Please Don't Tell My Parents I Have A Nemesis

by Richard Roberts

  Entropy, claws sheathed again, gave Spider a glare. “Can the children clear out, now?”

  Sue, puffing like she’d run a marathon, stared at her shaking hands. She nearly keeled over when Marcia tackled her, but got lifted up into the air and shaken in a gleeful hug instead.

  “You were unbelievable! Did you ever guess you had that kind of power?” Marcia squealed.

  “Did I… what?” Sue asked, wheezing from the tightness of Marcia’s grip.

  She did not get put down. The mix of angry stubbornness and deranged glee on Marcia’s face, not to mention her back bent posture, combined to be nearly as surreal as the fight we’d witnessed. Through gritted teeth, she crowed, “These are your shadow power peers, my best girl, and you went toe to toe with the two strongest! How does that feel?”

  “You planned this?!” Sue squeaked.

  Marcia dropped Sue back onto her feet, and gave her best friend a beaming, guiltless smile. “Yep. Feel good about yourself, now?”

  “Yes. I… yes!” Wide-eyed bogglement became Sue flinging her arms around Marcia’s neck, and clinging to her with eyes blissfully closed. And were those, maybe, tears forming at the corners of her eyes? If so, they didn’t develop enough to run down her cheeks.

  Robot Penny beat me to asking, “How could you possibly have planned that? She Who Wots can do practically anything. How did you know she’d pick shadow attacks?”

  From the pocket of her battered jeans, Marcia pulled out a card. I’d seen them before, white card stock with elegant ink calligraphy. The fortuneteller machine upstairs dispensed them, and they were always true.

  This one said:

  Yes.

  I gaped at it. Then I gaped at Marcia, who deserved some gaping.

  And then I laughed. “Ha! HA HA HA HA HA! AH HA HA HA HA HA HA!”

  Eventually, my glee subsided to human levels. I swept back my braids, and let out a deep sigh. “That was fun, but can we do something next that won’t put us in danger of summary execution or having our consciousnesses ripped from our flesh and flung into alien dimensions of eternal darkness?”

  “And can you hurry up?” grumbled Entropy.

  Sue, smiled more honestly than I’d ever seen, if still a bit groggy. “I might need to visit those dimensions.”

  “Let’s show Sue and Robot Penny the fortune teller machine next!” Marcia shouted, dragging Sue towards the door.

  I stepped shoulder to shoulder with Mecha-Me, and gave her an inquisitive look. She answered it by whispering, “I’ll contact you when I’m ready for round two. Until then, the longer this drags out, the less we both miss Ray and Claire.”

  Cassie clapped us both on the shoulder, and pushed us towards the door. I didn’t mind. Her dedication to platonic social interaction was wearing my anxieties down.

  I’m good at making friends. It was a strange thing to realize, at that moment, like those kids from regular human families who suddenly develop super powers when they hit adolescence.

  woke up the next morning feeling good. An occasional night like last night might keep loneliness at bay until Ray and Claire got back.

  After I obtained the necessary clothing and cleanliness, including submitting to the attentions of Dad’s latest hair braiding marvel, I made the long and arduous journey to the kitchen. Alas, this was not one of those lucky mornings where food had been prepared for me. I contemplated the Egg Machine, but decided the appetite I’d woken up with demanded more immediate solutions. So, with a brief side trip to start the toaster, I made myself a bowl of cold cereal.

  Amidst my satisfied crunching, I heard Dad ask from the hallway, “How’d it go last night, Pumpkin?”

  Note to Penny: Remember how many times Dad used the P word last night. You were too distracted to present your bill.

  Second Note to Penny: Do not flub this question.

  The carefully limited truth had gotten me this far. My parents thought I was hiding normal teenage stuff. “It was great. Cassie was great. As long as we watched her like a hawk so she didn’t get us all killed, even Marcia was great. Chinatown is a circus. Supervillains are seriously weird. I mean, heroes are friendly. Villains are so friendly it’s creepy.”

  From somewhere else in the house, Mom barked with laughter. “The job invites extreme personalities. The villain side even more than the hero side.”

  Mom walked in, buttered my toast, flipped it onto my plate, and set her own to cooking, all with her usual inhuman efficiency. She sat with her own cereal by the time Dad called out, “What are your plans for the day?”

  Between bites of whatever mysterious brand of flake my parents bought this week, I answered, “Probably nothing much.”

  “If you want quality time with your parents, let us know. I have analysis work today, but it’s low priority.” Which would be why he was back in his laboratory, and not in his office. “Echo and Man of Courage think the incident at your school a few days ago was Organism One.”

  I shook my head, even though Dad couldn’t see me. “Naah. It was Bad Penny. That’s why I picked that spot to fight her.”

  He sounded amused. “I agree. She’s a known tech thief. The machine she used was so advanced because she stole it. Probably from an old stockpile no one else has found.”

  Mom gave an affirmative nod. “The sub-basement level of Los Angeles is riddled with the storerooms and workshops of superheroes and villains now dead or otherwise inactive. Ninety-three percent are empty, but that still leaves a thirty percent chance that the vast majority of her tech comes from one such vault. If that’s not the case, there’s an eighty-seven percent chance she’s trading―”

  “You’re getting a little off track, love!” Dad warned.

  “Blood sugar,” came her answer, and she dug into her breakfast.

  Dad picked back up his side of the conversation. “I don’t know what they think I can do. There’s not a lot of evidence to go on, unless these spheres Man of Courage recovered turn out to contain elaborate microstructures. That’s pretty unlikely.”

  Mom raised her spoon, unable to resist that one. “Reliable probabilities are impossible to calculate, due to lack of analogous cases. I hope you’re performing your tests with full hazardous material protections.”

  “I am. Organism One could conceal dangerous technology in a stick of butter.”

  Mom rattled off dutifully, “November 23, 1992, the supermarket mutation outbreak incident. Initially blamed on the Third Horseman, because it was during the Horsemen’s campaign of terror. No known follow-up. Common consensus is that the effect was too scattershot to serve Organism One’s conquest goals.”

  I paused halfway through a slice of toast to snort a laugh. “Last night was great, but it wore me out. I just want to rest and be alone. Maybe play computer games all day.”

  “A healthy reaction for a highly social introvert,” observed Mom.

  Dad sounded a bit more concerned. “I’m glad you’re getting along with the Bradley girl, but I’m not thrilled with her connection to Mourning Dove.”

  Sue mentioned that last night. Swallowing the last of my toast, I said, “Mourning Dove doesn’t seem so bad.”

  ERROR. ERROR. You just let slip that you know Mourning Dove, Penelope!

  I tried to cover with a drink of milk and an innocent, “Ruthless, sure, but she’s all about fighting evil, right?”

  Yeah. That sounded like I was relying on general knowledge.

  It seemed to work. Mom gave me an affectionate pat on the head. “I hate to say this, but you’ll understand when you’re older. It’s not that you’re too young to understand, it’s that you don’t see how dangerous and broken some people are until you’ve interacted with them a number of times.”

  Wagging my spoon from side to side, I processed that out loud. “So, public opinion is that she’s dangerous, people who know her a little think she’s on the side of good, people who actually know her think she’s scary, so maybe actual close friends would think she’s good again?”
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  “There aren’t any of those,” Mom answered grimly. “And she’s been seen with Marcia lately, and Bad Penny. In fact, she’s been seen with multiple Bad Pennies. The link between Marcia, Mourning Dove, and Bad Penny could cause difficulties for you.”

  In a much lighter tone, Dad corrected, “Or, when you settle this feud, you and Bad Penny might become friends. Stranger things have happened.”

  Mom smirked. “In our community? Frequently.”

  “We’re pressuring her, honey. Let her relax.”

  I took that as my signal and filed my dish ware into the washing machine before wandering back to my room and my computer.

  For the rest of the day, I did glorious, relaxing nothing. It was a little awkward going online and knowing I wouldn’t see Ray and Claire. I finished Little Reaper Girl, then looked up the possible endings online. Seriously? Losing her whole family was the good ending? That made me look up the actual historical event.

  Wow. I was used to computer games exaggerating death counts. No one fighter ever personally kills a hundred enemies in combat, especially in one day. Except in this case. Descriptions from the witnesses who entered the palace first when the dome covering it unsealed were too gory for me to read comfortably.

  After that, to cleanse my mental palate, I reread Sentient Life. Owning the whole, fat stack of graphic novels felt good, and reading about V3R4 and Delph sailing the void together spawned intense bittersweet emotions now that I knew Vera and Polly Icarus were out exploring the ocean.

  Only while drifting off to sleep did it occur to me that Mom and Dad kept finding out things I would rather they not know.

  By the time I got fully up and about the next morning, it seemed irrelevant. WhenI finished my breakfast, Dad got up, reheated some lasagna, and took it into his office to eat. A minute later, he said, “Pumpkin? I have something you might like to see.”

  I wandered over, pausing to hold up three fingers and point at the Pumpkin jar. Dad got up from his chair, and dropped a green ball into my hands as he put three bills into the jar.

  I held it up to my eye. “And this is?” Knowing perfectly well the answer.

  “Plastic, that one with bands of zinc and lead. They’re identical to a normal marble, but with different ingredients.”

  Well, that was what I told the Machine to do. With a lopsided smile, I asked, “These came from the Bad Penny incident?”

  “They did. And so far, they are what they look like. Marbles made out of common materials like you might find in any computer. I have a few more tests, but there aren’t many more surprises they could be hiding.” He seemed pretty amused by it.

  The kitchen door opened and Mom came in. She’d already been out and returned while Dad and I lazed around. Beaming with satisfaction, she called over to us, “I have a surprise for you, Penny!”

  Abandoning my equally shiftless father to his meal, I wandered my shiftless self over to the kitchen to hear this surprise.

  Mom laid a hand on my shoulder, radiating pride. “I’ve made arrangements for you to accompany Marvelous a couple of times for crime fighting.”

  Dad spun in his chair to look at us. “She agreed?”

  Watching me eagerly for my reaction, Mom said, “She did! She would have taken Penny on as an actual sidekick, but that wouldn’t be healthy at fourteen. This is so you can get a taste of what the job is actually like. I trust by now that you’re good enough at avoiding getting hurt.”

  Criminy.

  Buckets.

  I’d fought Marvelous. Mom had never seen a good video of me fighting. Ifrit was hardly more than a kid himself. Marvelous was a pro, with two, three years under her belt. We’d fought seriously, and after I learned what I was doing. If I did battle next to her, she would recognize me. Would she be willing to keep my cover because telling my parents would be getting personal? Could she succeed if she tried?

  Second criminy. Maybe I’d overreacted. Being recognized was not a sure thing, just a risk I didn’t want to take. But I’d blundered into a much, much worse mistake.

  Mom, waiting to see me be happy, saw me panic instead. There were no reasonable explanations for this reaction, no teenage awkwardness that could account for it. Worse, I was still panicking. I couldn’t stop. Ice pumped through my veins, and knowing I couldn’t hide my fear kept me afraid.

  Damage control, Penny. Act confused. That would not be hard, and might keep Mom guessing. “That sounds… I never expected that. Am I ready? I hadn’t even considered I’d get to―”

  And then Dad interrupted. “Beebee, a wildfire has started up near Santa Barbara.”

  Oh, thank Tesla. A distraction. Good luck came out of nowhere the same as bad luck.

  Mom, scowled in concern and focused on Dad. “It’s been a dry summer. That could be bad.”

  “It is bad. It’s spreading as fast as the worst case scenarios, right now.”

  Mom barked questions. “Community response? How near is it to an inhabited area?”

  “I don’t want to wait to find out.”

  Mom nodded. “Your fire-fighting kit is in the garage. I’ll monitor from here, but the experts can calculate what to do better than I can.”

  “Penny, do you want to go?” Dad asked.

  The sudden return of attention to me produced mental whiplash. “Wha?”

  All serious now, Audit style blank and unreadable, Mom looked down at me again. “You wanted to be a hero. This is what we do. Save people. Whether your powers can help or not, you’re welcome to go with Brian and try.”

  My thoughts scrambled to catch up. This… I was still afraid, but I had no doubts what to do about this fear. “Yes. I want to try.”

  Dad set his computer to shut down and rushed over to give Mom a kiss on the cheek. “I’ll finish analyzing the marbles when I get home. It’s not like they were important.”

  “When you do, I’d like you to take a more detailed look at the blueprint blocks Penny made for her Machine, as well,” she said, all bland as if that wasn’t a pronunciation of doom.

  I was a little vague on the next few minutes of packing stuff in the car. Dad put the ‘superhero business’ sign in the windshield, which let us use the carpool and other restricted lanes on our way North. Even with those privileges, this would be an hour and a half drive up the coast. I had other things on my mind.

  When my cover fell apart, it would happen fast. I’d always known that. My parents’ ignorance balanced on a precarious tower of things they didn’t know, a couple of convincing but false facts, and mostly the giant unlikelihood that I had developed, before I turned fourteen, the strongest mad scientist super power in centuries.

  Eventually, Mom would learn something that knocked over that house of cards. It had finally happened. What was it? Analyzing my blueprints would bust me, for sure. They looked like they fit into the mechanical theme my parents thought I had, but only on the surface. The radio they could build didn’t run entirely on clockwork, that’s for sure.

  Had Mom become curious when I used that radio to swamp local transmissions? Was asking me about Marvelous a test? Did I give myself away with my reactions to Chinatown? Did she hear that Bad Penny’s marbles were made out of recycled computer parts, and ask herself who had the world’s best recycler? Maybe seeing Bad Penny operate without Reviled and E-Claire did it. Claire’s shapeshifting had been one of the biggest smokescreens keeping me safe, I knew that.

  Whatever tipped her off, Mom knew. Or… no, she didn’t know. Not yet. She didn’t even suspect, because Mom didn’t work like that. If my being Bad Penny stopped being a statistical outlier, she would already have acted. What she knew was that there she had missed something important. She was no longer giving me healthy space. She had started searching for that anomaly, and she would find it.

  I needed to get ahold of Robot Penny, fast. We had run out of time.

  I looked up. Above the brown, sunbaked hills behind Santa Barbara, hovered a brown sky, a dark stain against the blue. June Gloom had
parted today, only to be replaced by this nightmarish blot on nature’s beauty.

  That certainly put my problems into perspective.

  We were still far from the fire. What an incredible amount of smoke.

  Dad pulled into a rest stop parking lot, far too early. We were still miles away.

  While I goggled, Dad opened up the trunk of the car and pulled out his old hoversled.

  Wow. I hadn’t seen that thing in forever. Years. I’d forgotten he even had it. This time, I was old enough to ask an important question. “How does this work?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, between grunts. The sled required a lot of unfolding, not to mention transferring our bags.

  While I helped with the latter, I scolded, “Oh, come on. They call you the Brain because you know.”

  He gave me a smirk. Kind of a grim smirk. That stain in the sky stained our emotions as well. But my skepticism got an answer. “The sled is based on a technology of unidentified metal and carbon microstructures that generate greater push when fed energy than the power supplied. We found this material in the relics of a mad scientist who disappeared in 1910, along with the only machine capable of making more. It gets stolen every five minutes, so there’s no telling who owns it now. It may look like free energy, but in physics terms, it certainly isn’t. The side effects are catastrophically destructive. I took analysis by other people charting power generated and destruction caused, and applied that math to design microscopic spinning rings that maximize efficiency while preventing cascade reactions that might cause a hurricane or rip open a new fault line. They’re more like jagged stars than rings. Once you run the math, efficiency is rarely as pretty and geometric as people think.”