She frowned, thoughtfully. Well, on anybody else, that expression would be 'depressed,' but for Claudia it was pretty mild.
After some silence, she said, “Can I just give it up?”
“Being a super hero? Sure.”
Claudia leaped to her feet, and I jumped a step backwards in shock. Her fists balled up, she snarled between clenched teeth, “Of course you say that. Then I won't be around to stop you.”
I opened my mouth. Okay. Think about your words carefully, Penny Akk. The most powerful superhero in LA is having a mental breakdown in front of you. “That would be nice, but if not you, it will be someone else, like at the museum.”
Her fists let go. She leaned back against the bricks again. She sniffed, although no tears were visible in her eyes.
Movement caught my eye. Bull stood at the corner of the school, on the edge of the courtyard. He waved a huge arm, and called out, “Is this a bad time?”
Claudia answered. “No. It's not.”
Bull strolled over to us. Claudia's mother sat on one of his shoulders, holding onto a horn for balance like I had the first time I met him. In my case, I didn't have a tail to wrap around his arm for extra stability.
She was a pale purply-blue today, with peppermint striped red-and-white hair.
Both parents looked concerned, moving slowly and in a hush as they regarded their daughter. Claudia propped both hands on the edge of the giant pot behind her, and looked down at her feet. She'd drifted back to sounding almost normal. More normal than her usual haunted state, even. “My father and I keep fighting. He wants me to give up being a super hero.”
I fidgeted with the scepter behind my back. “You hate doing it. Why not give it up?”
“Because I have responsibilities! Look at this!” she shot back, on the edge of yelling. She lifted one of the bricks out of the planter, and closed her fist. The brick crumbled into sand, with no more resistance than if it had always been sand. Leaning forward, she bunched up both fists, pressing them into her lap, and her face screwed up in pain and anger. “I'm almost as strong as he is, and that's just the beginning of my powers. I can stop the greatest criminals and monsters from hurting people. If I can save even one life, doesn't that mean I have to?”
“No. You don't,” said Bull, his voice soft but decisive.
“You wasted your powers! You hurt people!” Claudia spat back at him.
I would have predicted those words would be a knife in Bull's heart, but he didn't so much as wince. “Every time you go to sleep at night, that's eight hours you aren't saving lives, but should you stop sleeping? Give up school? You don't have to carry the world, Cat. Nobody is that strong, not even you.”
My shoulders twitched. This was deep family stuff, and I was intruding here.
Except… Claudia came to me.
Shaking my head slowly, I reached out and gave Claudia's shoulder a cautious squeeze. “I don't know what's right, but I'm sure that making yourself miserable isn't it.”
She didn't move, didn't look up to me, but in a quiet squeak asked, “…what else can I do?”
Irene slid down Bull's arm to the ground, and gave her daughter a hug, although she had to reach up to do it. “Whatever you want, Cat. You know how much time I spend doing volunteer work. There are a million ways to help people with your powers.”
Bull reached out, and laid his hand on Claudia's head. When she didn't resist, he began stroking her hair back. “You're not even in high school. You don't have to know the answer to that, yet.”
I went back to scratching my head with the scepter. “I'd need to see Mom's statistics, but being a super hero if you hate it sounds like something that doesn't turn out well.”
“That's how Winnow got started, yes,” said Bull. He and Irene both grimaced. Maybe I did, too. There was a name that went right at the top of the 'murderous psychopaths' super powered list next to Judgment, and several steps up from Mourning Dove.
“But what do I do?” asked Claudia again, helpless.
Bull joined the family hug, the other two disappearing behind his bulk. “Whatever makes you happy, Cat. Just be a thirteen year old girl.”
There were no sounds of crying. The three of them were still, until Irene poked her head out. She'd turned orange, with fire engine red hair. Frowning at me, she said, “Is that my old Push Rod? That's been missing for twenty years.”
Jerking upright, I held the scepter out in both hands. “Someone gave it to me. You can have it back.”
She laughed, maybe a bit wan after that serious moment. “No, no, have fun with it. If I feel like playing hero some more after Catherine grows up, I'll go visit the Yucatan and bring back a crate full of my family's knickknacks. But… if you have the rod…”
Her smile turned into a frown, not of unhappiness but thought, deeper and deeper. She let out a loud whistle, and shouted, “Bark! Bark!” Or at least, words that sounded kind of like that.
Very faintly, I heard Ray and Claire yelling, and some thumps. I had to leap aside to not fall in as the entrance to my lair opened, and out flew a little brown metal sphere, about the size of a golf ball. Bull let go of Claudia, and caught the ball in both hands. He had to use both hands, because as it sailed into the open it grew, arriving the size of a cannonball. At this size, I could see all the faintly glowing orange symbols carved into it.
Bull recognized the ball, and his face lit up in pure joy. Winking down at Claudia, he said, “You want to know what to do with your powers? Play catch with your old man, like a normal girl.”
She stared up at him, open-mouthed in sheer puzzlement. “What?”
He nudged her with his elbow. “Go on. I'll throw it to you.”
Claudia pouted, but didn't argue. She hovered up off the ground, flying over to the end of the courtyard, where she stopped and looked back at her father.
He threw the ball up in a long, easy lob. Any fool with the slightest athletic skills could have caught it. I'd have given myself at least fifty-fifty.
Claudia did, in one hand. As it dragged her down to the ground, she grabbed hold with both hands, and still she only stopped it bent double.
She looked up at Bull, and laughed. Raising the ball in one hand, she tossed it back. It wasn't a swift motion. She had to work a little.
My brain broke trying to figure out how heavy that ball must be.
Bull caught it with an 'oof,' and the thump of it hitting his chest echoed back from the three walls around us. He threw it harder, past Claudia, and she soared up into the air, catching the ball in both hands like her father did. She sailed backwards after the impact for at least a good ten feet before she stopped.
Cupping his hands to his mouth, Bull yelled, “Why don't we go down to that abandoned rail track a few blocks South, Cat? We won't hurt anyone there if we miss.”
Ball tucked into one elbow, Claudia flew over to us, grabbed Bull's upraised hand, and flew up and away with him. She laughed the whole time, a stammering, bubbly sound, like she wasn't sure how.
That left me alone with the diminutive, color-changing beauty Irene, who still didn't look like she could be Claudia's mother or Bull's wife, or old enough to drink, for that matter.
Looking down on an adult felt really weird. It only helped slightly when she jumped up on the tree pot Claudia was sitting on earlier. Crouching like a bird, arms wrapped around her legs, she turned the fond smile that had watched her family sail away on me. “She talks about you a lot. We knew where she had to have gone.” Lifting one wrist, she gave it a shake until her loose sleeve fell to reveal a wide bracelet in the same 'copper and orange symbols' theme as the ball and rod. Flashing a pointy-toothed grin, she added, “A tracer helped, but you know – only after we got close.”
“I hope I helped.” What else could I say?
“You know Cat and I live off a trust fund, right? Do you know where he got most of the money?”
I shook my head. Hey, why should this conversation start going in any predictable direction now?
“A couple of years before Cat was born, Bull got a job working for a man who called himself the Third Horseman.”
Behind me, Ray's voice interrupted her. “Ooh, ouch.”
I looked back. Of course he and Claire were sitting on the edge of the entrance tunnel. They wouldn't have just stood around after seeing the freaky magic heavy ball rocket out, right?
Claire, kicking her legs in glee because she loved super powered story time, said, “The real Third Horseman would have been dead ten years already.”
Irene's smile quirked up on one side. She had an awfully playful expression, like if Claire were a little more calm and adult, or Miss Lutra was a little less serenely smug. “That's why everyone assumed he was just a random mad scientist with money to spend on his inferiority complex. He had a ten gallon jar of weaponized anthrax, and held LA hostage, threatening to set it off.”
Claire's eyes went wide. “Oh, wow. That's a lot of people dead. How big was the ransom?”
Ray said, “Standard practice is to pay it off, no matter how big it is, and have superheroes take the money back as soon as he's clear of the bomb.”
“Except he really was the Third Horseman. As soon as a helicopter dropped off the money, he set off the bomb. He was standing right on it.”
Ray, Claire, and I all winced. I said, “If that many people died, even I would know about this event. What happened?”
Turning pale, golden yellow, her hair an even lighter shade of corn silk, Irene raised her warm, adoring smile back up to the sky, staring off the way Bull and Claudia had gone. “My big, dumb, hairy, fight-crazy boy switched the jar with flour. He had no idea the Third Horseman intended to set it off. He just didn't want to risk anyone getting infected by accident.”
I blinked, and followed her gaze. “Well. Now I know why he has so many friends.”
Irene giggled, and was much better at it than Claudia. “The heroes let Bull keep the ransom. He put it all away for me, and eventually for Cat. She takes after her father much more than she thinks.” Hopping off the brick wall, she dusted off her tail. “Thank you, kids. I have to go help with a bake sale, but I appreciate you helping Catherine figure out what she wants.”
She walked off, and since the brick planter was available, I sat on it myself.
I'd expected getting super powers to turn this semester upside down. It had, but not with adventures. Instead, I was seeing everyone I knew transform.
Was I changing? How would I know? I guess only by asking the question everybody else had answered already.
“What do I want?” I said aloud, sitting on a still-unidentified piece of workshop equipment in the front hall.
“A screwdriver?” asked Claire.
“A bottle of fake diamonds?” asked Ray.
“Five new wall outlets?”
“A kiss?” Ray leered, and I tried very hard to keep my thoughts serious and not look directly at the cute boy-
No, really. Serious thoughts, Penny.
I kicked out one foot. “I mean, the whole superhero/supervillain thing. Ray doesn't want to, and if I do anything that involves a fight, my mom will notice.”
“But you want to. You just can't,” said Ray.
Claire rose up smoothly from the floor where she'd been messing with computers, and gave her ivory hair a flip. Chin high, strutting while standing still, she announced, “Well, I'm going to be a cat burglar like my mother. If you two aren't available, I have a target picked out for my first try.”
My mouth opened for some wounded friendship type protests, but Claire cut me off with a wink. “No, I mean it. I want more Inscrutable Machine, but I need to learn to solo.”
Ray shook his head slowly, one side of his face pinching in skepticism. “I don't think your mom started pulling robberies at thirteen.”
I shook my own head, but at Ray. “There's no way we can talk her out of this. What she needs is backup.”
“That brings us back to him not wanting to, and you not being able to,” said Claire, flicking a finger between Ray and me.
With a huge, languid sigh, Ray drew himself to his feet. Claire had done that gracefully. Ray rose as if he were pulled up by a string, liquidly unfurling in defiance of gravity. Taking off his hat, he held it mournfully against his chest. “If I must accompany the second most exquisitely desirable young woman I know on her adventures, so be it. I will simply have to endure jealousy driving my real girlfriend to throw herself at me ever more aggressively so that I remain hers.”
Claire and I pelted him with screws. She had way more in arm's reach than I did, since they came off the computers. As I watched him cower from her assault, I hunched up and sulked. “I want to. It's just that now that she's watching for it, she'll know if I… personally…”
The rain of screws stopped. Ray started to say something, but Claire bolted over, wrapping her hand over his mouth to stop him. “Shhh. Mad genius is happening,” she whispered.
My hand wandered around behind my head, took hold of one of my pigtails, and tugged on it as I turned the idea over and over in my head. “It's not as exciting as being there, but it might get close.”
“Whaaaaat?” coaxed Claire.
More pigtail tugging, and I wrapped it around my hand as well. The idea was getting better by the second. “The heroes have never seen Bad Penny except in full armor. One of the less likely theories is that she's a robot. What if I gave that theory a kick?”
Claire's eyes half-lidded, following the thought herself. “So, you would sit here, not getting mussed up and actiony because all you're doing is typing on a computer…”
“I was thinking a full cockpit. It's not worth doing, if it's not fun.”
The light dawned in Ray's eyes as well. He held up one hand to volunteer. “Mission contact. E-Claire, I'm reading life signs on the other side of that door. Go around the hall behind you. I'll set a waypoint for Bad Penny to follow.”
We all burst into laughter.
I kicked my feet giddily. This was all sounding fun again!
Releasing her grip on Ray, Claire went from 'squee' to 'imperial,' dusting off her hands and lifting her chin so she could look down at me – even though, sitting on the table, I was actually taller than her. “Well, then. Penelope has finally surrendered and given me what I want. It's time to engage in a little behavioral modification training. Ray, secure the goods, and I'll call my mother.”
“Woah! Hey!” I shouted, between laughs, as Ray advanced on me with hands raised. When he pounced, there was really nothing I could do about it, and the giddy feeling in my stomach didn't want to. When he slung me over his shoulder, I did kick him in the back a couple of times, but not very hard.
“Mom, can you take us on a little shopping trip? There's something I've been meaning to buy Penny…”
Less than half an hour later, the Inscrutable Machine, in our secret identities as Ray Viles, Claire Lutra, and Penelope Akk, launched operation 'sit at a table at Superburger and eat.' Despite the ridiculous name, the burgers were pretty good, and I always loved the garish brightly colored fifties decorations. It was like being on the inside of a spandex costume.
Ray had already downed his first burger. Mine was about a third done. As I chewed another bite with the grace and feminine splendor of a capybara, Claire held across the table a box with the title 'Grimoire of Nursey Rhymes.'
“For you, Penelope, since you took as long getting around to buying your own copy as you did agreeing to go on a mission. Spring break is over for you. During the day, you will prepare your robot double. Every night for homework, you will work on getting to the big transformation scene so I can finally discuss it with you!” Lunging across the table, she grabbed my lapels in both hands, and gave me a shake. “TWO MONTHS.”
We all our respective laughs – Claire giggling schoolgirlishly, Ray snorting, and me with my trademark wicked chortle. Then we settled down to eat some more.
With my mouth too full to talk, my thoughts drifted. Not, strangely enou
gh, to the game box in front of me. That would be great, but the giddiness of having an Inscrutable Machine mission coming up was better. And yet, there was one thing better still.
Standing around with Ray and Claire in the game store had been great. We'd argued about whether there was any good reason game controllers came in such a range of prices. We'd bemoaned bad console-to-PC ports. Ray and I had a little contest to identify the dumbest action blockbuster game on the racks, while Claire and her super power pretty-pleased a teller into digging around in the back room to find the one remaining copy of Grimoire of Nursery Rhymes in the building.
Waving my hamburger, with a pause to swallow, I said, “I'm adding a rider to our deal. This. I want more of this, almost regular kid social time. We split our time half and half between this, and super stuff. The club doesn't count.”
“A well balanced friendship diet,” agreed Claire.
Ray jabbed a french fry at my hamburger. “That's a balanced diet?”
Pfft. There was lettuce in there somewhere. It was just hard to see with the chili, egg, and bacon. Hey, we hadn't gone out like this for awhile!
hings were different when school started up again. Or rather, I noticed the differences now, rather than just hurrying through the day.
The changes had happened slowly, and now that I was paying attention, what I loved the most was that nobody else was. Some kid walked past in the hall with rainbow-patterned scales on his cheeks. Nobody gave him a second glance, except me. He'd never showed up at the club. He was just another kid with super powers. In first period, we got these annoying little refresher quizzes, as if we'd forgotten everything over a one week break, right? When Sue got called to pass them out, she never got out of her chair. The stack of papers floated up off the big front desk, floated down the aisles, and a test slid out to every student in turn.
The universal reaction? Crabbiness that we had to take a test first thing back after Spring Break. As it should be. Who cared how these stupid, unfair tests were delivered?
Please Don't Tell My Parents I've Got Henchmen Page 21