You Believe Her

by Richard Roberts

  Criminy, Cassie. Why did you have to waste a crush this big on someone you can’t have? Defending me was so sweet, but completely unnecessary. My double thought so too, and treated Cassie to a warm smile.

  Patting Marcia on the shoulder, Meatbag Penny gave her a little red-and-white spotted ball. “Here. You eat this, and I’ll go talk to her.”

  Only a crazy person would accept that offer, so of course Marcia immediately plucked it from Other Me’s fingers and threw it in her own mouth. “Ooh, what flavor is it? Oh. It’s… sleepy… flavor.”

  She collapsed into an uncomfortable looking heap, and immediately started to snore.

  My double propped a fist on her hip, and gave one of her braids a tug with the other hand. “I’m glad I finally found a use for that. Knockout gas won’t work on you, and it takes so much to affect a super-powered metabolism, I can’t use it where it might hurt a civilian.”

  Touched by the dedication of two friends who I would never have thought of as close before, I asked, “Can you help Cassie cross the line so she can take Marcia outside to safety?”

  Not promising to not take advantage felt weird, but I didn’t need to. Other Me knew I would hold back, because Marcia and Cassie’s safety was more important.

  “No. I’m not leaving you,” Cassie insisted, her voice cracking badly now.

  “This is how it has to be, Cassie,” said Other Me, deliberately using her proper name. This was a personal message.

  I filled in the next part of the thought. “We only have one body, and neither of us can live like this, with only part of a life.”

  My double walked over to Cassie, stepping onto the mines without a care, thanks to the bracelet that defended her from her own bombs. She held out both hands invitingly. “And we won’t kill each other, I promise. Even if I shatter her body, she won’t actually be hurt, just asleep.”

  Reluctantly, Cassie took Other Me’s hands, and stepped over the mine field.

  “Take care of Marcia. Being knocked out shuts off her healing,” I said. That was why the knockout gas had worked at all. Put Marcia out before she could get mad, and she couldn’t purge the drug any better than any other superhuman.

  Bottom lip quivering, Cassie took hold of Marcia under her armpits, and dragged my insane former rival out of the arcade and around the corner, out of sight.

  With the field clear, Meatbag Penny leaned forward, presumably squinting at me behind those goggles. “You don’t even have our staff, do you? Okay, last chance, you can back out. Take it before I change my mind.”

  “Nope. Gonna kick your butt.” Maybe I could steal the bracelet this time.

  She nodded once, sharply. “Cool.” Audibly relieved to have her mercy refused, she plucked a bomb out of her bandolier and threw it at me.

  My aim was so bad. I backed away, but it wouldn’t have hit me anyway. When it did hit the floor, the effect reminded me of her space manipulation blocking field. Jagged brown lines appeared in the air in maybe a two foot circle. Inside that line, the carpet dissolved, and then the tile floor. The corner of a wooden game cabinet did not, and the game didn’t shut off.

  I eyed it. “Interesting.”

  “It doesn’t affect metal. These should reduce your shell to powder, but leave the Heart of Steel undamaged. I keep my promises,” said Meatbag Penny. With that said, she threw another bomb, and another.

  Neither was all that close, but I zapped the first one away with a forcefield. Why? To see if the bombs would penetrate it. The bomb itself did not, but when it blew up, the zigzaggy distortion zone did go through my shield, and hung in the air motionless. The other bomb took a chunk out of the floor farther along.

  Why that cunning little vixen. She wasn’t trying all that hard to hit me anyway. This was another mine field, penning me in.

  Unwilling to wait around for that, I charged the ring of land mines, blasting it with my shield bands. A section of the sticky bombs exploded, battering me with sound, force, bits of rubble, and smoke.

  Instead of charging through the concealing smoke, I jumped up on a nearby arcade cabinet, vaulting over it past the ring.

  My double spotted me. She had less than a second to react. Enough time to press her finger hard into the red button of a ring on her right hand.

  Criminy. She could have any number of itty-bitty weapons on her.

  With a WHOOMP, wind rushed out, a blast catching me in mid-air and sending me tumbling back over the arcade machine again. I hit the floor hard. If I’d been in my flesh and blood body, that would have broken something. Also, good thing I’d tried this before Meatbag Penny had time to fill this whole back area with robot-destroying zones.

  Rolling to my feet, I went right back to the game cabinet, and encountered something slightly stranger than usual.

  The blast wave was still there. It hung, a rippling globe of distorted air, just inside the land mine ring.

  Justifiably proud, my double held out a hand and admired her ring. “It’s not technically a forcefield. It’s a frozen explosion, all the energy pointed out. Great new defensive tool, isn’t it?”

  “Do I really like explosions this much?”

  She stomped her foot, fists jerking down at her sides. “Yes! You just think you’re not supposed to. Do you have the slightest idea how infuriating that got by the time we were separated?”

  Fiddling with my wrist, I said, “I have to admit, this is cool!” There. The Machine came free, and I held him up, rubbing him at the blast wave like I was cleaning off a window. He sucked it up everywhere he touched, and in less than two seconds I had a nice, big gap to dive through.

  She saw what I was doing, of course, so I dove fast, plunging and then sprinting towards her with all the sudden speed this robot body could manage. That caught her by surprise. She still had time to touch her ring again——but I had won. I was too close, the Machine held out in front of me, and he ate so much of the explosion it didn’t touch the rest of me. We crashed together, and I shouted at the Machine, “Eat her bombs!”

  He grabbed onto the bandolier and started to chew. Apparently it counted in how he interpreted the order.

  My double and I spun apart. She yelled, “Criminy!” and yanked uselessly at her belt. There was no stopping the Machine, and she knew it. So she pulled out a little glowing white ball instead.

  Whatever this was, she thought it was big. I projected both shields forward, and prepared to dodge.

  That was my mistake. I recognized the fat white pill with its orbiting white sparks too late. Other Me put the power activator in her mouth and swallowed it.

  Horrified, I squeaked, “I destroyed those!”

  She rolled her head sarcastically. “Yeah. One tube. I have a barrel of them at home under my bed. You know we can only do this once, so I had to make enough to last.”

  Her eyes rolled too. Oh, criminy, here it came. She was getting weird. With a crooked grin, she picked two bombs out of separate pockets. She had time. Yes, the Machine was eating through the belt, but he couldn’t do it instantly.

  Holding them up to show me, she asked, “So, you need light to see, right?” and crushed them together.

  The already shadowy arcade went pitch black. I could make out a vague rectangle of the doorway to the sunlit outside world, but nothing else.

  However, I knew where she was, only a few feet in front of me. Lunging forward, I grabbed, only to feel the brush of fabric-covered flesh against my arm as she slipped away. Grabbing at that spot got me nothing but empty air. She hadn’t made any noise. She hadn’t thrown herself away desperately. No, with access to my omniscient power, she knew where I was, and just stepped out of the way.

  Her access wasn’t perfect, Penny. Remember that. The pills gave Other Me peeks, not full contact. She was just fighting with our super power activated, with both the benefits and curses that entailed.

  As suddenly as they went out, the lights came back on. Not that the room was anything but a pit of shadows with occasional arcade game s
potlights, but I could see clearly again.

  The Machine sat on the floor near my feet, chewing down the last of the bomb bandolier. Whether they went off inside his indestructible body was entirely moot. My double had crossed the line, and holding no bombs, now lurked next to the dance machine. Oh, and the first of the destruction zones she’d set up with her bombs had faded. Excellent, they weren’t permanent. In a minute, I wouldn’t have to worry about avoiding them.

  Holding up a hand to show off my shield bands, I said, “Now you’re the one outgunned. Since I didn’t bring anything to capture you, I’ll allow you to leave unharmed if you surrender.”

  “HA! HA HA HA HA! HA HA HA HA HA!” She laughed, bitter and manic and scornful. With a sharp kick, she popped open a panel on the side of the dance machine, and reached in with her bare hands to rearrange its innards.

  The land mine circle lay between us. Could I jump it? I’d have to circle around over the game cabinets again, and I might not have that much time. So instead, I scooped the Machine up off the floor, and threw him at her, shouting, “Eat that video game!”

  Sorry, goth couple. It’s you or me.

  Note to Penny: Brilliant counterattack, one little problem you didn’t think through. My white-suited double caught the Machine right out of the air, declared in a wobbly voice, “I love playing catch!” and flung him to the far side of the room.

  Well, criminy. Plan B. I ran back and leaped over the game cabinets again, turning as soon as I hit the floor to charge Meatbag Penny.

  Too late. She had gone back to fiddling with the internals. The game clinked rapid-fire, like someone was pouring coins into it, and the goth couple crawled out of the screen. The little man helped his wasp-thin wife down to the floor elegantly, and they both pounced yours truly.

  I backpedaled, fell onto my butt, and rolled out of the way of the slightly transparent black-dressed woman’s claw-shaped black fingernails. By the arcade game, my double hugged herself tight with both arms, and through a fit of giggles said, “You’ve heard of that science fiction trope ‘solid light’, right? It sounds so stupid and meaningless, until you see the trick. That’s all technology is. Card tricks with physics.”

  Another very unwanted Note to Penny: Explaining an invention that much should have broken my power’s hold, but Other Me was still very much in its grip. Last time, she’d broken herself free doing that. Did she try this time, and fail?

  I didn’t have much time to worry about it. Keeping out of the grip of two adults determined to get hold of you requires a lot of wiggling and scrambling. I managed to roll around the other side of them, and charged Meatbag Penny, leading her own creations towards her.

  She saw us coming, and activated her shield bomb ring. I ducked, curling up, and let the holograms trip over me and take the hit.

  We all three got knocked to the opposite wall. I didn’t have a brain for that blow to rattle, but neither did the goths. They grabbed hold of my arms before I could pull away.

  Something crunched, and buzzed, and the little mustached man and tall, pale woman in her body-hugging dress disappeared. Over at the machine that spawned them, my Machine’s butt stuck out of a hole at the base. After eating those blasts Other Me fed him, he’d become quite a speedy little bug. Now he chomped away noisily inside the arcade cabinet, finishing it off.

  Meatbag Penny was already walking to a new arcade game when the holograms holding me prisoner winked out. She pulled hard, yanking the whole wooden side of Marcia’s combat rock-scissors-paper game off, and started fiddling.

  Not again. Of course, she’d crossed the land mine field again, but I bounded over the cabinets I’d been using as a bridge, and tackled my double just as a sparkly yellow energy hand extended out of the machine. It froze there, whatever changes my power was making not quite complete, as I shoved my double to the floor beneath me.

  I stomped one booted foot on the wrist of the hand wearing the explosion ring. She couldn’t press its button one-handed. Activating the shields from my glove bands, I shoved them against her chest, pinning her in a cloud of rainbow sparkles. I wasn’t heavy, but she wasn’t strong, and her leverage was terrible.

  Her free arm groped for the arcade game she’d been altering, but she couldn’t reach. It shuddered, and off-balance thanks to her tearing away one side, fell slowly onto its back. The glowy arm disappeared. Instead, a column of white light so intense and pure I couldn’t see through it rose out of the screen.

  “No! No, you ruined it! It’s too late!” whined my doppelgänger, smacking her fist on the carpeted floor.

  The white column resolutely did nothing but exist. Whatever she’d been planning, I diverted it.

  I let out a sigh of relief. As she clawed ineffectually at my force shields, I leaned all my medium weight on her and said, “I am going to pin you here until that pill wears off. You have got to stop taking those things.”

  “But they work!” she answered, her petulance turned mocking. She stuck the back of her free hand over her mouth, and bit a white plastic ring I hadn’t even seen against her white, heavily contoured jumpsuit.

  Another pill rolled out of the ring’s secret compartment into her mouth.

  She knew I would try to stop her from taking more, and had planned ahead.

  Okayokayokay. Think. She couldn’t do anything without ingredients and tools. If I held her here, the power would wear off and it wouldn’t matter. I already had her pinned down, right?

  Sure, I did. Right up until she laughed, raspy and yipping, like a sick hyena. Then the force shields I was leaning atop winked out.

  I fell on top of her. Pulling a miniature screwdriver out of a tool pocket, she stabbed me in the arm. It couldn’t penetrate my armored lab coat, but it did jam coat, shirt, and the point of the screwdriver into the seam where my upper arm’s ball socket connected to my shoulder.

  ‘Jam’ being the operative word. My arm wouldn’t move!

  Meatbag Penny rolled out from under me and to her feet. She didn’t seem to be doing anything, so I had time to wiggle my arm until the screwdriver came free. There. I could move. No obvious damage. A quick check showed the shield bands were working again. Seriously, how had she done that?

  I stood up slowly, and approached my double with my hands up. She wobbled in place, looking all around, but took a staggered step away for each of mine. Vaguely, she babbled, “I can see you don’t get it. Nobody gets it. Nobody can get it. It’s all right in front of us. All of it, every opportunity, every trick, fire, water, mass, energy. We could bend time with the snap of our fingers. All the most complex processes of any machine are involved in that one action, after all. You just have to direct them.”

  Her stumbling brought her into the doorway to the street. She leaned one arm against the jam, and took deep breaths. More focused, which was an extremely low bar, she looked up at me. “You shouldn’t have stopped me from working on that game. Now we’ve gone and made something very strange, indeed. Let me show you a truly exotic physical reaction. Check it out. Shadow puppets!”

  She held up a hand, fingers extended in the ridiculous bad bunny pose people used when making shadow puppets. In the light from the outside, that shadow fell on the machine we’d just abandoned, and its column of white light.

  Not that you can see a shadow on light. Not until it swam out from the interior, a seething black rabbit head the size of a basketball.

  “Machine! Emergency dump! Everything you’ve got in a block on top of that, right now!” I yelled.

  Quite fat now, he galloped over, regurgitated a big block of metal and wood, and it slammed down on top of the game machine. The white column disappeared, or at least was blocked.

  “Hey! Hey, what should I do next? I can build anything. Anything at all. Go on, challenge me!” babbled Other Me. On fire with inspiration, she’d forgotten we were even fighting.

  Fine by me. I lunged over to the Machine, grabbed him, and ran out the door and away along the sidewalk.

  Let he
r think she’d won. I didn’t care. She might have yet another power-enhancing pill somewhere. Without me, she had no reason to take it. I’d outmaneuvered her so far, yes, but it had been way too close.

  No more sparring and picking at her. This was getting too dangerous. From now on, I would strike decisively, or not at all, and I couldn’t strike until I had a mind transfer device.

  Cassie stood next to a seated but apparently conscious Marcia at the end of the block. I raced up to them, grabbed Cassie by the shoulder, and pointed back at the arcade. “Flesh and blood Penny needs you. Our power has overloaded. Please, take care of her. If I try, she’ll just fight me.”

  Her eyes wide and face stiff with worry, she nodded. “I will, I promise.”

  She sprinted back towards the doors of the arcade, and my double. To whom, I was sure, she would blabbermouth everything I’d told her this morning. My plan to get a mind transfer machine was underway.

  Maybe these horrible pills would have a side benefit, and Other Me would build the device I’d use to take my body back. Wouldn’t that be ironic?

  ow, normally I’m not against spending a few days holed up in my room playing the computer. After my all too exciting summer, the occasional rest helped give me strength for the next phase. With so much about to happen, I couldn’t properly relax this time.

  Large amounts of Princess of the Closet Monsters did help, but hoo boy. Every choice traded away another body part now, most of the time without saving any of my weird, precious subjects. I could barely recognize the main character, physically or in personality.

  Gorgeous graphics, though, and the level where I led the mouse-like scavengers through the walls to a new home made the game worth it by itself.

  The game balance was definitely spotty, and after the twelfth frustrating attempt to stop the Web, I took a break. Who thought that boss fight was a good idea?! Of course, if I’d been playing the Vengeance route, my character wouldn’t be unarmed and flammable. Another example of my Evil Twin getting the easy road.