Sidekick: The Misadventures of the New Scarlet Knight

by Pab Sungenis

  It was light and balanced perfectly in my hand, but I felt the heft it would carry with it when swung. The sword fit in my hand better than anything I’d ever held, like it was a part of me. With a heavy heart, I went to return it to its maker.

  And I would have, too, if the door hadn’t chosen that minute to explode.

  The room filled with smoke and panic—in that order. Reflexively, I shielded my face, expecting splinters from the door or shards of glass from a window to fly forward, but after a few seconds, and none of the expected pain, I lowered my forearm and squinted against the spreading smoke.

  My brain cycled through all the villains Uncle Jack and I had fought, trying to figure out who would enter like that. We’d dealt with a lot of creeps who like to shake down and rob little operations like the Forge, but none of them ever arrived in a puff of smoke.

  The air cleared, and I was able to get a good look at the newcomer. I couldn’t remember ever seeing him before.

  He was slightly shorter than me and covered in black from head to toe. Even his face was completely covered in ultra-fine mesh fabric. The costume wasn’t as tight as most I’d seen, but it was snug enough not to trip him in the heat of action. A red sash tied around his waist served as a belt of sorts with a sack tucked over it. A jewel robber, not exactly something new here in Harbor City, but something was different about this one.

  “Attention!” The robber’s voice was tinny and artificial, probably from one of those electronic voice-modifier thingies toy stores sell. “Do what you are told and no one will get hurt. I want you to … ”

  By that point, the smoke had cleared enough that we could both see each other clearly. At first, I couldn’t figure out why the sight of me would stop him mid-sentence; I wasn’t in uniform, so he couldn’t have known who I was.

  Then it hit me. When the explosion went off, I had reflexively assumed a defensive posture—with a sword in my hand. So this robber, who had just said no one would get hurt if they didn’t screw with him, found himself confronted by a kid wielding a sword as if ready to lop his head off.

  So much for cooperation.

  “Get out of here!” I screamed to the customers and the shopkeeper. “Back door, if there is one. Call 911 once you’re safely away. I’ll hold him off.”

  They didn’t move.

  “NOW!” I had no way of knowing where the lung capacity for such a shout came from, but it was enough to scare the bystanders into action. The customers clambered over each other to get as far away from the robber (or the lunatic teenager with the sword) as their feet could take them. The blacksmith, apparently unwilling to part with his baby, just ducked behind the counter.

  “I don’t know who you are,” I told the interloper, “and I’m really not in a mood to find out, especially after the day I’ve had. So why don’t you just pop out of here, and we’ll call it … ”

  I froze as the robber reached into one of his pockets (another advantage the getup had over the usual super-guy costume). I got enough of a hint of cheekbones under the thick black nothing of his mask to be pretty sure he was smiling. He pulled out something that looked like an old TV remote with …

  You have got to be shitting me.

  I recognized it immediately, even before he pushed the button that caused the blade to shoot out of the base to its full length.

  That bastard had the Scarlet Knight’s sword. That bastard was wielding a weapon he had taken off Uncle Jack’s body.

  That bastard was the man who had killed my Uncle Jack.

  Secret Origins

  Seeing the Scarlet Knight’s sword in this bozo’s hands brought on a flood of memories, starting with the first time I’d ever seen it and working backward from there, like my life flashing before my eyes in reverse.

  My mother wasn’t the most beautiful woman in the world if you want to use objective measures, but every boy is blind where his mother is concerned. What I remember the most is that she was warm, and when her arms were around me, nothing in the world could hurt me. That’s how I remember her. If that’s not the case, I don’t care.

  And I remember in excruciating detail the day we buried her when I was five. I didn’t understand what my pop was talking about when he was trying to explain about ectopic pregnancies and hemorrhaging, but I remembered every word.

  Likewise, don’t confuse my not liking to talk about my pop all that much with not remembering him. I don’t hate him now that he’s gone, but I still don’t have to like him, do I? As hard as my mother’s death was for me, it had to have been a thousand times worse for him, and he became restless and aimless. We moved around a lot, and he took on odd jobs wherever we went, trying to keep food on the table and even a temporary roof over our heads. Once I was old enough to do a decent job shoveling snow or wielding a hammer, I did jobs with him, essentially turning us into a two-income household.

  When we finally landed in Harbor City, he stopped doing handyman jobs and took up ones that had … a much better return on investment. I traded in my hammer and spade for a nice new bicycle, complete with a front basket. I rode it everywhere, quickly learning the streets of my new hometown. Hardly a day went by that I wasn’t out there on my bike, and hardly a bike trip passed that I didn’t have some parcel in my basket from Pop. I never asked what was inside, and I never peeked. I just carried them from one place to another like I was told.

  Of course, as with just about any business, the high returns carried high risks. The day everything finally came to a head, just like the day I lost my mother, is one I remember in vivid detail.

  It started out as a typical delivery job—a few packages to a warehouse on Ocean Avenue. Nothing to raise the hair on the back of my neck, but something kept nagging me and made sure I stayed alert. If I hadn’t been keeping my eyes and ears open, what was left of my life would have been a hell of a lot different.

  I had arrived early and was headed inside when I heard two men talking a little louder than they probably should have been. Most of their words washed over me, but when Pop’s name came up, I went into full-blown high-alert mode. I stepped back as quietly as I could and laid myself flat against the wall next to the door.

  I only managed to catch two out of every three words, but I got enough to fill in the gaps. It turned out the guy up the criminal food chain from the warehouse bozos had gotten it into his head that Pop and I were no longer to be trusted. That was all I needed to hear. I dropped the packages, turned tail, and dashed back to my bike as quickly as I could.

  You can guess what happened. That’s why I never again locked a bicycle when I left it somewhere. Better to lose it than run the risk of getting knocked out while kneeling and trying to dial a combination.

  That day, I didn’t have to wait for my vision to return to know I was in deep shit. The first thing I noticed was the stink of the guy leaning over me, a weird mix of body odor, onion breath, and a whiff of cigar.

  “Wake up, twerp.” Ah. My hearing was coming back too. And the chafing of the rope around my wrists and the hard wood under my ass let me know my sense of touch was back. Oh, and that I was tied to a chair, too. Maybe if he leaned in just a wee bit closer I could bite him and see if my sense of taste was back.

  “I said wake up, kid.” A quick backhanded smack upside my head got me seeing stars. At least I was seeing something. I gingerly opened my eyes and stared up at the jerk with the cigar. I’d seen him before at a few of the stops on my delivery route and assumed he was someone just a little bit more important than me and thus unlikely to care about my well-being.

  “You know something, FedEx? Normally, I’d be real appreciative of quick delivery service, but this time you may have been just a little too quick for your own good.”

  “Huh?” Had I suffered more brain damage from the blow to my head than I had thought? What was he talking about?

  “You see, FedEx, the original plan was for one of us to follow you home after this delivery. For some strange reason, the address my employer had on fil
e for your father wasn’t accurate. You wouldn’t know why, would you?”

  Ah. Pop’s paranoia. It had always served him well enough in the past. “Nope. No clue. So, what’s with the ropes? You expect me to squeal on my pop and tell you where we live? Or are you just a pervert who likes tying little boys up?”

  “Oh, I don’t want you to squeal on your pop—” He reached into his pocket and drew out a card. “—Bobby. No self-respecting boy would ever do that kind of thing, and I’m not the kind that gets off on trying to get them to do it, either. Good thing I don’t need to.”

  He smiled, which lowered the temperature of my blood at least three degrees. He flashed the card again, and I recognized it.

  “You know you’re a really conscientious kid? Smart to carry something like this around in your wallet. ‘In case of emergency, contact … ’ with a phone number and address. Well, I’d say this certainly qualifies as an emergency, so I’ve sent a few guys over to,” he checked the card again, “56 West 22nd Street to, shall we say, make contact.”

  He smiled again, and my blood froze.

  “Like I said, you sure did me a favor carrying this card, so I’m going to return the favor.” He reached back into his pocket and pulled out a pistol, which he pointed directly at my forehead. “I’m gonna make sure it’s over quick and doesn’t hurt, unlike what we’d planned for you and your pop. Say goodbye, FedEx.”

  There was a loud crash and what sounded like breaking glass, and then a rush of wind tore past me. To my left was a big gaping hole where the wall had been a few moments before. To my right, the bozo with the gun squared off against the strangest-looking person I’d ever seen.

  He was clad in a knight’s armor right out of a King Arthur movie. His left arm had a bracer strapped to it, and his right arm grasped a gizmo that sort of looked like an old-school TV remote control. He clicked a button, and a blade shot out of the gizmo, leaving him with a full-length sword. But the part of the getup that grabbed my attention the most was the coat of arms he wore over his chest: a blood-red shield with a white mare rearing up.

  I’d heard about the guy while out doing jobs but figured he was a myth, the kind of crap they like to put out there to scare cowardly folks into walking the straight and narrow. But he was right in front of me.

  The Scarlet Knight.

  The bozo shot at the Knight a couple of times, but the armor proved more than up to the task of blocking the bullets. Frustrated, Bozo tossed the gun, picked up a crowbar, and charged the Knight. Unfazed, the Knight simply raised his sword, pointed it at Bozo, and clicked another button. A flash of white light arced from the blade, knocking Bozo out like some kind of super stun gun. Beautiful!

  The Knight marched over to untie me but stopped cold when I yelled at him.

  “Knight! They’re on their way to kill my pop! 56 West 22nd Street! Hurry! I’ll be okay! Save him!”

  He gathered Bozo under his arm, gave me a curt nod, and flew straight up, breaking through a skylight high in the warehouse ceiling.

  Five minutes later, police sirens and squealing tires announced the arrival of the black-and-whites, but for the rest of my life I’ll think about those five minutes whenever I hear the word “alone.”

  ***

  The interrogation room at the Harbor City Police Department was bright white with flickering florescent bulbs high against the ceiling. A plain wood table sat right in the middle, behind which was a huge mirror spanning the length of the wall. A cop had brought me in there, equipped with a mug of cocoa and a plate of cookies (how young did they think I was, anyhow?), then proceeded to tell me the Knight hadn’t made it in time to save my pop. He’d figured I’d want some privacy after getting the bad news, so he left me in there to have a good cry, stuff myself, and wait for the social worker who would follow shortly.

  I sat, transfixed by my reflection, unable to break eye contact with myself. Half of me couldn’t understand how I’d been reduced to this situation, but the other half knew darned well how I’d gotten there and was thankful it didn’t end up worse. I’d survived to be miserable, which I suppose wasn’t all that bad when you consider the alternative.

  I lost track of how long I’d been sitting there staring at myself when the door opened. In came a woman who couldn’t have been much out of her twenties, with her black hair done up in one of those severe buns you see in old photographs and horn-rimmed glasses that did nothing for her face. With her was a middle-aged guy with brown hair wearing a battered old suit. The woman spoke first. “Bobby? I’m Miss Penobscot, from the Division of Youth and Family Services. I’m so sorry about your loss.”

  “I’m sure you are.” I turned to the man. “Who are you? A lawyer or something?”

  He chuckled. “Or something. I’m not a lawyer, but I guess you could say I know a few things about the law. And I also know a few things about justice.” He turned to the lady. “Is everything in order, Phoebe?”

  “Do you know how many strings I had to pull to set that up? How many favors I had to call in?”

  “That’s one of the reasons we’ve got you there. Is it all set up?”

  She grinned. “Yes, I took care of it all.”

  “Excuse me,” I interjected, “but what are you talking about? Who are you, exactly?”

  The woman cleared her throat, thinking the time had come for a formal introduction. “Bobby, this is Mr. Horner. He’s a local businessman, and he’s volunteered to be your foster parent.”

  “Jack Horner,” the man said, extending his hand for me to shake. “And please, no jokes about Christmas pies.”

  “Bobby Baines,” I said, remembering my manners and taking his hand.

  “I know.” And that’s how it all began.

  Duel Identities

  Logically, when out of uniform and at a major disadvantage equipment-wise against an enemy who’s already killed someone with all of the high-tech gadgets you don’t have at your disposal at that moment, the reasonable thing would be to make a strategic retreat and call for help. Push and hold that little panic button on my watch, and within minutes the six strongest people in the universe would flock to my aid. Then I’d stand a better chance of walking away from it all, not to mention bringing the villain to justice. Yes, that is the smart thing to do in this case.

  Too bad for me that a meeting with my guidance counselor a couple hours before had confirmed I was anything but smart.

  For a couple of moments we stared at each other, looking for any opening and preparing to guard against any attack. Of course, being the impetuous fool I am, I lunged first. The killer parried my blow almost effortlessly then followed with a sweeping motion toward my torso as if he intended to cut me in two. I jumped back in time to save my skin but not my down jacket as the blade sliced through it and sent stuffing all over the place. I used the spray of little feathers to camouflage my movements as I tried a move Mister Mystery had taught me in one of the big training sessions the heroes used to like to give us kids. I dove to the floor, sliding headfirst like an insane baseball player, between the robber’s legs, before I rolled back to my feet and swung the sword, full-force.

  Instead of connecting with the shoulder I had been aiming for, I found my blade parried in an expert move, and the killer facing me. He’d anticipated my move better than I ever expected, and I considered myself lucky he hadn’t run me through while I was pulling off my fancy maneuver.

  I went back to basics. Every attack I’d been taught, every move I’d learned to disarm and disable a lunatic with a blade, spun through my head and out to my arms. But each and every motion seemed prepared for. The guy was a better swordsman than I’d ever hoped to be, and I was beginning to see how he could have taken down Uncle Jack.

  The more I fought him, the more my mind flashed back to the one key thing in this confrontation: this was the guy who had killed my Uncle Jack. This man had taken the most important person in my life, and I was going to make sure he paid for it with his life, even if I ended up dying in the p
rocess.

  Out of sheer rage, I pulled a berserker move. I pulled back and charged headlong, thrusting forward with the sword, as I was about to ram into him. I hoped to catch him by surprise with a stupid move no sword fighter would use nowadays but found myself thrown off balance when he stepped aside at the last second, sending me sprawling toward the window.

  I tossed the sword in the air, then tucked and rolled, managing to come back to my feet just in time to catch the hilt as the sword came back down. Another stupid move, but I was desperate. I’d done that trick plenty of times with my staff, but a staff won’t slice your hand off if it spins around in the air. Still, I managed to recover quickly enough to deny the jackass the pleasure of watching me go face-first through plate glass.

  For what seemed like an hour, we led each other on a merry dance, attacking and parrying, neither of us gaining much of an advantage. He bounced around like a drop of water on a pancake griddle, hissing about as loud as one too, as swipe after swipe of our swords missed their marks. No matter what I did, I couldn’t lay a single blow, and I considered myself damn lucky he hadn’t managed to, either.

  I switched tactics again. Uncle Jack and the rest of the Justice Federation had taught me the elegant art of hand-to-hand combat, but now it was time to go back to techniques my pop had showed me. He’d started teaching me to box when I was five, right after we lost my mom, and a couple of years later he’d taught me the correct way to fight: dirty. Feinting with the sword in my right hand, I swung my left hand up, hoping to connect with the creep’s nose and throw him off-balance. A similar move from a sixth-grade bully had given my nose its current interesting shape, and now I was eager to show that I’d learned from the experience and return the favor. Unfortunately, the creep managed to move his face out of the way just enough. I missed and nearly lost my balance in the process. I stumbled slightly before resuming a proper stance.