Broke and Famous

by Elizabeth Gannon

“He’s really going to tell us all about some random stripper he boned, isn’t he?” Peter asked them, sounding amazed. “A whole room full of students?” He threw out his hands in exasperated acceptance. “Just: ‘Yeah, we totally fucked hard and she probably wanted it, I could tell. She was basking in my ten inches of dick that night, am I right?” He held up two fingers from one hand perpendicular to two fingers of his other hand, to form a hashtag symbol. “Hashtag ‘feminism.’”

  Kristine shrugged. “What did you expect?”

  “In character, still concerning.” Peter summarized, holding up his index finger to accentuate the point.

  No, Thraex didn’t like superheroes.

  And this “Rascal” seemed like one of the worst.

  Obnoxious, flamboyant, rape-y, and overbearingly egomaniacal, the man seemed to spend most of his days self-promoting, and the rest telling women how much they wanted him.

  Personally, Thraex thought that any man that had to try that hard to get a woman into his bed probably wasn’t fishing with the right lure.

  The man in question exited the ring and bent to pick up a 1,000 pound dumbbell, pretended to have difficulty lifting it so that the crowd would be entertained, then smashed the metal into a pancake between his hands.

  “See guys, when you’re as amazing as your boy Jaxx, there’s a look you start to recognize in women’s eyes.” Jaxton sighed in resignation. “I can tell she wants me, even if she’s too scared to admit it.” He smiled lasciviously. “I’m used to that look, because I see it a lot, am I right?”

  The crowd laughed at that, because at this point, they seemed conditioned to laugh and cheer at pretty much anything.

  The fella could announce that he had a bomb and they’d all soon die horribly, and this crowd would cheer that news.

  They’d cheer their own funeral if everyone else was cheering too.

  His father had always been able to do the same thing with his subjects. Make them rejoice at their subjugation.

  Thraex hated people, no matter the dimension.

  “Whoa, we've reached peak masculinity here.” Peter held up his hand to indicate a level above his head. “This is the apex, I’m telling you.” He turned to the girl sitting next to him. “Seriously, Kristine, I don’t want to alarm you, but there’s a good chance you’re pregnant now, just from listening to him. He’s that much man.”

  The girl broke out laughing.

  “In any case,” Brixton vaulted into the ring again, looking lost for a moment, “I completely forget what got me on that subject.”

  Yep, him and Thraex both.

  Idiot.

  “Now then, your boy Jaxx needs a volunteer for a little sparring match…” Brixton asked.

  Peter’s hand immediately shot up like a rocket, pointing down at Thraex. “Right here, Jaxx! Thraex was born to ‘bask in the Jaxx’! He’s ready to go to war!”

  Thraex slapped his hand down. “I’m not gonna go up there and deal with that fool. Let some other sap do it.”

  “Fool?!? He’s the GOAT!” Peter teased. “You heard him, he’s talking shit about Elvis and you need to smack him down! Get in there and defend The King’s honor!”

  Thraex crossed his arms over his chest. “I don’t get involved in that superhero nonsense, I make it a point to stay in my own damn yard and I expect everyone else to stay in theirs.”

  “Fine.” Peter let out a resigned sigh. “But it really would have gone better for you, dude. Just sayin’.” He shrugged. “You’re not one of my ‘projects’ though, so pick whatever road you choose, I don’t care.” He paused for a beat, his tone darkening. “Even if this one ends in betrayal and death.”

  Thraex’s head whipped around to stare at him in surprise, unsure how Peter could possibly know about Thraex’s plans in this dimension. He’d never told anyone what he intended to do here, and the boy’s powers only told him things he’d eventually learn. And if that boy was due to die in 11 years, then he’d be long dead by the time Thraex was ready to launch his betrayal, unless he was remembering things after his death.

  He opened his mouth to challenge the boy, but didn’t get the chance, he suddenly had bigger problems than the youngest Ferral boy.

  Brixton continued turning in a circle, looking for fools eager to be suckered. “Ah, the winsome Miss Westgate! Come up here!” He motioned with his hand. “It’s about time that someone who spends her day in a lab learned how to deal with things when they get real.”

  Awww, shit…

  Miss Sasha’s co-workers shoved her towards the stairs and although she put up a valiant struggle, she soon found herself in the ring with that moron.

  “Turn in a circle, honey, let them get a look at you.” Brixton grabbed her hand and used it to spin her around, looking out over the crowd. “Am I right, boys?”

  Catcalls and cheering.

  “Yeah, yeah, I’ll clap for that.” Brixton agreed, almost manically. “Fantastic. We’re all clapping for that pretty figure, am I right? Wowza! Yeah, clap for that, am I right?”

  “She built a machine that cleans contaminated water in impoverished areas, and costs mere pennies to operate. It saves 300,000 lives a year.” Thraex growled out, teeth on edge.

  “And she gets ‘wowza’ from an idiot who I know for a fact never drinks anything but bottled water imported from Fiji.” Peter added. “I partially blame myself for that. I convinced him Fiji was a mystical island of wizards. He thinks the water gives him magic powers. No joke.”

  Thraex pointed at the ring. “This is why I hate the Cape scene in this town. At least in Reichelt Park, when someone disrespects you, it’s deliberate.”

  Miss Sasha leaned closer to the man to say something to him, probably informing him that she didn’t want any kind of fighting lesson today.

  “What was that, sweetheart?” Brixton asked, leaning down to her. “Yes, you can have my autograph.” He smirked, pretending that she was just awestruck of him. “Should I give it to you now or just leave it on your pillow in the morning?” He looked out over the crowd, laughing. “Am I right?”

  Sasha looked deeply uncomfortable now.

  Thraex glanced over at her parents, waiting for one of them to put a stop to it, but they were arguing about something and paying no attention.

  Brixton refocused on his instruction. “Now then, your boy Jaxx is going to teach you how to escape when someone has you in a chokehold…” He stood behind her, uncomfortably close. He put his arm around her, pulling her against him, then looked out at the crowd. “Can you believe that I get paid for this?”

  Laughter.

  “What you’re going to want to do, sweetheart, is bend waaaaaay over and grab for my boot and pull my weight out from under me…” Brixton pushed Sasha, bending her forward and pressing against her.

  He was visibly enjoying his lesson though.

  Even a pecker that tiny, Sasha would have had to feel it against her. She immediately pulled away from him, holding up her hands to make some excuse about why she couldn’t participate.

  Thraex was already on his feet, stepping from bleacher seat to bleacher seat, paying no attention to the people sitting in them or the hands and refreshments he was stomping in the process.

  Brixton pursued Sasha. “Come on, all of these people want to see their teacher show how badass she is!” He looked out at the crowd, asking for their support. “Am I right?”

  Cheers.

  Brixton grabbed for her arm, but Sasha pulled away from him, tripped, then fell onto the smashed dumbbell which that moron had left lying around.

  Sasha’s face hammered into it when she hit the ground, and the whole audience winced. She groggily stirred a moment later, face already bruising.

  Brixton didn’t look overly concerned about her injury. “Ouch, well, you go get some ice for that, okay? Don’t worry, everyone understands that you science people aren’t really ‘fighters.’”

  Thraex stepped over the ropes of the ring.

  ****

 
Sasha’s day just kept getting worse.

  She’d been forced to deal with that idiot, she was going to have a black eye, and now Thraex was going to fight a superhero.

  She tried to sit up, but Kurtz kept her down, applying an ice pack to her face which he’d instantly produced from his Lost in Space lunchbox toolkit. “Stay put.” He advised, looking over her injuries.

  In the ring, Rascal turned towards Thraex. “Ah, a student! “

  “I’ll fight you, mister.” Thraex volunteered casually in his lazy, arrogant drawl. “Say when.”

  “Well, this should be fun!” Jaxx grinned, stepping towards him. “Okay, I think you should…”

  Sasha jolted as Thraex popped him right in the face, apparently interpreting that as an invitation to start the fight. It was an utterly ungentlemanly thing to do, but no one had ever accused Thraex of civility.

  Brixton stumbled back a step from the blow, swearing. “You little shit!” He looked down at the blood which was now staining his white unitard. “I’m going to tear you apart for that!”

  Thraex dodged to the side to avoid the man’s haymaker, blocked a follow-up kick, and re-directed another punch with the back of his arm.

  Then he absolutely clobbered Rascal with a hard right.

  Rascal flew back into the ropes, where Thraex was instantly on him again. He ducked under one of the man’s punches, moving far quicker than anyone she’d ever seen. He trapped Rascal’s arm, lifted him up in a German suplex, then slammed him down to the mat hard enough to send the man through it. Jaxx hit the cement beneath the ring and didn’t move.

  The crowd was completely silent.

  …With the exception of the Ferral boy in the bleachers, who was laughing his ass off for some reason.

  Thraex bent down into the hole he’d created, grabbed the man by the front of his clothes, then tossed him straight through the open window of the building and out into the parking lot.

  The crowd of people in the auditorium raced for the exits in panic.

  By this point, Sasha was struggling to get to her feet, to try to keep him from killing the man.

  The rest of the Freedom Squad weren’t taking it too kindly either.

  The Drover slid into the ring and lashed out at Thraex with his energy whip to keep him from going after Jaxx. Thraex caught the whip around his forearm and yanked the man forward into a head-butt which broke Drover’s nose and sent him down to the canvas.

  One of the Freedom Squad’s flying heroines hovered over the ring, firing energy blasts down at Thraex, and he used the Drover’s whip to lasso her around the leg and yank her from the sky. The woman hit the mat with a dull thud, and Thraex vaulted from the ring.

  He spin-kicked the ring’s corner post, breaking the supports so that the elastic ropes sprang back, propelling both Drover and the woman into a third man like a slingshot as he entered the ring, and knocking all three of them into the far wall with a sickening crash.

  Thraex continued stalking after Rascal, seemingly intending to follow him out into the parking lot and finish the beating.

  That plan was not to be though, because the Freedom Squad’s heavy-hitters were in the fight now.

  Captain Dauntless landed in front of Thraex and absolutely leveled him with a massive punch.

  Sasha gasped in terror as Thraex tumbled across the floor and into the now empty bleachers, breaking them apart in a shower of shattered wood and metal.

  He was dead! He was dead! He was…

  Thraex righted himself a second later, and crouched down low, angrily spitting out a mouthful of grey blood onto the floor. His eyes were burning bright red now, crackling with spheres of energy which radiated outwards in furious waves.

  Dauntless flew at him, winding up to deliver another blow…

  Sasha started to scream.

  But Dauntless’ blow didn’t land, instead that same red crackling energy shot up from the floor under him, surrounding him and causing his entire body to writhe and sizzle.

  Despite his invulnerability, Dauntless screamed…

  A moment later, the hero broke free and hit the ground, panting for breath but visibly shaken and furious.

  Thraex didn’t look scared, he moved to stand in front of where Sasha was sprawled and snapped his fingers. Instantly, a spear weapon made of red crackling energy filled his grasp. The same energy which had just tortured Dauntless.

  Thraex eyed his opponent coldly, standing in front of Sasha’s family, protective and predatory, pointing his weapon at Dauntless. “Don’t. Touch. My Westgates.” He snarled, eyes blazing with energy.

  Dauntless wasn’t so easily discouraged and started forward towards Thraex, obviously now looking to seriously hurt him.

  Sasha ran over to try to hold them apart. “Don’t kill him.” She begged Thraex. “Please don’t kill him, I don’t want you to go to jail...”

  Kurtz darted forward to stand beside her, pulling the bright red and blue ray-gun from his novelty space-age holster and pointing it at Dauntless.

  The hero paused in his tracks, rage overshadowed by amusement. “What are you even doing, kid?” Dauntless scoffed. “You don’t have any powers, get outta here with that thing.”

  Her parents joined the argument, standing beside their children, blocking Dauntless’ way. “You fight Sasha, you fight the Westgates.” Her father warned.

  “And their custodian.” Kurtz added, gesturing to Thraex. “We don’t have super-powers… but we’re pretty damn smart.” He pressed a button on the side of his weapon. “This is a sub-miniature atomic blast gun. It fires a tiny pellet which transforms into a microscopic sun for 1/1000th of a second. Not long enough to do the world any damage… but its searing heat and wicked gravity field are going to make sure that you get one hell of a suntan as your body instantly twists into a pretzel the size of a single atom.” Kurtz’s voice sounded dangerous now. “That’s a bad fucking day.”

  “Not even you can walk that off, Roger.” Sasha’s mother icily warned the otherwise impervious Dauntless. “Back. Off.”

  The most famous superhero in the city and the First Family of Interdimensional Travel stood toe-to-toe in the ring, continuing to eye each other down, waiting to make their move.

  From the balcony, someone else in the Freedom Squad whistled loudly to get their attention. “Hey kid,” The Honey Badger called down to Thraex, looking amused, “you want a job?”

  Chapter 10

  “William Westgate. Died 1983. Killed inside his own damn nightmare, after entering it on a mission with Eureka Spark, Warden of Dreams. You know that dream where you’re at school naked and forgot to study? Well, William died in that dream. That crazy top hat wearin’ steampunk bitch got him killed. But William always was a dreamer so it came as no surprise to the rest of the family.”

  – Thraex, Damn Fool Ways Westgates Ended Up Graveyard Dead: Vol. 1

  Present Day

  She couldn’t trust him.

  There was no doubt about that.

  He was a betrayer, obviously, even if she didn’t know it yet.

  But more to the point… Thraex struggled with closeness. It wasn’t something that he really experienced too much in his life.

  As much as he absolutely adored his mother and was eternally thankful for her presence in his life… she had never been a particularly warm woman. That wasn’t the way of his people, especially considering their history.

  His father was a megalomaniacal trans-dimensional demon god, and his step-father had been too busy poisoning himself in a doomed and unnecessary attempt to win back respect in this community.

  None of them had been what could be called “huggers.”

  At the moment, Thraex was busy elbowing his way through the light crowd in the park, towards one of the other tables. Sasha and her idiot brother had returned to the Westgate Foundation building, which left Thraex time to conduct some business on his own.

  This was the northern section of the park, which featured a large decorative fountain, an
d the support pillars for the now defunct “Westgate Levitating Train,” which they’d pitched to the city in 1967. The idea was that the train would always be in motion, with passengers boarding a series of cabins from a speed-matched rotating platform attached to an elevated train station. The tracks ran from a depot several blocks east of the park near the old courthouse, to a matching station across from the Westgate Foundation building, using linear induction motors to move the train and produce the “levitating” effect.

  The city had okayed the prototype, but then the funding had fallen through after they’d already built the track and the stations. The city wanted to stay with subways, no matter how futuristic the Westgate’s project would have been. As such, the colorful train cabins had never had so much as a single passenger, and were scrapped long ago. Phase 1 of the elevated track was still there though, 15 feet off the ground, cutting a long swath through the Reichelt Park district. Like the bones of some giant decaying animal from the Atomic Age, reminding people that they could have had a pleasant journey in the sunlight, rather than traveling underground in a noisy, urine-soaked tube.

  Every few years the city tried to come up with some reason to keep the track around or the money to finally tear it down, but it somehow remained right where it was. Reichelt Park wasn’t an area of the city which politicians cared about much, and the residents here generally preferred to keep things as they were.

  Even with Triumph Industries trying to buy up the land which housed the now condemned stations, Thraex was willing to bet the old track would outlast all of the residents here.

  Regally seated next to the fountain, in the shade of the tracks above, was arguably the current grande dame of this community, Mrs. Magnolia Lafayette-Dupree.

  The Lafayette-Dupree family was old science. Like, ‘Doing science with Ben Franklin and his kite, long before half the damn city got superpowers and started running around in their underwear and capes,’ old science.

  Magnolia’s star might be declining in this neighborhood due to her age and general health, but Thraex knew she was still sharp as a tack, no matter what other folks whispered.