by Alex Gabriel
Doctor Destiny, what the fuck? She’d never even crossed Pat’s mind. The Doc was serious business, a mad scientist and scheming mastermind all rolled up into one. She clocked in at the upper end of the challenger spectrum, right up there with people like Cassiopeia. What was she doing on a random downtown rampage? That kind of thing was more the wavelength of small fry like The Shark (though not this far out of water), or screechy Bitterfly with her eternal campaign to be acknowledged as the most-wronged — or alternately the most annoying — person in the history of ever.
Pat scrambled to his feet and realized, with a thrill of cold, that he’d lost his shopping bag. He’d stayed up all afternoon refreshing the infoweb page to get on the waiting list for Mad Bad and Dangerous to Ho. He’d paid way more for it than he should have. No way, he was not going to lose his new album because of a stupid challenger attack!
It took him a minute because the dust hadn’t settled yet and his eyes were tearing, but then he spotted his bag on the ground, pretty much exactly at the gleaming polished heels of Doctor Destiny’s boots. Not ideal, but if he was quick about it he could just grab it and go, leaving the challenger to her challenging and getting on with his day. Right?
Pat had barely snuck within grabbing range when Doctor Destiny whipped around, nearly kneeing him in the face. Her dark, burning gaze landed squarely on him, crouched at her feet with his outstretched fingertips almost brushing his bag, and by extension her boot.
It was an awkward situation all round.
“Heya, Doc,” said Pat. He tried a sheepish smile.
“Patrick? Patrick West, is that you?”
A moment later, she’d yanked him up by the arm, tossed him over her shoulder in a fireman’s carry — cueing a chorus of shocked cries and shouts from the onlookers — and almost made him puke up his Cassiopeia cookie by painfully jolting his stomach while flying him to the top of City Hall, bag and all.
Several tiles came loose beneath his feet as he scrambled to find his balance on the steeply slanted roof. He sat down hastily and ended up more or less starfished on his back, which at least ended the sliding. His dignity was less valuable than the roof; City Hall had only been renovated last year, and the tiles were expensive natural slate, still all fresh and nice-looking.
Doctor Destiny stood tall at the edge of the roof, dramatically outlined against the sky. She sent several more bolts ripping across the square. Most of them evaporated harmlessly, if with a lot of flash and noise. One, however, smashed into an abandoned hot dog stand, and another ripped up the pavement right in front of Taliesin Books, scattering stones and a display of discount DVDs into every direction.
The view from up here was pretty cool, Pat noted. Like, the way the buildings were grouped around the square was suddenly totally clear. Even if the black-clad challenger with the billowy cape shooting electricity everywhere did clutter up the cityscape some.
“How have you been?” Doctor Destiny tossed the question over her shoulder, adding a menacing glare and threatening pointing finger for effect. Pat rolled his eyes, but obligingly cowered a little when she stabbed her finger at him again with more emphasis. He wasn’t completely blind to propriety, and people were watching, after all. “Imagine running into each other like that! Why, the last time I saw you, you were a pimply scrap of a teenager. Now look at you, all grown up and handsome. I’ve heard you’re going to university now, just like your sisters. Your mother must be so proud!”
“Yeah well, I hope so,” said Pat, evasively. “So, I’ve been wondering. What’s with the mortals thing? I mean, you’re mortal too, right?”
She heaved a sigh, throwing him a gleaming gaze. Literally gleaming — her eyes glowed electric blue behind the black mask. “That does not make my appellation any less accurate, Patrick. The point is to address my victims in a properly imposing manner. It appears you have much left to learn.”
“Yeah, sure.” Pat hastily cast about for a subject that would head off the threatening discussion of his choice of career. “Oh hey, speaking of victims. What are you doing here anyway? Isn’t it a little… I mean, usually you have, like, submarines and airships and all kinds of super-cool stuff.”
Briefly, Doctor Destiny’s lip twitched into a pleased smile, though she quickly caught herself and assumed a suitably chilling look of command instead. “I do, don’t I. Be that as it may, Patrick, when you grow older you will learn that at times, it is incumbent upon a person to —” She broke off abruptly, shook her head, and sighed out a put-upon gust of air before beginning again in a less declamatory tone. “Unfortunately I don’t have much time, so I’ll be brief. Have you been in that new book store? The Taliesin chain is buying up stores all over, but frankly I have no idea why they are at all successful. Their selection is so poor it makes me ill. Their foreign-language section comprises one tiny little shelf with five anthologies of Spanish poetry and three French novels. They have nothing else — not even Ancient Sumerian! And the rest of their selection is no better. Good luck finding anything to read in that dump. They barely even have books, just several displays of bestsellers and a plethora of touristy riffraff like calendars, chocolates, totes and mugs.”
She let out a scream of rage. “How dare they call themselves booksellers?” A solid column of electricity streaked across the square, racing from Doctor Destiny’s hand to detonate in a blinding shower of sparks in front of Taliesin Books. “What they are is a morally decrepit sell-out of a chain with an abysmal selection. And they dare to come into this city and buy up Mary-Lou’s Book Emporium in order to shut it down, ridding themselves of the competition of a real bookstore!”
“What? They’re going to shut down Mary-Lou’s?” Pat loved Mary-Lou’s! You could browse for hours in there, and they had everything. Pat didn’t actually care about Ancient Sumerian literature, although he did get that it was important, but Mary Lou’s had an awesome architecture section, and a pretty good selection of supernatural romances, too. Where would Pat get his monographs, and the romantic elf and were-creature fiction his sisters liked (and that Pat might possibly also happen to read sometimes out of idle curiosity)?
“They are!” Doctor Destiny eyes were now glowing with the white-hot intensity of a fire stoked to burn down a city district or two. “Taliesin knows naught of either common decency or bookselling. And I shall bring them down, whatever it may take. None shall stand in my way!”
“Definitely not standing in your way here.” Pat gestured invitingly (though carefully, given his prone position on the roof) towards the market square, where the last remaining citizens still in sight were inching along the buildings to keep out of the open. “With you all the way, Doc. You’re gonna blast Taliesin to dust so they won’t close Mary-Lou’s until they’ve rebuilt Taliesin, right?”
“You have divined my plan, Patrick West.” An evil smirk stole over Doc’s face. “And allow me to remark that many things can happen between now and then. A great many things, if you perceive my meaning. As a matter of fact…”
“It is Destiny!” Pat shouted, punching the air in tandem with her. Okay, out of character for the cowed hostage he was supposed to be, but Doc Destiny’s catchphrase was the coolest. It was totally worth sliding a meter or so over the roof tiles.
Doc paced along the edge of the roof slowly, throwing Pat a quick smirk. “Don’t worry, Patrick, I won’t be keeping you much longer. The hoagies are due to arrive at any moment, and then I’ll be free to cut loose without fear of harming civilians. Be sure to scream a little so they make rescuing you a priority.”
Right on cue, the trademark hum of a Corps-issue aircycle filled the air, clearly coming from the left, the direction of the university. It was a single hum, which meant that either there was only one hoagie — ahem, hero — answering the emergency call, or that only one of them needed a cycle to fly.
“Say hi to your mom from me, would you? Tell her I look forward to Serpentissima’s resurgence.”
The aircycle cleared City Hall’s roof an
d a hero descended on them in a cloud of righteous indignation, all fluttering white linen and wildly wind-tossed curls. Scarily perfect cheekbones, enormous ball of thread, superhuman strength and speed — bingo! It was Ariadne. Pat had totally called it, and Zen was going down.
Pat barely restrained himself from fistpumping in victory, and instead cleared his throat and made sure he was gripping his shopping bag tightly. “Help! Save m—”
Another hero shot into sight from the opposite direction, wrapped in a metallic haze of force fields.
Silver Paladin. It was Silver Paladin, and for no reason at all, Pat’s cry for help dried up in his throat, becoming nothing more than an undignified croak.
Everybody and their grandmother knew that Silver Paladin was built. It wasn’t a secret, seeing as the man’s quantum armor fit like a second skin. So yeah, Pat had known that before; he’d just never particularly cared. But now… well.
By the time Pat managed to tear his attention away from the square below, where Silver Paladin was rounding up the gathering thrill-seekers, reporters and other idiots and herding them to safety, Ariadne had unraveled an expanding coil of red string. It hovered around her in readiness as she circled for position, sandaled feet treading lightly over the steep roof.
“Doctor Destiny.” Ariadne’s voice rang with the natural resonance and authority of a born orator. “I should have known it would be you. Give up your wickedness and surrender, foul villain, or prepare to suffer my wrath.”
“Your wrath?” Doctor Destiny’s grin had grown wicked and sly, eyes narrowing to slits of cyan malice as crackling energy gathered around her raised hands. “As though you could stand against me, you laughable excuse for a —”
A net of yarn rose up around Doc, as quick as thought. Pat hadn’t even caught on to what was happening when a blinding flare of energy flashed outward from the yarn-obscured form. The force of the blast caught Pat unprepared and dislodged him from his tenuous position. He rolled across the roof in panicked slow motion, scrabbling for purchase on tiles that loosened beneath his desperate grasp. What the fuck, they were supposed to rescue him first!
“Poor little orphan girl!” Doctor Destiny was booming, “Cast out by your own father! Never good enough —”
“Look who’s talking!” Pat had never heard the dignified, collected Ariadne’s tone turn so venomous before. “What is this but a pathetic, misguided cry for attention?”
Under different circumstances, Pat might have been intrigued by how quickly Doc and Ariadne had escalated to personal low blows, but right now he was a little busy trying not to fall off a roof. He’d stopped sliding at the last moment and was perched precariously on the tiny ledge just before the gutter, crouched on his hands and knees. If he raised his gaze from where his fingers were curled white-knuckled into the bronze rainpipe — which he was trying very, very hard not to do — he could look straight down on the stairs leading up to City Hall’s entrance.
Fuck. City Hall had never seemed so immensely high from below. Pat’s stomach lurched with vertigo, and he had to swallow down bile. He felt sick and terrified. He hadn’t even known he was afraid of heights before.
A hazy flash of silver appeared in his peripheral vision. Pat caught a confused glimpse of a familiar frown below a mirrored visor, and then large, silver-gloved hands reached out and he found himself picked up and tossed over Silver Paladin’s shoulder.
Force fields buzzed against his chest and stomach and legs, scrambling Pat’s brains and making his teeth ache. It took him a moment to register that he was now airborne; correction, that they were airborne, City Hall and the fighting challenger and hero retreating until all Pat could see was Silver Paladin’s legs and ass. It was a weird angle, and Pat could have done without the obscuring force fields and the armor in the way, but even so it was a pretty spectacular view.
By the time they touched down, Pat was giggling uncontrollably.
Pat found himself set back on his feet with surprising gentleness. A quick look around revealed that they were in front of the small chocolatier Hell liked, right in the middle of the picturesquely ivy-adorned side street leading to the temple square.
With his visor down and the force fields on, there really wasn’t much of Silver Paladin’s face to see. Even so, Pat imagined he could read surprise in the blurry line of his jaw. “You? What are you doing —”
Pat waved a hand to indicate this wasn’t an ideal time to bombard him with dumb questions, seeing as he was still choking back giggles and wiping tears of laughter from his eyes. It wasn’t even that anything about this was funny, exactly. It was just all so absurd. All of it, from the ridiculous companion misunderstanding to having to be rescued by a superhero in complete earnest.
Once he’d managed to get himself back under control, he discovered Silver Paladin had flipped up his visor, the better to give Pat a narrow-eyed look that seemed set to burn right through to his bones. Not hostile, precisely; more heroically stern, or whatever.
“Are you injured?” And there was the heroic voice to match, all no-nonsense firmness and authority.
“Nah, I’m fine.” It was true enough. “No worries, it’s all good. Thanks for the ride, dude. Or the carry, whatever.”
Even without the visor covering most of his face, Silver Paladin didn’t look nearly as much as Nicholas as you’d think. Weird. Not that they weren’t clearly the same person — there was just something different about the man in superhero mode. It must have been the addition of the stereotypically heroic bearing… the steely jaw and heroic profile and whatnot.
Pat cleared his throat and shifted a little, trying not to let on how gut-meltingly hot he found the heroic whatnot. It didn’t seem like the right moment.
“What were you doing on that roof?” Silver Paladin barked, a stern horizontal crease forming between his forbidding brows. He looked like a schoolmaster who’d caught one of his charges out after curfew.
What was with the tone — did he think Pat had been hanging out on top of City Hall for fun, just waiting to be caught up in a passing superpowered grudge-fest? “Trying not to fall off, for the most part. Look, buddy —”
And that was when it hit him: his album. His album! “Mad Bad and Dangerous to Ho!” Pat shouted.
He barely had time to register that Silver Paladin’s face now had a definitely shocked thing going on (if there was a prize for disconcerting an unflappable superhero, Pat had just won the gold) before turning to run back to the market square. Or trying to, at least. He’d only managed a few steps when an arm as immovable as a steel bar wrapped around his chest from behind.
“Civilians are expected to expend every effort in order to stay out of the range of supervillain conflicts,” Silver Paladin growled into his ear. Pat couldn’t help but notice that his back was now pressed tightly to the hero’s body, the hum of force fields beginning to seep through him again. “Civilians who recklessly endanger themselves or others, or who deliberately hinder superhero operations in any fashion, can and will be prosecuted.”
“Are you seriously throwing the book at me?” Pat squirmed in the Paladin’s grip until he could look up at him, even if all he could see from this angle was a slice of sternly set cast-iron jaw and heroic glare. “This is not the time for that, you loser! Aren’t you supposed to be good at saving people?”
“I am excellent at saving people,” barked Silver Paladin, glaring. His force field hum was making Pat’s fillings ache, and his stupid face and stupid body and stupid hotness grew more and more annoying the longer Pat was exposed to them.
“You are so not! I give you two out of ten, you suck so bad. I lost my limited edition album thanks to you, dude! Mad Bad and Dangerous to Ho, the most —”
“Companion,” said Silver Paladin, his tone somehow both completely flat and utterly disapproving at the same time.
Pat blinked, thrown. “What?”
Considering the way the conversation was going, it might have been a good thing that at that point, a
furiously loud series of thudding crashes followed by a deeply ominous rumbling interrupted it. The noise came from the direction of the market square and sounded pretty much exactly what Pat assumed a building taking major structural damage would sound like.
An instant later, a cloud of stone and concrete dust rose against the sky, and Silver Paladin was nothing but a fast-moving haze of glowing force fields, streaking off towards the commotion.
Pat’s back was still warm from being pressed against him. He felt oddly unsteady for a moment before he got himself sorted.
Back in the market square, Doctor Destiny was balancing atop the sagging, smoking ruins of Taliesin Books’ roof, laughing maniacally (her projection was amazing, as Pat noted with admiration). The building looked to be held together pretty much exclusively by masses of red string. Pat hadn’t gotten to the more advanced structural engineering classes yet, but if he was any judge, the place was a complete loss.
Ariadne’s aircycle was sitting in the middle of the square, but she herself was nowhere in sight. Her string, by contrast, was everywhere. Silver Paladin was whipping by so fast he was no more than a metallic blur, extracting book lovers with no taste in shopping venues from the ruined building.
Pat considered the chaos at Taliesin, the City Hall’s roof, Ariadne’s abandoned aircycle, and the awesomeness of BadMadRad, and came up with ‘what the hell, go for it’.
If wishes were serpents, we’d all rule the world, as Pat’s mom used to say.