The Sidekicks Initiative

by Barry J. Hutchison

  “You sure that’s a good idea, John?” Chuck asked, flicking his eyes to where the tables used to be. “He was pretty upset. He could hurt you.”

  Nazi gave a nod, then a vague, empty sort of smile. “And he’d be well within his rights to.”

  After some wandering, interspersed with a few bursts of stressed-out high-speed sprinting, Sam found himself in a part of the complex he’d never been in before. A series of lights clunked on as he entered, revealing a room that looked like some sort of museum, complete with glass display cases, framed photographs, and several person-sized lumps with white dust sheets draped protectively over them.

  A fanfare blared out from some concealed speakers—the familiar opening refrain of Doc Mighty’s theme tune from the blockbuster movie series based on his adventures.

  “Oh, great,” Sam muttered. He was partly annoyed because the movies had glamorized Mighty to a ludicrous degree while painting Sam himself as a buffoonish comic relief, before eventually killing him off in the third installment.

  Mostly, though, he was annoyed because he knew the tune would be stuck in his head for the rest of the day. He caught himself humming along to it, even now, and had to make a conscious effort to stop.

  The glass display cases each contained some slice of superhero history. Over there was Su Man Chu’s old utility belt. Fastened to the wall was the broken power staff of Thragulos, the Dark Sorceress who Memetzo, Mandroid Master of the Mystic Arts had defeated in magical combat on the peak of Mount… Somewhere or Other. It had been before any of the Platoon had taken on sidekicks, so Sam’s memory of it was based on old comic books and half-remembered stories told in the heat of battle.

  Sam had never understood Doc Mighty’s habit of monologuing during his battles. He’d loved nothing more than to wax lyrical while battling giant bog monsters, wrestling energy beings, or rescuing children from burning buildings. It had seemed to Sam that the Doc’s mind had always seemed wrapped up in past adventures, rather than on the one he was having right then.

  During these moments, Sam’s own internal monologue was usually saying nothing but, “Ohshitohshitohshitohshit!” and so he was hazy on some of the details of Mighty’s tales.

  He stopped at another display case. It contained two metal bracelets, and while he could dimly recall someone wearing them, he couldn’t quite place who it had been.

  “Mr. Atomic,” said Kapitän Nazi, appearing behind him.

  Sam didn’t turn or acknowledge that he’d even heard.

  “Battled the Justice Platoon with his radioactive powers,” Nazi continued. “He died in a hospice a few years back. All those battles and turns out the only thing he was truly wreaking havoc on was his own prostate.”

  The Kapitän shoved his hands down deep in the pocket of his hoodie and looked forlornly at the exhibits around them. “It all seems so silly now.”

  “Tell that to the people you killed,” Sam spat.

  Nazi nodded slowly. “Would but I could,” he said. He drew in a steadying breath. “I don’t remember. What I did to you, I mean. I don’t remember.”

  “I remember,” said Sam. “Every second of it.”

  “I’m sure you do. I am told I was exceptionally gifted when it came to… that sort of thing.”

  Sam’s hands shook. He clasped them together. “I can vouch for that.”

  Kapitän Nazi opened his mouth to reply, then closed it again. He looked down for a while, carefully formulating his response.

  “We were both sidekicks, in a way,” he said. “My mentor was not as… celebrated as yours. Not in the end, anyway. And rightly so. But he shaped me in his likeness. Instilled in me his beliefs. When I resisted, he forced them upon me. Bent me to his will.”

  “Oh, boo-hoo,” said Sam, although there was a flicker of something like guilt as the words left his mouth.

  “I’m not asking for sympathy, Sam. I haven’t earned it, and I don’t deserve it,” Nazi continued. “I’m just saying… It took me awhile, but I eventually worked out that I didn’t have to be who he wanted me to be. Whatever lessons he taught me, ultimately I could choose not to heed them.”

  “Great. Good for you,” said Sam. “Now, if you don’t mind…”

  He walked on to the next display, wanting to ask why the hell they’d built a secret superhero museum down here, but not wanting to ask him.

  One of the dust sheet-covered shapes stood before him. He pulled the sheet aside, then groaned at what he found beneath it. There were two mannequins, one adult-sized, one smaller. The larger of the two wore a replica of Doc Mighty’s costume. The smaller wore Sam’s own Kid Random costume from back in the day.

  Jesus, it looked ridiculous. He felt his cheeks sting with embarrassment even just looking at it, and so he turned his attention to the larger mannequin, instead. It was the old, traditional Doc Mighty costume, from back before his many rebranding exercises and the revamped outfits they inevitably brought with them.

  With its blue spandex and red cape, this costume had come to represent the Doc’s ‘Classic Era.’ Ask anyone over twenty to describe Doc Mighty, and the flowing crimson cape would almost certainly be the first thing they mentioned. Ask anyone younger, though, and the answers would likely differ wildly.

  They might describe his ‘Living Laser’ period, when his powers inexplicably changed, and he adopted a garish electric blue costume with a glowing white mask.

  Some of them might refer to the ‘Doc Negative’ era, when, following a trip to the Negative Zone, he occasionally became a reverse version of himself and, through reasons not fully understood, his own arch-enemy.

  Very few would mention the joyless and drab, ‘Dark Mighty’ period, when he wore a muted version of his classic suit and scowled a lot, because everyone agreed it was probably best forgotten.

  “He wore that the first time we fought,” Kapitän Nazi said, appearing behind Sam again, much to Sam’s annoyance. “I dropped a tank onto a shopping mall and declared Cityopolis was under Nazi rule. Before your time.”

  Sam said nothing, just clasped his hands together more tightly, trying to resist the urge to turn and strangle the evil bastard. The shape in his head twisted and rolled.

  “He came out of nowhere,” Nazi continued. “I’d heard rumors of the city’s protector, but I had no idea. Not really. I found out later he was in France when the tank fell. All I remember is the impact, then the sound of him crashing through the wall, in that order. The noise trailed behind him. I was fast, but not that fast. No one was that fast. No one but him.”

  Sam turned. “What are you doing?” he demanded. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Eight people died when the tank came down,” Nazi said. “Four more in the battle that followed. He went to their funerals, I believe.”

  “Again, why are you telling me this?” Sam hissed. “You killed people. That’s not exactly a secret.”

  Nazi produced a battered leather notebook from inside his hoodie pocket. He held it between finger and thumb for a moment, as if weighing it, then held it out to Sam.

  Sam made no move to take it.

  “Please,” Nazi urged.

  With a sigh, Sam took the book. Opening it, he flicked through the first few pages. “Names. It’s… It’s names. So what?”

  “It’s all their names,” Nazi said, lowering his head. “All of them.”

  Sam scanned down one of the pages. Dozens of names were written on it in neat, studious block capitals, small enough to fit three on each printed line, one above the other. A couple of the names were vaguely familiar to Sam, but not so much so that he could actually picture any of their faces.

  “You killed all these people,” Sam realized. “That’s what this is.”

  “It has taken years, but I think that’s all of them,” Nazi said.

  Sam thrust the book back at him. “This is… this is sick. You’re worse than I thought!” he spat. “And considering I thought you were a mass-murdering Nazi supervillain who tortured kids,
that’s really saying something.”

  He turned away and started for the door. One of the other exhibits caught his eye, though. It was a long wooden display case, featuring an assortment of what Sam guessed must be less valuable items, as there was no glass protecting any of them.

  Sam stopped at it. His hands shook again.

  “You don’t understand,” said Nazi. “People are not black and white, Sam. We are weighed by the things we did, and the things we didn’t. I keep this book as a reminder of what I did. My memories of that time are… vague. Distant. Like horror stories I have been told long ago.”

  He waved the book. “This. This reminds me that I did these things. That I killed these people. It reminds me that I was the horror story.”

  Nazi traced his fingers across the worn leather, then slipped the book back in his pocket. “Sometimes, I can convince myself that it wasn’t me. Not really. It was my programming. I can make myself believe that my actions were merely a symptom of what they did to my mind. How they broke me.”

  He looked down again. “But that’s a lie, isn’t it? It was still me. Still these hands that did those things. Still this body that inflicted all that pain. It wasn’t someone else. It was me. Whatever the reason, whatever my excuse, it was me.”

  Sam stared down into the display case. The shape in his head wriggled and squirmed.

  “I can lift a car with one hand,” Nazi said. “I can throw a rock from one side of the city to the other. But this book… This book is the heaviest burden I have ever carried.”

  Snatching one of the items from the display, Sam spun. He thrust forward, and the shiny blade of one of Su Man Chu’s old throwing daggers glinted in the sterile glow of the overhead lighting.

  The tip of the blade stopped just a fraction of an inch from Nazi’s throat. He didn’t react, other than by freezing.

  “You’re an evil son-of-a-bitch!” Sam hissed. He pressed with the blade and felt the point dig into the Kapitän’s skin. “I should kill you! I should kill you for everything you did!”

  “You should,” Kapitän Nazi whispered. “You should. But, though I might wish otherwise, you won’t. That’s not who you are, Sam.”

  “You think I don’t have it in me? Is that it?” Sam spat. “You think I can’t?”

  “I think you won’t,” the Kapitän said.

  “And what would those people want me to do? Huh?” Sam demanded. “Those names in that book. What would they all want me to do?”

  Nazi closed his eyes. He breathed deeply, and for a moment Sam thought he could feel him leaning into the knife’s point. “The right thing.”

  Sam’s hand trembled on the handle of the blade. He clamped his teeth together, biting back the tears that threatened to come. The shape in his head thrashed. Urgently. Violently.

  With a roar, he wrenched his arm away and let fly with the knife. It whistled across the room, spinning end over end.

  Somewhere along the way, it became a fat and really rather surprised frog. It barely had a moment to pull itself together and wonder how it had suddenly come into existence before it was taken back out of it again by the wall.

  The frog exploded with a splat against the paintwork. By the time it hit the floor, it was a knife again. Or bits of one, anyway.

  The squirming of the thing in Sam’s head became a contented wriggle, then settled into stillness.

  None the wiser about what had just happened, Kapitän Nazi opened his eyes, and immediately saw the hatred blazing behind Sam’s own.

  “Stay away from me,” Sam warned. “I don’t care what Chuck says. You and me? We are not on the same side.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Knock knock.”

  Sam looked up from the bottom bunk to find Anna leaning against his doorframe, two glasses of wine in her hands. The rooms they had been given were small but functional, containing the bunk-beds, a desk, a chair, and not a whole lot else. There was a small TV mounted to the wall just beyond the foot of the bed, but Sam hadn’t bothered to switch it on.

  “You OK?” Anna asked.

  Sam nodded too quickly. “Sure. Fine. Sorry about earlier.”

  “Ah, shut up,” Anna told him. “Did John find you?”

  A look of betrayal flashed across Sam’s face. “You’re calling him John now?”

  “Kapitän Nazi just feels like a bit of a mouthful,” she said. She held one of the glasses out to him. “Here. I talked Chuck into letting us have some of the real stuff. And when I say I talked him into it, I mean I swiped it from a cabinet when he wasn’t looking.”

  Sam regarded the offered glass for a few moments, then accepted it. He knocked half the contents back in one gulp. “Thanks.”

  Anna sipped from her own glass as she looked around the room. “Nice place you got here,” she said. “I have one just like it. Although, I’m sure if I look hard enough I’ll find out mine has a couple of nipples stashed away somewhere.”

  She turned the swivel chair away from the desk and took a seat. “I mean, who thought that was a good idea?”

  “It wasn’t a terrible idea,” Sam said, but the look on Anna’s face forced him to reconsider. “No, you’re right. Completely sexist and unacceptable.”

  “Right? It’d be like giving your suit balls,” said Anna. She paused momentarily to picture this, then shuddered at whatever image she settled on. “No. Nobody wants to see that.”

  Sam’s jacket was draped across the back of the chair. Something in the pocket caught Anna’s eye, and she fished it out. “Nice elephant,” she said. “Yours?”

  “I got it for my son,” said Sam. “And it’s a hippo. It’s his favo… It’s his second favorite color.”

  Anna shoved the plush toy back into the pocket. “Well, I mean, you don’t want to spoil him by getting him his first favorite color, do you?”

  “He changed it,” said Sam. “His favorite color, I mean. I didn’t know until after I’d bought it. He changed it to match the color of his mom’s boyfriend’s car.”

  Anna winced. “Ouch.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So, you’re not together? I mean, I’m assuming. Unless… I don’t know how your relationship works, maybe you’re both into—”

  “We’re not together,” Sam confirmed. “Corey comes to stay over a couple of times a month. We all get together for his birthday.”

  Anna nodded slowly and took another sip of her wine. “Right. Still… You have a kid. Crazy. Last time I saw you we all pretty much were kids, and now you’ve actually gone and made one.”

  Sam smiled. “Yep. Well, he’s adopted, but… Yeah.”

  “Adopted?”

  “An orphan. Like us, I guess,” Sam said, scratching his head in a way that suggested he wasn’t entirely comfortable talking about it. “I knew what it was like growing up the way I did, and I wanted to make a difference for some other kid, you know?”

  Anna raised her glass in salute. “Well, good for you, Sam. That is pretty damn decent of you.”

  “Also, I didn’t want to risk passing on my powers in case he started flying or, you know, shitting bullets, or whatever,” Sam said. “So, I got the old…” He mimed snipping something with scissors. “… before Laura and I met, and then I told her I was infertile.”

  “Wow,” Anna said. “And she fell for it?”

  “Completely,” said Sam. “And then she found out, called me a lying scumbag, and kicked me out of the house.”

  Anna sucked air in through her teeth. “Shit.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Although…”

  “It was my own fault, and I completely had it coming. Yes. I do understand that,” Sam said. “I just couldn’t risk it, you know?”

  Anna nodded into her glass as she brought it to her lips.

  “What about you?” Sam asked. “Any kids?”

  “God, no!” Anna snorted. “I can barely look after myself, let alone another human being.”

  Sam smiled at her. His face felt a little rubbery, a
nd he realized his glass was empty. “You look like you’re doing OK,” he told her.

  “I did have a cat for a while,” Anna said. “No idea where it went.”

  “Uh… OK. Sorry to hear that.”

  “Don’t be,” Anna sniffed. “Judgmental little prick. He’s probably off badmouthing me somewhere.”

  Sam laughed at that. A silence fell after a while. It wasn’t quite a comfortable silence, although it wasn’t entirely uncomfortable, either.

  “Married?” Sam asked.

  Anna swirled the dregs of her wine around in her glass. “Yeah.”

  “Oh? Oh!” said Sam, before following up with as nonchalant a third, “Oh,” as he could manage.

  “Twice. Briefly,” said Anna. She stopped swirling for a moment and peered at the wall. “Wait. No. Three times. But that third time barely even counts.”

  “Right! Right,” said Sam. “Right. Three times? Wow. Right.”

  He brought the empty glass to his lips and drained a solitary drip from the bottom. “And now…?”

  “Now? No. Not now,” said Anna. “I am done with marriage. Done.”

  She set her glass down on the desk, the faint chink it made punctuating the sentence. She flicked her eyes in Sam’s direction and just held his gaze for a while. The wine had colored her lips a deep crimson, and the way they stood out against her pale, freckled skin drew Sam’s gaze.

  “So,” she said.

  Sam’s throat felt tight. His voice came out as an anxious squeak. “So.”

  Anna bit her lip to stop herself grinning. It was, Sam thought, one of the most arousing things he had ever seen, although he’d be the first to admit he’d led a pretty sheltered life romance-wise.

  He watched her as she stood up, leaning himself back a little as she crossed to him. She was dressed in the same baggy t-shirt and shorts combo as he was, but there was no denying that she wore it better than he ever could.

  His head whooshed with a thousand thoughts. Had he had enough wine to do this? Had he had too much? Should they be doing it? Were they even going to do what he thought they were going to do?