The Sidekicks Initiative

by Barry J. Hutchison

  “Then you don’t have to worry, because it isn’t rubber,” Chuck told her.

  “No, right. No. But it’s like rubber,” Anna said, giving it another poke as if to demonstrate. “Are you saying it’s breathable and that chafing won’t be an issue?”

  “I’m saying it’s a state-of-the-art, multi-million-dollar supersuit developed by our top scientists using materials I’m not even sure originate from this planet,” Chuck said. “So yes, I’m guessing they made it breathable.”

  “You’re guessing…” said Anna.

  “I don’t like it,” Randy snarled, regarding his outfit with contempt. “Where’s the cape? Where’s the symbol? Where’s the… pizazz?”

  Sam raised a hand. “I’m fine without the pizazz,” he said. “Just putting that out there on the record.”

  “It ain’t about pizazz. It’s about getting the damn job done,” said Chuck. “Those outfits will make you all faster, stronger, it’ll let you absorb more punishment—hell, it’ll even help you heal any damage you do take.”

  “It will also help you focus your abilities,” Mari chimed in. “Something you might find particularly useful, Sam.”

  Sam glanced around at the robot, then turned his attention back to the suit. “I don’t need help with that,” he said.

  Anna snorted. “Yeah, right. I literally haven’t seen you do anything yet. What even is your power? I mean, Kid Random. I always thought maybe you had, like, gadgets or something? Little tricks, or whatever.” Her brow furrowed. “But, come to think about it, I don’t think I ever saw you do anything. Power-wise, I mean.”

  She jabbed a thumb to her right. “Even Randy conjured up some butterflies when we were fighting the henchmen.”

  “You’re damn right I did,” Randy hissed. “Wait, what do you mean ‘even Randy’?”

  “You know what I mean. No offense,” said Anna. “You magicked up a few butterflies. I’m just saying, it was impressive. But not, like, wow, you know?”

  Randy squared up to her. “I’d like to see you produce an army of butterflies out of thin air,” he spat.

  “It was, like, eight butterflies,” said Anna.

  “It was twelve! Twelve butterflies! From nowhere.”

  “They were inside your cape,” said Chuck.

  Randy hesitated. The others looked at him in silence. “Or were they?” he whispered, after a while.

  “Yes. They were,” Chuck confirmed.

  Anna and Sam both turned all the way around to face Randy.

  “They were in your cape? So… wait. What powers do you have, exactly?” Anna demanded. “Or am I the only one here who can actually do anything?”

  “I have all the skills and abilities of the noble butterfly!” Randy hissed, bubbles of spit forming between his teeth. “Apart from the flying or being small, as I previously explained.”

  “Right—”

  “Or the stuff about caterpillars,” Randy added.

  “So, what does that leave?” asked Sam.

  Randy didn’t answer right away. Not out loud, anyway, although the way his lips moved suggested he was running through some options.

  “Confidence,” he said, in his usual growl.

  “Confidence isn’t a superpower,” Anna pointed out.

  “It’s kind of a superpower.”

  “Nah. It isn’t,” Anna insisted.

  “Oh! Wait! I know another one!” Randy yelped. He waved his hands in front of his face in what was presumably meant to be a mysterious manner and side-stepped in closer to his mannequin. “Camouflage,” he whispered.

  Sam cleared his throat. “We can still see you, Randy.”

  There was some shuffling.

  “How about now?”

  “We still see you,” Anna said. “I mean, you’re standing right there.”

  Randy tutted and stepped out from behind the mannequin. “Fine,” he grunted. There was a clack as he untied his belt, then a rustle as his jeans fell down around his ankles. “Give me the damn suit.”

  Chuck scraped his top teeth across his bottom lip, like he was stopping himself saying something he’d later regret. Instead, he forced something that wasn’t quite a smile, but was somewhere in the same ballpark.

  “I thought we’d grab lunch first,” he said. “Those things cost millions. I don’t want you spilling tuna salad down the front on the first day.”

  “Great! I am starving,” said Anna. “There’ll be wine, right? Can’t be lunchtime without wine.”

  “There’s kind of wine,” Chuck said, as he and Mari led the way toward the door. “It’s non-alcoholic.”

  “It’s what? What does that even mean? ‘Non-alcoholic’?” Anna demanded, hurrying after them. “Is that an actual thing? That can’t be an actual thing.”

  Sam didn’t follow right away. Instead, he ran his fingers across the chest of his outfit, and felt his skin tingle where they touched.

  “Can I let you in on a secret?” Randy whispered.

  Sam blinked, as if being awoken from a dream. “Huh? Oh. Yeah, go for it.”

  Randy leaned in closer, staring into Sam’s eyes with a fiery intensity. “I hate tuna salad,” he said.

  He eyeballed Sam for a moment, really driving his point home. Then, after bending to pull up his pants, Randy headed off after the others.

  “Yeah,” said Sam, giving the suit one last look. “Me, too.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  The wind whispered between the shining glass towers of Cityopolis and whistled around the four figures perched on the roof of an old brownstone near the heart of the downtown district.

  “I don’t think this is a good idea,” said Sam, tugging on the crotch of his costume in an attempt to stop it cutting him in two. “We’re not ready for this.”

  Kapitän Nazi stood at the head of the group, one foot on the small raised wall running around the roof’s edge. He leaned forward, giving him a clear view of the alleys and streets below. One good push would be enough to send him over the drop, Sam thought. That was all it would take.

  Of course, there was no saying it would actually hurt him, but it would at least give Sam a fleeting moment of satisfaction as he watched the bastard fall.

  “This will make you ready,” said Nazi, not looking back.

  One push. Just one.

  “Hey, wait a minute!” said Anna, her voice rising to an indignant yelp. “Why is my suit the only one with nipples?”

  “Huh?” said Sam, turning to look. He felt himself blush behind his mask. Unfortunately, as the mask covered nothing but his eyes, this was clear for everyone to see. “Oh, um. Uh.”

  “Your suit doesn’t have nipples. Randy’s suit doesn’t have nipples!”

  “To be fair, Randy doesn’t have nipples either,” Sam pointed out.

  “I don’t want nipples!” Anna protested. “What am I going to be doing, breastfeeding criminals into submission?”

  “I highly doubt that’d be effective,” Randy growled. He studied her breasts. “If it’s any consolation, those are some nice nipples.”

  “That’s not any consolation, no. That’s the opposite of consolation,” Anna told him. “You’ve just made it creepy and weird.”

  Sam tried not to look. “Do they… I don’t know, do they maybe do something?”

  “Do my nipples do something?” Anna scoffed. She twiddled them both in turn. Despite his best efforts, Sam found his eyes drawn to this, so he forced himself to turn away. “No. They don’t seem to be doing anything special. They’re just big old rubber nipples!”

  Randy shook his head. “Big old organic biopolymer nipples,” he corrected.

  “Shut the fuck up, Randy,” Anna muttered, almost absentmindedly.

  After they’d suited up, Sam had been expecting another session in the training room. He’d almost been looking forward to taking another crack at Kapitän Nazi, in the hope of maybe kicking the crap out of the guy this time, or at least getting in a couple of solid punches.

  Instead, N
azi had suggested accelerating their training by taking them out into the city. Chuck had seemed reluctant at first, but for a mass-murdering super powered fascist, the Kapitän could be pretty persuasive when he wanted to be.

  And so now here they were, hanging around on a rooftop, waiting for trouble. Chuck had given clear instructions that they had to avoid any interactions with supervillains, so the trouble they were waiting on was of the low-level variety. Sam took a little comfort from that.

  Not a lot, but a little.

  “Any sign of anything happening?” asked Anna, stepping closer to the edge and looking down at the street below. It was a narrow side-street, with scuffed and dented ten-year-old cars parked along the whole length of it on one side. The shining towers of uptown cast the whole place into gloomy shadow, and in that shadow, crime could always be found.

  Or almost always. Today, it seemed, crime was taking a vacation.

  “We’ve been up here for over two hours,” Sam complained. He adjusted the crotch of his suit again and shook the tingling out of his legs.

  “Told you, you should’ve ditched the underwear,” Randy said. He squatted a couple of times, demonstrating the freedom of movement he enjoyed around his own groin area.

  “I’m not going commando,” Sam said.

  “You don’t know what you’re missing,” Randy said. He cupped a hand to his ear. “Hear that? That’s the sound of my balls breathing.”

  Sam turned his attention back to the city. He shuffled a little closer to the edge of the roof, but stopped at what he felt was a safe distance from it. “Can you see anything yet?” he asked.

  Kapitän Nazi shook his head. “Not yet. Give it time.”

  “We’ve given it time,” Sam pointed out. “A lot of time. Too much time, if anything.”

  Randy stepped past him and jumped right up onto the ledge. He stopped with his toes sticking out over the drop, and Sam felt his heart leap into his mouth just at the thought of it.

  “Jesus, Randy, what are you doing? Get down!” Sam yelped.

  “God, you’re so uptight. Just like your balls in that suit. I have an idea,” Randy growled. He placed his fingers to his temples. “Butterfly King’s subjects will be our eyes. I’ll link up with every butterfly in the city. I’ll see what they see, know what they know. If there’s trouble afoot, we’ll find it.”

  Anna looked almost impressed. “You can do that?”

  “You bet I can, Nips,” Randy replied. He had forgone his suit’s mask in favor of his leather flying hat, and gave Anna a wink through the goggles.

  “Did he… Did you just call me ‘Nips’?”

  “Silence!” Randy barked, closing his eyes. “I’m concentrating.”

  Randy stood there for several seconds, the cape he had insisted on safety-pinning onto his outfit fluttering gently in the wind.

  “Aha!” he cried.

  “Get something?” asked Sam.

  “Shh. Concentrating.”

  Several more seconds passed, during which Randy made a few further announcements, including a “Well, well, well” two, “What have we here’s?” and one pretty definitive, “Gotcha!”

  At last, he opened his eyes and jumped back down onto the rooftop proper, grinning from ear to ear.

  “Well?” asked Nazi.

  “Hmm? Oh. No, I got nothing,” said Randy.

  Sam and Anna exchanged looks. “Nothing?” asked Sam.

  “Then what was all that ‘Aha!’ and ‘Ooh!’ stuff about?” Anna demanded.

  Randy shrugged. “I mean there was nothing going on crime-wise. But I saw some pretty interesting stuff.”

  “Like what?” Anna asked, intrigued despite herself.

  “Like people walking,” Randy said. “Cars. A woman with a dog.”

  Anna sighed. “That’s it?”

  “There are only, like, three butterflies in the whole city,” Randy explained. “To be honest, it’s not really their natural environment.”

  Not for the first time, Sam was about to suggest they pack up and go back to base, when Kapitän Nazi raised a clenched fist above his head, calling for silence.

  “What is it? You see something?” Anna whispered.

  Nazi nodded. “Down there. By the garage door,” he said.

  Anna and Randy rushed back to the edge and followed the Kapitän’s gaze. Sam hung back a little, standing on his tiptoes to try to see over them.

  “What is it?” he asked. “What’s happening?”

  “Looks like a good old-fashioned granny mugging,” Randy spat. He punched a fist into the opposite palm. “I make two guys!”

  Anna side-eyed him. “Well, there’s four of them, so...”

  “Where?” Randy demanded.

  Anna pointed.

  “Hmm?” Randy frowned. “Oh. Yeah. There’s four. I thought those other two were reflections in that mirror.”

  “Why would they be…? What mirror?” Anna asked. She shook her head, dismissing the questions before any answers could be given. “Forget it, I don’t care. What do we do?”

  “I know what I’m going to do,” Randy announced. He stepped up onto the ledge again and held his cape out behind him. “I’m going in for the superhero landing.”

  “We’re four floors up,” Anna pointed out. “You’ll shatter your spine. Like that other guy did. Back in the day. What was his name?”

  “Powerfist.”

  “No, afterward,” said Anna. “He changed it.”

  “Oh. Wheeled Warrior.”

  “Right! That was him,” said Anna. “Thanks, that would’ve bugged me for the rest of the day.”

  Kapitän Nazi gave a shake of his head. “The suit will protect him and prevent him breaking anything. He should be fine.”

  “Of course he won’t be fine!” Sam protested. “Suit or no suit, that’s too long a drop. Even if he doesn’t cripple himself he’ll hurt his knees.”

  “I’m doing it. For justice!” Randy announced. He lifted a foot and looked around to Sam as he stepped off into thin air. “Fuck my knees!”

  There came four seconds of silence, broken eventually by a thump.

  “Fuck!” came a strangled cry from below. “My knees!”

  “I told him. I told him that would happen,” Sam said. “Never do the superhero landing. It’s asking for trouble.”

  Anna winced. “Ooh. Looks like those guys have seen him. They’re coming over. He’s going to need help.”

  She and Sam both looked to Kapitän Nazi. It took him a moment to realize. “What are you staring at me for?” he asked. “I’m not the one in the supersuit. This is the whole point of us being out here. Go.”

  Sam wrung his gloved hands. “Shit. Shit, shit, shit,” he muttered, then he drew in a sharp breath and nodded. “How do we get down?”

  “Jump,” Nazi suggested.

  “Fuck off! ‘Jump,’” Anna yelped. “We just saw what happened when he jumped.”

  “He didn’t bend his knees when he landed,” Nazi explained. “You have to bend your knees properly. Don’t do the superhero landing thing. It looks impressive, but it’s murder on the joints.”

  Anna shot him a scowl, then hurried for the corner of the building. “Drainpipe,” she announced. “We’ll take that.”

  “OK! OK! You do that,” said Sam, backing toward the rooftop’s only door. “I’ll take the stairs and surprise them by coming out through the front door.”

  Anna paused. “How will that surprise them?”

  “I’ll, uh, I’ll jump out. Like—wargh!” Sam said.

  “Oh yeah, that’ll do it,” Anna conceded, although there was a very real possibility that she did so sarcastically. “They won’t see that coming.”

  If she said more, Sam didn’t hear it. Pulling open the unlocked rooftop door, he plunged down the narrow staircase beyond, then raced onto a wider but more dilapidated-looking second staircase that wound down the center of the apartment block in a series of right turns.

  Two floors down, Sam considered droppi
ng through the stairwell gap, but the ground still seemed too far away, so he pressed on running and settled for jumping the two steps at the bottom of each set, instead.

  At last, he reached the bottom. Lining himself up with the door, he took a few seconds to compose himself. This largely involved him trembling from head to toe and groaning, “What the hell am I doing?” a few times.

  After concluding that he didn’t really know what he was doing, but that he was going to do it anyway, Sam charged for the door. He emerged with a surprising, “Wargh!” just as planned, only to find an empty street waiting for him. There was no sign of Randy or the muggers anywhere.

  It was around this point that Sam realized he’d come out through the wrong door. Turning, he raced back through the graffiti-stained lobby, raised his fists, then barreled out through the other exit.

  He smacked straight into the broad back of a shockingly large man wearing gang colors. Sam wasn’t sure which gang the colors represented, but he was pretty certain it didn’t matter. It wasn’t like there was a friendly, considerate gang going around helping people out. Whatever street tribe these colors represented, it was bad news.

  The man-mountain turned. This took some time. Sam was dismayed to see the guy held a long piece of jagged metal in one of his enormous bear paw-like hands.

  “Dafuq you supposed to be?” the giant demanded. His face was pitted with old acne scars that creased together when he scowled.

  Randy was on the ground just on the other side of the big guy, two other men and one heavyset woman all looming over him.

  “You shouldn’t have come. I’ve totally got this,” Randy wheezed, but the way the bottom half of his left leg was pointing in a completely different direction to the top suggested to Sam that this probably wasn’t the case.

  Sam took a deep breath. The squirming shape in his head didn’t so much as flicker.

  “Back away you, uh, punks,” he warned.

  The three other gang members exchanged puzzled looks. The largest of the four bared his yellow and gold teeth. “What did you say?”

  “You heard me,” said Sam, hoping they didn’t pick up on the croak in his voice. “Back off. Leave him alone.”

  “We ain’t done nothin’ to him,” spat the woman.