He climbed onto the counter and into the kitchen sink. The motors in his legs were strong enough to carry several times his weight. Once there, he used one of his manipulators to turn on the water and grab the sprayer. The water did nothing to stop the flames, but spraying it directly into their faces seemed to annoy them.
A tail slashed out, burning through the hose. So much for that.
Warning: Temperature reaching dangerous levels. His fluid cycled faster, the cooling mechanism trying to cope.
Jarhead pulled up the neurocontrols. His jar was a self-contained, self-sustaining environment, but every mechanical device required maintenance sooner or later, including the ability to change out his nutrient fluid. He mentally unlocked the drainage spout, tightened the valve, and overrode the safeties to increase the pump’s pressure to dangerous levels.
The blast of blue biofluid slammed the creature’s head against the end of the faucet. It gave a pathetic squawk and slumped to the bottom of the sink. He used his legs to grab the next one, yanked it around, and fired directly into the beak, blasting the butterscotch candy into its throat. It staggered away, hacking and choking.
The third flew away, either out of fear, or because Manchester had ordered it to retreat.
Jarhead tested his jar’s metal limbs and checked the status of his systems. He hadn’t had a good old-fashioned throwdown since the day he lost ninety percent of his body weight. That had almost been fun.
“You know, legally I’m obligated to report your whereabouts to the police.”
Puff had taken refuge in the bay, hiding out in the shadows below the docks. Jarhead bobbed in the darkness beside her. His system was equipped for swimming and diving, using a series of small pumps to propel him through the water. The buoyancy was off, though, thanks to his expending a quarter of his biofluid against those flying scorpions. His eyes and scalp kept threatening to dry out, forcing him to perform rather ridiculous somersaults with his jar every few minutes to rehydrate.
Puff’s eyes narrowed. “I’ll be long gone before they get here.”
“Exactly. So reporting you wouldn’t help anyone. But as your therapist, it’s my job to help you. The way I see it, our best chance is to prove your parents were set up, and that Manchester was behind it. That should be more than enough to get a judge to rule in your favor.”
“How do you expect to do that?”
“I say we take the war to him. He broke into your home, so we break into his. We find the evidence we need, and—”
“You’re as bad as my parents,” Puff snapped. “Do I look like a superhero? What, am I supposed to dress up in spandex and follow you around as your sidekick now?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not—”
“Oh, now I’m ridiculous? All I wanted from you was my stupid cellphone charger.”
Jarhead used a claw to remove the charger cable from the compartment in his base. “Here you go. I put it in a baggie so it wouldn’t get wet.” He waited. “You have what you wanted, and we both know I can’t stop you from swimming away.”
She snatched it away and rolled her eyes. “I’m not interested in breaking into Manchester’s lair and fighting past traps and guards and whatever else he has waiting. It’s crazy.”
“It’s normal to be afraid—”
“I’m not afraid,” Puff said, emphasizing every syllable. “I’m telling you the whole superhero thing is stupid and archaic. Dressing up in costumes, trying to solve everything with your fists, always looking over your shoulder for the day your arch enemy kills your loved ones or banishes you to an alternate dimension. The only winners are the lawyers and the merchandisers selling action figures and movies and ‘Super-inspired fashion.’”
“You might be right,” said Jarhead. He had been thinking like a superhero, not a therapist. The fight at Puff’s house had triggered old memories of a life he thought he’d left behind years ago. He was still feeling the aftermath of the adrenaline rush… which was fascinating, now that he thought about it. He’d have to do some testing on how the adrenal gland worked when you were nothing but a head. Maybe he could get a paper out of it. “I’m sorry. You have every right to be angry.”
“I know that.” They bobbed in silence in the darkness beneath one of the docks. “I meant what I said. I’ll run away rather than let him take me.”
Jarhead started to assure her that he wouldn’t let that happen, but that was him speaking as a superhero again. In the past twenty-four hours, Puff’s world had been ripped apart.
But she hadn’t. She had escaped both Manchester’s monkey-goats and a team of highly trained police officers. “Why was your charger so important? You wouldn’t risk me turning you in just so you could check Facebook.”
“I told you—”
“I know, Facebook is for old people. You don’t need me to come up with a plan. You already have one, don’t you?” He studied her more closely, and smiled. “How can I help?”
Puff took a deep breath, enough to raise her spines slightly. “I could use a beta reader.”
###
It took Puff just over twenty-four hours to bring Manchester down. Jarhead was impressed. Even with superspeed, it would have taken a while for him to find where Manchester was hiding, scout the location, and deal with whatever obstacles were waiting.
Puff didn’t bother with any of that. She foiled his plan within twenty-four hours, using nothing but a smart phone, and stopping only to sneak onto one of the ferries to recharge it.
Unfortunately, as any experienced superhero could have warned her, villains were at their most dangerous when their plans were falling apart.
Jarhead and Puff had just picked up her chair from a dockside storage locker and were waiting for a wheelchair-friendly cab to arrive when the commotion started.
“What the hell are those?” Puff whispered.
With his quasi-legal attempt to gain custody of Puff ruined, Manchester had fallen back on his old tactics. Charging down the road were a pair of full-grown bulls with the long, flailing tentacles of a giant squid and the thick armor plating of an armadillo. “Three species in one,” Jarhead commented. “He’s finally changing things up a little.”
A third… squimadull? … carried the doctor himself, a middle-aged man who made Frankenstein look like a male model. Manchester had spliced himself back together again and again over the years, until he was a patchwork of different races and species. Only the head and brain were original parts. In that respect, he and Jarhead had something in common.
Traffic screeched out of the way. Cars too slow to move were gored aside.
“Doctor J, I can’t control my chair.”
Manchester had probably found a way to hack it. Jarhead hoped the nanocircuitry in his jar was advanced enough to ward off similar attempts. He climbed onto the back of Puff’s chair as it carried her toward Manchester.
“I tried to be civilized,” Manchester shouted. “Once I discovered your home, my creatures could have poisoned your parents in their sleep. As a favor to you, I allowed them to live. And you repay me with slander and libel?”
Jarhead grinned. Puff had started by posting a series of animated gifs on Tumblr, showing clips of some of Manchester’s more disturbing experiments. She had included a two-paragraph summary of how, despite being a convicted supervillain, nothing in the law prevented someone like Manchester from suing for custody.
What if it was your baby sister he kidnapped from the hospital? Your newborn daughter he cut and pasted into a monster. Bad enough he creates monstrosities like me, but should the insertion of a bit of his DNA give him ownership over his victims?
The last time Jarhead checked, that particular post had been reblogged six thousand times, with an additional twelve thousand “likes.”
Similar clips, images, and pleas had gone live on Vine, Instagram, Superfriends, Twitter, and even Facebook. The results were impressive, and included a petition to the mayor with thousands of signatures; a barrage of Tweets targeting
Lake City’s elected representatives, three of whom had already vowed to fight any attempt to grant Manchester custody; and more.
It turned out that Puff’s various online friend lists included a number of other superpowered kids. One had the ability to telepathically interface with the web. She had begun digging up Manchester’s oldest and most embarrassing secrets, and posting them online. Another was some kind of superevolved computer genius, who had hacked the IRS computers to find evidence of Manchester’s tampering. He had also provided the location of Manchester’s hideout to a third superteen, one who had done some very careful and precise weather manipulation to create a wind that began at the waste treatment plant and ended in a slow-moving circle of air, concentrating the stench at Manchester’s front door.
Jarhead amplified his speakers. “It’s over, Manchester.”
Manchester was experienced enough to have had long ago learned not to waste time with pointless monologues. He shouted a command, and one of the bullsquallos whipped a tentacle forward to pluck Jarhead from the wheelchair. Slimy, dripping suction cups surrounded him. They couldn’t hurt the jar, but they blinded him to whatever was happening.
Jarhead jabbed two metal legs into the tentacle and sent an electric charge through his attacker. An instant later, he was flying through the air. He hit someone’s windshield, breaking halfway through the glass and leaving a web of cracks around him.
By the time the biofluid stopped sloshing around, Manchester had reached Puff.
Jarhead scurried forward, then grinned. “You didn’t think this through, did you?”
Puff had escaped her chair and expanded to her full size. She bristled like a porcupine in the middle of the road. An angry, venomous porcupine. She couldn’t fight like that. She could barely move. But neither Manchester nor his creatures could touch her. From the way one of the animals whimpered and cradled a tentacle, they had already tried.
Another tried to carefully sneak a tentacle around Puff’s throat. She grabbed the tentacle, pulled it close, and took an enormous bite. Never underestimate the appetite of a blowfish or a teenager.
“There’s still time to run away before the police and superheroes arrive,” Jarhead said.
Manchester’s mount reached past Puff to grab a bystander. It hurled the man at Puff, who deflated to keep from impaling him. The tentacles snaked around her body, squeezing tight to prevent her from inflating again. Manchester laughed, and his mount turned to escape.
“Hey!” Jarhead skittered into the street. “Get your tentacles off my client.”
He adjusted the output feed on his speakers and used the one weapon he had left. The weapon he had hoped never to have to use. Not because it was dangerous, but because it was… embarrassing.
Bubbles filled his vision, but he saw the armasquidull stumble. The bull head shook angrily, like it was trying to get rid of an annoying insect inside his skull. The other two creatures were already running away.
Jarhead walked toward them. He could hear sirens approaching.
Puff tumbled free as the animal wrapped its tentacles around its head, staggering in pain.
Manchester jumped down and strode toward them, a pistol-sized bioweapon of some sort clutched in his hands. “I don’t know what weapon you’ve got hidden away in there, but we’ll see how cocky you are once I’ve spliced you face-first to the back end of a cow! You’ll—”
That was when Puff slapped him in the legs with her partially inflated tail, driving her spines deep into his leg.
He yelped and jumped away. His body wobbled. “Oh, hell.”
With that, Manchester’s eyes rolled up in his head, and he collapsed.
###
“I told you,” Puff said sullenly, sitting in her customary spot in Jarhead’s office. “It’s the twenty-first century. My parents are stuck in the past with their costumes and their showdowns and their battles in the middle of the city.”
“How long have you been fighting crime?” asked Triton.
Puff shrugged. “We’ve been working as a team for a year or so. We have three other supers, and a few normals. You remember the scandal that killed Maximole’s run for Governor? We were the ones who turned him into a laughingstock online.”
“It’s an impressive power,” said Jarhead. “But remember—”
“You’re going to give me the ‘great power, great responsibility’ lecture, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know,” said Optica. “Fighting crime from a smart phone? With no costume, no secret identity—”
“Oh, please. I have six different identities,” said Puff. “Neurogirl has thirty-four. And I guarantee my user icon is cooler than a few strips of spandex.” She turned back to Jarhead. “What I haven’t been able to figure out is how you stopped Manchester from escaping. I was trapped, and then his animal suddenly went crazy.”
If Jarhead’s circulatory system had still been capable, he might have blushed. “I’m still a speedster, remember?”
“But you’re…” She gestured at the jar.
“That’s right. Pretty much all I can do these days is wiggle my nose at superspeed” He pursed his lips. “However, sound is nothing but vibrations, and animals tend to have much better hearing than we do.”
“You can shoot sonic beams out of that thing with your nose?” She covered her mouth and nose, but not before he saw her laughing. “That is so weird.”
“Says the mermaid to the head in the jar,” he shot back. “Now, it’s going to take a while to process everything that’s happened over the past day. But that doesn’t mean we can ignore things like your biology grade.”
Puff smiled. It was a dangerous, predatory smile. “I already emailed her about a make-up paper examining the physiology of a hawk-scorpion who choked to death on butterscotch candy…”
***
Jim C. Hines’ first novel was Goblin Quest, the humorous tale of a nearsighted goblin runt and his pet fire-spider. After finishing the goblin trilogy, he went on to write the Princess series of fairy tale retellings, and is currently working on the Magic ex Libris books, a modern-day fantasy series about a magic-wielding librarian, a dryad, a secret society founded by Johannes Gutenberg, a flaming spider, and an enchanted convertible. His short fiction has appeared in more than 40 magazines and anthologies. You can find him online at www.jimchines.com.
The Right Answer
James A. Miller
While I certainly didn’t plan on an alien encounter, my life had been in such a downward spiral that I had gotten used to expecting the unexpected.
Cheryl, my wife, and Ryan, my friend and boss, had been spending some extra time together without me—nights mostly. I handled this by 1) punching Ryan in the mouth, twice, then 2) spending the rest of the day drinking lunch, and 3) picking up dinner at the liquor store. On the way home, my car expired on the freeway by spewing steam and smoke then finally bursting into flames. I did, however, manage to rescue my bottle of dinner vodka before its fiery demise, but somehow forgot my personal laptop was in the back seat. I eventually reached home only to find Cheryl had gone. Judging by the amount of stuff she had taken with her, it was for good.
I surveyed what little remained in the house. In the living room there was carpeting with clean spots where the furniture had been, and a TV stand with no TV. In the kitchen I was left with one red plastic cup, an unopened box of flexible drinking straws, and a bag of pretzels. In the bedroom I saw a bed frame with no mattress or sheets, wire hangers, and a torn Sports Illustrated. I grabbed the pretzels from the kitchen and made my way out onto the patio to get away from the heavy absence of material items. I was considering which lawn chair I might sleep in, when I noticed a little green creature standing in my back yard. It took a while for my senses to come into agreement; I was looking at Fonzie. Yes, Fonzie, the character played by Henry Winkler on Happy Days.
He didn’t look at all like Fonzie in the face, or even his body type. In that regard he was as stereotypically expected: green, about four fe
et tall, three long fingers on each hand, comically big eyes, with no nose to speak of, and a very tiny mouth. It was the leather jacket, pinch rolled jeans, and perfectly greased jet black hair that gave the general appearance of the Fonz.
The creature leaned coolly against my fence, holding one finger of each hand in the air. I assumed those were the closest thing he had to thumbs.
“Aaaaaaaayyyy.”
I am sure most other times I would have reacted with fear and horror, fleeing the situation in order to head straight for the police or psychiatric help, but tonight was special. I had given up caring about a lot of things, including concern for my own well-being. Whether this was an alcohol induced fantasy or plain old reality, I decided I had plenty of free time to roll with it.
“So you’re an alien. Sure, why not. Before we get on with the probing, can you tell me why you’re dressed like a Happy Days character?”
“I am a respected person from your media.”
“How clichéd. So why Fonzie? Why not Abe Lincoln or Thomas Jefferson or Scarlett Johansson or Scarlett Johansson as a nurse or Scarlet Johansson as a naughty teacher, or any of the other Scarlett Johansson possibilities that I would be really open to right now?”
“Everybody loves the Fonz.”
“I sure can’t argue with that logic, but your timing is terrible. You know that character went off the air thirty years ago.”
“Is Arthur Fonzarelli no longer a viable form?”
“Well, let’s just say if you’re trying hard not to be noticed, there’ll be a high degree of failure in your future. Right now, for me, you couldn’t be more perfect. But do tell me, tiny Fonzie, what brings you all the way across the galaxy, or universe, or from New Jersey, to my pathetic back yard? Did Mary Beth dump Ritchie again?”
“I am here to share our technology with you.”
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