by Alex Gabriel
Her hair was fretting at itself, individual locks twisting around each other. Pat had never seen it do that before. It distracted him enough that when she began to speak again, it took several seconds for the meaning of her words to filter through to his brain. “Time flies by so quickly. Only yesterday you were the tiniest, most cutely dappled of eggs… and today you’re all grown up and seducing the foremost hoagies of your generation to our side.”
Pat’s startled jerk went unnoticed. His mother was watching Nick hover in the air with his arms crossed and his shoulders squared, radiating an aggressive heroism that (to Pat) spoke clearly of his uncertainty.
Maybe Serpentissima saw it, too, and deemed it an opportunity too good to be missed. Or maybe she’d simply had enough of being sentimental. Whatever the reason, she shook her head in her habitual impatient manner, dismissing all distractions. When she leaned down to put a firm hand on Pat’s shoulder, no trace of nostalgia remained in her expression; she was all challenger, fierce as the ancient statues of lost gods. “You have hooked him with your wiles, my son. Now, it is imperative that you keep him happy and interested while we draw him gradually further in. Ask your Serpent Sluts to teach you some tricks.”
“Mom!” Pat sounded scandalized, probably because he was. Usually he’d have been embarrassed about that, but right now it was pretty much the only option. “That’s not — I haven’t hooked him. I mean, it’s not like that. I’m not involved with him because — just, I like him, okay? That’s why I’m seeing him. I like him, period. No wiles here, nothing to see, move along.”
Serpentissima chuckled evilly as she pulled him into a headlock. It was the affectionate kind, complete with friendly cuddling and ruffling of hair. “Ah, there’s my sweet, naive little hatchling. Of course you like him, Patpat. That’s the best part! Silver Paladin is not such a fool as to fall for a lie or an obvious scheme. Subconscious cunning is the most dangerous kind of all.”
Subconscious cunning, seriously? “That’s not even a real thing!” Pat sputtered.
“How would you know?”
There was no good way to answer that, so Pat gaped at his mother while she grinned smugly. Even when her features smoothed into cool haughtiness as she rose to her full height, snapping her fingers to dismiss the Veil, the smugness lurked on in the corners of her mouth and the glint of her eye.
Honestly, some days it was rough being the Dread Serpent’s son.
He trailed after her moodily as she moved back to square off against Silver Paladin once again. Nick was taking the interruption with more grace than Pat would have expected; it wasn’t exactly the done thing to run off for private discussions in the middle of showdowns. For good reason, too. It ruined the dramatic tension, for one thing. For another, it was just plain rude.
If he’d been able to catch Nick’s eye, Pat would have mouthed a ‘sorry, dude’ at him. Even if it hadn’t been for the stupid visor, though, the way Nick was hovering announced that he was demonstratively not looking at Pat. Pat would have liked to believe the man just didn’t want to be distracted from a dangerous foe, but even he wasn’t that oblivious.
“Once again, all of my best-laid plans are to come to naught,” boomed Serpentissima. Her voice ripped through the throne room like despair given sound. “A curse on your house, and a curse on mine! In the end, even the mightiest kingdoms fall to dust, crushed beneath the weight of time and entropy. What is life, what is all earthly power but a candle flickering in the storm, waiting for the moment when its feeble, transient light is extinguished, giving way to endless night?”
Several pigeons appeared in a wild flutter, flapping frantically about before managing to escape through the hole in the roof. Pat would have applauded Serpentissima’s impromptu (if mostly nonsensical) speech, but he was too cross with her. He hoped Mom noticed the lack of applause, and felt suitably chastened.
Silence fell. An oblivious pigeon with no sense of dramatic timing cooed softly from just outside the cavern, accompanied by a tiny trickle of dirt sifting down.
“Excuse me if I am being dense,” said Silver Paladin into the dramatic almost-silence, slowly and rather suspiciously. “Do I understand correctly that as of this moment, you are abandoning your plans for world domination?”
Pat perked up immediately, because — yes, of course! That was what she’d said, wasn’t it? And it made sense, too. Mom could hardly expect Nick to abandon his principles so quickly and so completely that he’d go over to her side while she was making an active bid for power. If she was serious about wanting to draw him in, she had to lower the inhibition threshold. Ergo…
“You understand perfectly, Silver Paladin.” Serpentissima sounded grudging. Her stance was losing some of its majesty, the aura of terrible power around her dissipating. Her sigh was entirely non-majestic, too; there weren’t even any echoes. “There is no help for it, frustrating and unsatisfying though it is. I suppose I must take comfort in the fact that my downfall has been orchestrated by my own treacherous hatchling — the littlest and yet most venomous snake in my nest.”
“The littlest and most venomous snake,” Nick repeated, flatly.
It wasn’t like there was much doubt who that referred to, but Pat grinned and waved anyway. His mood had taken a sharp upturn, and he barely stopped himself from throwing in a helpful “that’s me!”, just because. He did not stop himself from grinning like a loon. He felt light, almost giddy, as though a huge weight was lifting from his heart.
Sure, to say Serpentissima was ‘abandoning’ her plans was overstating the case. ‘Delaying’ would have been more accurate. But that was a minor quibble when you considered how amazingly well this was going. Nobody Pat cared for would have to be crushed beneath the wheels of anybody’s grand scheme any time soon. What more could he ask for, really?
“Are you serious?” asked Nick. It sounded like a genuine request for information.
Pat’s mom clicked her tongue in exasperation. It was a startlingly informal gesture, which she immediately one-upped by patting at her hair, pulling it into a more orderly shape when it would have writhed away. “Of course I am, youngling.” The hissing edges to her words had given way to a more mundane annoyance. “I can hardly take over the world under these circumstances. It would be in exceedingly bad taste to walk over the body of my son’s partner on the way to ultimate power.”
Partner…? Hang on now. Who’d said anything about partners? Pat and Nick hadn’t even had the boyfriend conversation yet, and partners were, like, the next stage of commitment after that.
But Pat’s protest lodged unspoken in his throat. If it led to a ceasefire, then it was all for the good if Mom thought he and Nick were more serious than they were. Right? It’d be dumb to try and convince her otherwise.
That was the only reason he didn’t correct his mom’s choice of words. Of course it was. It wasn’t that he felt a warm, possessive little thrill at the thought of Nick being his partner, for example, or that he actually couldn’t wait to introduce Nick to everyone he knew (and a bunch of random strangers besides) using that particular word. Of course it wasn’t. That would have been ridiculous.
Still. Pat couldn’t help but notice that Nick hadn’t objected to Serpentissima’s choice of words, either. Not that Pat was reading anything into that. Theoretically, he could just be choosing to be pragmatic about this, too, right? Anything to stop Serpentissima’s ascension.
The pigeon with no sense of dramatic timing had evidently found some dry leaves to traipse around in. The rustling was absurdly loud in the uneasy near-silence.
A moment later, Nick touched down several meters away. His force fields weren’t nearly as glowy when he wasn’t all powered up to fly; they still distorted the air around him, but far less so, making his expression easier to gauge. And visor or no visor, that looked a hell of a lot like wary caution shot through with suspicion, if Pat was any judge. (Which of course he was. In fact, he considered himself the world’s foremost expert on the facial expression
s of Nicholas Andersen.)
The visor flashed as Nick turned his face towards Pat. Pat and the distorted reflection of himself mirrored in the visor shared a long look. In Pat’s chest, something lurched unsteadily, painfully squeezing his heart.
It took half of a frozen, uncertain eternity, but finally Nick cleared his throat and turned to Serpentissima. “You are willing, then, to put aside your plans for world domination as well as any other ploys and schemes you might have been hatching?”
“I am,” Serpentissima replied at last. “Can you speak for the Hero Corps when you vow that there will be neither retribution nor other repercussions for me or any of mine for what has happened here today, and what has happened in days before?”
Silence… and then Nick moved.
Pat froze, caught between the impulse to duck and run for cover and the one to throw himself to the floor and hope for the best. Before he could do either, Nick flipped up his visor. Then, he just stood there, continuing to entirely fail to attack. “I can speak for the Hero Corps, and I do.”
Nick was: A, slightly flushed with exertion; B, evidently attempting to stab everyone in the throne room with his eyes; and C, utterly, stupidly perfect.
“You’re coming to dinner on Sunday, Silver Paladin,” Serpentissima ordered, hard and uncompromising. “Bring a mixed green salad. A large one — we’ll be seven people. And do mind you keep the dressing separate, and have several varieties on hand to account for different tastes.”
Family dinner. Mom was inviting (no, commanding) Nick to attend the traditional West family dinner!
It was absurdly easy to imagine how that would go down. His parents would interrogate Nick about how he’d met Pat, of course; his sisters would get a total kick out of playing at innocent ignorance, launching sly innuendos at whatever innocent and wholesome, parent-appropriate story Pat and Nick would have invented. Nick would stare at everyone like he was planning to murder them in their sleep, and judge them silently, and eat so much of Dad’s cooking that Dad would be totally won over. Pat’s family would get into passionate arguments sparked by Nick’s ice-breaking questions, and bombard Nick with questions about being rich, a genius inventor, and Silver Paladin. Zen would pester him for gossip about the famous people he knew, and Cea would make lewd jokes, and Hell would bait him with too much knowledge of Hero Corps secrets…
There’d be a lot of embarrassing stories about Pat, of course. Baby pictures, too; his mom would force Nick to coo over the infamous pic of little Hell grinning fit to burst while holding newly hatched baby Pat, who was wearing an eggshell-shaped hat and worrying at his blanket with his egg tooth.
Obviously, Nick would have to bring baby pictures of his own in self-defense. Then he could distract his tormentors with images of little Nick — already all serious and intense, frowning at the camera as though wondering what new incompetence he was going to be subjected to now; or maybe laughing with the gleeful, open-mouthed abandon of infants; or sleeping in a pile of stuffed animals wearing footie pyjamas…
Pat should probably try to stop beaming at some point. It seemed almost rude in a way, given that his mom was wearing a stern Mom-frown, disapproving of Nick’s lack of immediate acquiescence, while Nick was watching Pat’s mom as warily as though she was a poisonous snake that had suddenly appeared in his path. (It seemed like a pretty suitable way to think of the situation, really… and Pat was willing to bet very few people had a quick response ready for being asked to attend a family dinner by a poisonous snake. A giant one, at that.)
After another beat had passed, Nick slanted a quick sideways look Pat’s way, giving him the smallest, most brisk and businesslike of nods. It was no more than a minute lowering of the chin, but it was enough to make Pat’s heart skip giddily.
Pat was pretty sure his grin was bordering on the ridiculous by now. His cheeks were beginning to ache from the face-splitting intensity of it. He probably looked like a crazed maniac, not that he could bring himself to care.
In the stillness, the sound of Serpentissima’s brisk clap was as sudden and shocking as a gunshot. “It’s settled, then. I will expect you at 18 o’clock sharp.”
And Nick would be there. He hadn’t agreed in so many words, but Pat had no doubt he’d turn up on the West family doorstep right on time. His overgrown hoagie sense of duty — combined with good old-fashioned curiosity — would make sure of it. He had to keep an eye on whatever the Serpent Ascending was planning, right? A large bowl of green salad and a bunch of dressing seemed like a pretty good deal as the price of admission to the serpent’s inner sanctum. Especially since Nick would have his kitchen minions prepare it all, anyway.
Servants, that was. Servants, not minions. Nick was a superhero, and superheroes didn’t have minions, of course. Ahem.
Anyway: Shaping the world according to her wishes came naturally to Pat’s mom, as it did to all challengers worthy of the name. She was used to things happening as she wanted them to, and hardly paused before going on.
“I will call you Nicholas, and you must call me Serpentissima. No more of that formal Dread Serpent nonsense.” She swiveled gracefully to survey the shambles of her throne room, tutting and shaking her head. When she addressed Nick again, she spoke casually over one shoulder. Pat was sure the gesture wasn’t lost on Nick; he’d know it for the ritual demonstration of disarming that it was. “Be a dear and remove your incapacitated compatriots from my lair, Nicholas. As it turns out, I have no immediate use for decorative statues of vanquished foes. No doubt you’ll want to restore them to their usual state, so tomorrow, I will send four single-use thawing triggers to your house.” She paused before adding, delicately, “I do hope there will be no misunderstandings once everyone is restored. It would be so unfortunate if there were additional statues to contend with. I won’t be handing out additional thawing triggers, you understand.”
Personally, Pat felt that Nick’s lab would benefit from a crystallized hoagie or two to liven up the place. But yeah, Nick being Nick he’d be sure to thaw out all his friends just as soon as he could. And then he’d have to explain that the Hero Corps had made peace with Serpentissima while they were indisposed… the Hero Corps, as represented by Silver Paladin.
Wow, Pat so did not envy Nick the task of trying to reason with Star Knight. Or Nexus, for that matter.
Pat threw a speculative glance across the cavern, considering the frozen shape of the world’s best-known extraterrestrial immigrant hero. The man (or whatever) wouldn’t remain frozen for long, more was the pity, but while he was, there was an important question burning to be answered. Namely: Would permanent markers work on the hard surface of Hero’s Bane…?
Sweet visions of lewd graffiti limericks, snake bite marks with little trickles of ‘blood’ winding down, and/or heavy goth make-up danced before Pat’s inner eye. He tuned back in to current events just in time to realize that Nick was saying something, and Pat had already missed half of it.
“…that you will keep your promise? You will pardon me for not wishing to rely solely on something as insubstantial as words. What is to prevent you from continuing along your way to world domination as soon as I have left? Once you free your minions from Ariadne’s thread and your own crystal, you will once again be at full strength. Meanwhile, I will be left with the support of Captain Cool and a collection of stasis art.”
“Hey!” yelled Captain Cool from his forgotten corner. He didn’t say anything more (probably because Tom more or less threw himself on his face to shut him up), so Pat wasn’t sure whether he was protesting against the idea that he and Nick would need help to take down Serpentissima, or what.
Not that it mattered, since everyone ignored him, anyway.
A cool eternity passed while Serpentissima said nothing, rearing slowly back and up as she fixed Nick with an unreadable look. Surely she wasn’t going to take Nick’s lack of trust as an insult — surely she wouldn’t. Not when everything had been going so well. Not when Pat had already started wondering which
of his sisters to take Nick out with first, and whether it would be a stroke of brilliance or sheer lunacy to put Nick and Hell on the same team for paintball.
Pat felt a bit faint, and found that he had forgotten to breathe. The ragged gasp he gave as he drew in a too-hasty gulp of air was loud in the tense silence.
“Here’s an idea.” Serpentissima smiled slowly, evilly. The needle tips of her fangs caught the light, sparking maliciously. “Why don’t you take a hostage? My son, for example. He’ll just have to nip out and put on some proper clothes first.”
~~~~~
“Dude, I’d kill for a pizza right now. Do they serve good pizza here, d’you think?”
The couch shifted as someone dropped down heavily beside him. The fresh, musky scent of expensive shower gel wafted over Pat in a strangely pointed manner, as though to remind him that underneath his hastily thrown-on t-shirt, he himself was still oily, dusty and thoroughly unpresentable.
A word from Nick, and in ten to twenty minutes there’d be a selection of whatever kind of clothes Pat wanted — sweats or suits or kimonos or Star Knight uniform replicas. His own clothes, even, fetched from his apartment and laundered and pressed on the way here. Such was the power of the serving heart, backed by obscene amounts of money. Pat was fine with hanging out like this, though. Nick would just have to suck it up.
There oughta be a maxim for this… something like ‘hang out with wolves (snakes, whatever) and you get hair on your couch, sucker’.
“Fuck you,” said Nick, with considerable delay and without heat. He sounded just as tired as Pat felt.