something did happen, but it wasn't Bad Penny. You had no idea she was out. You don't seem unhappy. What was it, hon?”
Uh.
“You can't tell me. Because it's personal.” In that special, super powered sense of the word 'personal.' Mom's solemn eyes were maybe a little too understanding.
She gave me a quick, gentle hug, then straightened up. “I'm not going to push you to give up other people's secrets. Once the other kids in your school came out, this was inevitable.”
“Are you okay, Pumpkin?” Dad slid his chair around until he could see me past the doorway between the kitchen and his office.
“Very.” I was. Bludgeoned, possibly, but bludgeoned with someone else’s unexpected happiness.
Mom patted my head, and turned her attention back to Dad. “Brian, honey, I don't think the thief is Bad Penny.”
“No? High school age tech thief, female, using a sound system override to destroy surveillance equipment. Smart and professional enough to grab what she wants and run before help arrives. That's Bad Penny's MO. Is it because there was no sign of the rest of the Inscrutable Machine?”
Mom stepped up next to him, taking over his mouse, and clicking with it to pull up a picture. “No. At least one apparently solo robbery was inevitable. This girl is the wrong height, and has the wrong posture to be Bad Penny.”
The photo in question was one of those blurry black and white security camera shots, apparently taken from the next parking lot.
Dad squinted at the tiny figure. “You can tell?”
“Yes. The only way that's Bad Penny is…”
“Back to the robot theory,” said Dad.
Mom nodded.
Dad rubbed his beard thoughtfully. “This girl has a visible ponytail, but that's easy to fake. Most robots that good have fake hair.”
“Eighty-eight percent,” Mom agreed.
“It's an issue of quality.” Something on Dad's pocket bleeped, at the same time as something in Mom's pocket clunked.
Those were their text message sounds. They both pulled out their phones. Mom's eyebrows rose. “A message from Vixxy Kit? That's improbable.”
They stared at the screens for a few seconds, until Mom said, “So that's where you were.”
Suddenly, I was the middle of a hug sandwich, with Mom on one side, and Dad on the other. Dad pressed his face into my hair so hard, it kind of hurt. “I'm so proud of you, Princess.” He sounded like he was going to cry. Mom actually sniffled.
“Uh,” I said, cogently. I was fresh out of wit.
Mom detached enough to hold up her phone. She sniffed again, eyes shining, as she showed me a photo of Bull, Claudia, and Irene tangled up in a bawling knot, with me standing off to the side.
Oh, criminy.
Mom kissed my forehead. “It's okay, honey. You don't have to tell us how it happened. You shouldn't. These aren't your secrets. Just be aware that you did a very good thing, bringing them back together.”
“We should celebrate,” Dad suggested, a bit hoarse.
“I'd just like to go lie down,” I said. Between Lab Rat's weird offer, finding out Bull and Claudia were related, and now a fake Bad Penny… I just couldn't take anymore. My brain didn't have room.
“Of course,” Mom assured me.
They both let go, but Dad patted me on the shoulder. “And tomorrow, we'll go blow up some robots spectacularly.”
nd then the big one tried to plant onion sprouts by firing them like a machine gun. One of the sprouts hit the Whinetron 9000, and it went into this rant where its words got faster and higher pitched, until it exploded. Hardcore exploded. We lost the cameras in the test chamber, and all the other robots. Dad was pretty disappointed. He said the programming on the big bot could have been useful, if it was put in a body that wasn't the size of a bulldozer.”
Ray swallowed a cube of lasagna whole, then nodded at Claire. “Too detailed. I am convinced she's telling the truth.”
Claire propped her fist on her hip, and rolled her eyes. “Well, between that and conclusive photographic proof that you were somewhere else at the time of the robbery, I guess we believe you.”
A carton of corn disappeared into Ray's abyssal, super-metabolism-driven maw. “So who would pull crimes pretending to be Bad Penny?”
Personally, I had enough time to eat one forkful of macaroni and cheese between an
swers, but Claire's mom could make macaroni and cheese into a gourmet dish. I waved my orange-coated fork between my friends. “I don't think she is. People just assume. Besides, my Mom figured it out immediately.”
“What about Bull and Claudia?” Claire asked.
The three of us looked over at Claudia, sitting alone at her own table. She didn't have that pained, despairing expression today. She didn't have any expression, except maybe confusion. Everyone was still leaving her alone, even though by now every kid in our school must know her father was one of the biggest name supervillains of the 70s and 80s.
I shrugged, wishing I had something useful to say. “I tried to talk to her on the way to the cafeteria, and she just said she doesn't feel like talking right now.” If it were anybody else, I would have taken that as a sign of deep depression, but it was a big step up from Claudia's normal bitter suspicion.
Claire pointed her little bottle of that purple stuff her mom makes out of five kinds of fruit at me. “That reminds me. Penny, dear heart, Cassie has already convinced everyone that the club meets Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.”
“What!? How am I supposed to have time for them, to do homework, and to hang out with my real friends?” Specifically, the two people talking to me.
Pitching his voice lower, probably because he was name dropping, Ray suggested, “If Lab Rat comes through, we'll figure it out then. If he doesn't before the end of the week… we'll figure it out then.”
I gave him a grateful smile for his patience, since he was the one left out the most by these meetings.
Claire bumped her hip against mine on the bench. “You looked like you were enjoying the adulation.”
Covering my mouth with a fist, I cleared my throat awkwardly, while putting my other hand to productive use giving one of my pigtail braids a tug. “That part is pretty great.”
So was the free stuff. I stood there Monday afternoon, and watched the kids with super strength carry equipment and supplies into my lab. Ray was grinning pretty smugly himself as he took advantage of his fake gloves to carry the table saw down by himself.
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