A Shot at the Big Time

by Christina McMullen

  A Shot at the Big Time

  A Maxima City Talent Novel

  by

  Christina McMullen

  A Shot at the Big Time

  Copyright © 2016, Christina McMullen

  All rights reserved.

  Unauthorized distribution or reproduction is strictly prohibited.

  The following is a work of fiction. All names, characters, locations, and brands are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons living, dead, or the living dead, is entirely coincidental or used with permission.

  Additional Disclaimer Regarding Subject Matter:

  The following work is a satirical parody of comic book superheroes. While I, the author, have a pretty expansive knowledge of the genre, it is by no means exhaustive. I have done my best to ensure my characters do not infringe upon the rights of others. If you believe that I have inadvertently used a name you hold the rights to, please feel free to contact me at mcmullenwrites@gmail.com to let me know. I am flexible and willing to make changes and would rather not be sued.

  Cover composition, layout, & design by

  Christina McMullen

  Images used in composition of this cover courtesy of http://pixabay.com under Creative Commons CCO

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Epilogue

  A Note from the Author

  Chapter 1

  The problem with a dead end job is that no matter what kind of vibrant and exciting life one may lead outside of work, the hours spent doing soul sucking menial tasks for little to no reward always seemed to be the longest in existence. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if I found out some evil wizard cast a spell that made the hours spent inside a cubicle pass at a rate at least four times slower than anywhere else. In fact, I’d go so far as to say this was one super disgruntled jackass of a wizard because paradoxically, eight hours were never enough to finish every task, file every report, or answer every email, which meant low paid desk jockeys like myself had no choice but to stay late or risk a poor performance review.

  And forget ever getting out on time on a Friday.

  “Brad, would you please stop moving the mouse?”

  “But the little arrow is moving by itself. I can’t stop it.”

  I bit back the litany of curses that found their way too easily to the tip of my tongue and did my best to ignore the little clock in the corner of the monitor, mockingly reminding me that my shift ended some time ago.

  “For the last time,” I instead reminded him, measuring my tone and trying not to think about the half price vodka tonic that I was not currently enjoying thanks to this idiot, “I’ve remoted into your computer. I am the one moving the cursor. I’ve done this so that I can figure out what you did to gooch your hard drive and figure out if it’s even fixable.”

  “B-but why are you trying to look at my browser history?”

  It was moments like this that made me question why I decided on a career that required the patience of a saint knowing full well that I had none. If I’d been one of those freaks whose talent was triggered by anger, I’d have destroyed half the city in my first week on the job.

  “If you have to ask, then it’s a good thing you’re in acquisitions and not IT,” I muttered, more to myself than Brad, but added for his benefit, “And I think you know damned well why I’m looking at your internet history. All of it. Even the incognito stuff.”

  “You—uh—y-you can do that?”

  The squeaky panic of a grown man on the verge of peeing his pants almost made it worth staying late. Almost. Sure, there’s something to be said for the heady rush of knowing you’ve got a worm by the balls, but there’s more to be said for the heady rush of tossing back a couple of cheap drinks on a Friday evening. Also, there really wasn’t a lot of joy in sifting through the sketchy torrent sites and even sketchier dating sites this guy frequented. I didn’t care enough to judge the dude on his tastes in music or women. All I cared about was the crap that came crawling in while he browsed.

  At last, I found what I knew I would; a massive payload of malware, downloaded with a file that promised, of all damned things, nude photos of Maxima City’s one and only female super villain, Hostile Takeover. I would have wondered how anyone could be so clueless, but that ship sailed back when I was a kid and I realized the majority of the population really were fooled into believing an impossibly fit alien was nothing more than a mild-mannered reporter just because he threw on a pair of nerd glasses.

  Luckily—well, for me anyway—it was an easy enough fix. I sent one of my own sweepers over to the infected drive and sat back, watching with satisfaction as the bot program not only obliterated the offending malware, but also took snapshots of all of the dubious content so I could send it up the ranks. Normally, I would just send the file over to HR and the employee’s immediate supervisor, but I had a feeling the big boss might want to know about this one. I also sent a text off to a currently jobless friend of mine, telling her to keep an eye on the job listings because there would likely be an opening in acquisitions soon.

  Finally, one hour and thirty minutes after my shift had officially ended, I got what I needed, backed out of Brad’s computer, and hung up the phone before he could finish what was threatening to become an awkward segue into an invite to drinks. I was packing up and ready to get the hell out of Dodge when a dark shadow fell across my desk, causing me to spill half the contents of my purse. I didn’t even need to look up to know who was blocking the entrance to my cubical, but I did anyway, just to give him a dirty look.

  “Yo, sis.”

  Even in Maxima City, few people were as brick wall-like as my brother, Lane. Literally everything about him, from his physique to his personality, was square.

  “You’re still here? I thought you sales guys all ducked out early on Fridays.”

  Lane shook his blocky head, nonplussed. “Weekly sales meetings are not the same thing as ducking out early, dear little sister.”

  I slid one incredulous eyebrow up in question before ducking back under my desk to search for a tube of lipstick that I heard rolling away.

  “They are when you have them at Lucky’s and drinking is involved,” I noted as my fingers closed around the fugitive lipstick tube. “And where did this little sister business come from? I’m older than you, doofus.”

  “By six minutes and I didn’t say younger, I said little. You’re a pipsqueak, Lisa.”

  “Five feet nine inches is four inches taller than the national average,” I grumbled, though I don’t know why I bothered defending myself. Lane was just trying to get my goat and knew the right buttons to press.

  “But Take is way taller than you.”

  Take, in this instance was short for the aforementioned Hostile Takeover, who stood well over six feet and also happened to be our boss. Well, our after-hours boss. By day, Lane and I both worked for Winfield Enterprises, headed by the notorious business mogul, Mary Sue Winfield. Much like Hostile Takeover, Winfield clawed her way to the top of what had previously been seen as a man’s game. Now, with almost half the corporations and industry under her control, Winfield’s net worth was second only to her biggest rival; bad boy billionaire and media darling, Wayne Grey.

  Coincidentally, Mary Sue Winfield also happened
to be an intimidating woman who stood well over six feet tall. Like I said, there was a lot of willful ignorance in Maxima City.

  “Is there a reason you’re here besides to annoy me?”

  “As a matter of fact…” Lane pulled an old comic book out of his pocket and threw it on my desk. “I wanted to get your opinion on something.”

  “Ace Guy comics? Really?”

  “Yeah, look, ignore that bozo,” he said, waving one meaty paw while he dug around in his pocket with the other. “Here, another one.”

  He dropped another comic on my desk. This one was an older book about some flaming guy named The Heat. Real original.

  “Notice anything about the henchmen?” Lane asked, pointing out the villainous grunts who were depicted as stereotypical bumbling oafs. Comic book writers were always biased. Not just toward the good guys, but the A-lister villains as well.

  “They’re all white and male?” I remarked dryly.

  “Oh come on,” Lane rolled his eyes at me. “Save that for your girl’s night out or whatever.”

  “Do you have a death wish or something?”

  “Whatever, Lisa, you’re just as much a minion as I am, so don’t get up on your high horse about—”

  “Ah, ah, ah!” I cut him off with an icy glare. “You know better than to use the M word around me.” I know what you’re thinking, but I assure you, the aversion has nothing to do with the sudden popularity of bumbling sentient snack foods. Well, okay, that doesn’t help, but no, I’ve never liked the word minion. It conjures up images of mindless drones who blindly follow their overlord without question. Personally, I have a little too much self-respect. “We’re heavies, henchpersons, thugs, if you will.”

  “Henchperson is so dumb. Stop trying to make henchperson happen. We’re henchmen.”

  “How about you stop trying to quote a movie you’ve never seen?”

  “You’re missing the point, sis.” Lane heaved another sigh and rolled his eyes dramatically.

  “And you’re keeping me from my drink,” I noted, glancing at the clock with a frown. I’d already missed the first hour of happy hour. If I hurried, I could still make it in time for slightly contented hour, have a few drinks, and cut out before drunken-hugging-and-singing-along-to-Journey hour. “Whatever you want to talk about, do so on the way to Lucky’s.”

  “I just think these old guys had style,” Lane said with a shrug, stuffing the comics back into his pocket and moving aside. He wasn’t dumb enough to stand between me and my Friday night. He might have been my brother, twin brother at that, but he was just as vulnerable to my ice attacks as anyone else.

  Oh yeah. In case you hadn’t figured it out by now, Lane and I are both talent. Some folks call us super-humans, but technically, the term super only applies to the top tier A-listers with brand recognition. Talent is the word we use to denote a remarkable abnormality that one might exploit for the purposes of personal gain. And before you ask, yes, there are good guys and bad guys, but don’t think for a moment that the good guys have some sort of altruistic intentions.

  See, when you live in a place like Maxima City, where talent is a dime a dozen, you stop seeing the world as black and white. Ironic, really, since taking sides is such a big deal here, but believe me, the Action Figures are doing this for just as selfish gains as the Malevolents.

  No, of course the good guys don’t call themselves Action Figures. That’s just what we call them because I’m one hundred percent certain fighting crime takes a distant second to selling merchandise for those guys. Seriously, toy sales fund their whole organization.

  What, you actually thought the local newspaper pays its bespectacled and totally not-an-alien-in-disguise employee enough to live in a penthouse apartment in the center of town? In today’s economy where no one even reads the newspaper? Come on! You know better than that.

  And that’s not all. Lady Freedom’s alter-ego is a food blogger. I’m pretty sure that’s not even a real job, but somehow she snagged a loft in the hippest—and not coincidentally, most expensive—neighborhood in town. Mr. Unbelievable daylights as an auto mechanic, an honest one at that, yet he lives on a sprawling ranch and owns horses. Don’t think for a minute that has nothing to do with those annoying commercials he does for low calorie butter substitutes. I could go on, but I think you get my point.

  Malevolents, on the other hand, own up to what we stand for. Make no mistake, we are the bad guys, but that’s a subjective assertion. Like I said, things aren’t always so cut and dry. Sure, there are some real psychos out there and our biggest organization of A-listers did name themselves the Coalition of Evil, but most of us aren’t too bad, just a little misunderstood. I’m sure it comes as no surprise that the vast majority of us chose to go dark side because of a past tragedy. Lane and I are no exception.

  As kids, we were pretty much just like everyone else. Well, everyone else with talent, that is, but like I said, that wasn’t so special around here. I’d hazard a guess that has a little to do with the shifty power plant on the edge of Maxima City… and maybe a smidge to do with the fact that the city sits in a valley that was created when a particularly powerful meteor hit the Earth, leaving trace elements of something science hasn’t quite figured out yet… and I’d wager we can also blame the underground lake that may or may not be radioactive… and then there’s the volcanic activity…

  …I’m getting away from myself. I do that. As a kid, mom joked my superhero name was going to be Tangent Girl. Mom and dad… Well shoot. Looks like I just tangent-ed myself back on topic.

  You see, Lane and I knew pretty early on that we were talent. Powers don’t usually develop fully until our teen years—which, come to think of it, is probably a good thing given how crazy we were as kids—but the telltale signs showed up for us right around third grade and don’t think for a moment we didn’t use that to our advantage. Like most kids growing up in the suburbs of Maxima City, we followed the adventures of the Liberty Gang, a group of Super Heroes who banded together to fight against the Coalition of Evil.

  The Liberty Gang started way back before we were born, right around the time that someone figured out they could sell twice as much merchandise if they branded half of it with their own name and half of it with the name of the organization they were affiliated with. There were others too, like the Vengeance Squad and Team Amaze, but only Liberty Gang attracted enough of the top names in heroics to have any staying power through the years.

  But while we were growing up, the top rated Liberty Gang member was Magnificent Man, and let me tell you, Lane and me, we were drinking the Magnificent Man Kool-Aid.

  Literally.

  We sucked down Magnificent Melon-aid by the gallon despite the fact that it was one of the worst things ever created by sugar and artificial flavors. We had the toys. We had the t-shirts. We had the video games, comics, lunch boxes, breakfast cereal, toothbrushes, beach towels, and heck, I think at one point we even had Magnificent Man toilet paper. We had plans to apply to Magnificent Man’s Magnificent Militia as soon as our own powers manifested.

  So obviously, when we heard that Magnificent Man was coming all the way out to the Sunnyside suburbs to make an appearance at the newly opened Toy-Town Megastore, we knew we had to be there.

  Little did we know, that would be the day which irrevocably changed our fate forever.

  We got there early, but already a crowd had formed, comprising of equal parts beleaguered parents with their overly excitable children and grown men hoping to grab one of the limited edition collectable Magnificent Man Toy-Town exclusive action figures. As we waited, more families and more collectors joined the throng, pushing from behind as if doing so would make the doors open sooner. By the time the store did open, we were no longer a crowd of fans, but an unruly mob. Hundreds, maybe even thousands of bodies rushed for the doors, knowing that only the first fifty inside would get the exclusive toy.

  In the panic and crush, Lane and I were separated from our parents. We were dragged al
ong with the crowd that was now trying to squeeze through the front door as one. I thought for sure the whole display window and front wall would collapse, but somehow, the building remained standing. I wish I could say the same for my parents. As soon as I could finally turn my head, I saw them, so far behind me, reaching their hands out and calling our names with the exact type of frantic desperation one might expect from parents who just lost their children in a mad stampede.

  And then, just like that, they were gone. Knocked down by the crushing mass of humanity. I stood frozen in place, unable to move as I watched both of my parents go down, shouting for help, but my voice was lost in the cacophony of cheers and shouts as I was carried farther away by the frenzied mob. But then, suddenly and just as unexpectedly, I found myself staring into the face of salvation. The hero of the day. The very reason we were there in the first place. The one man who could rise above the teeming masses and save my parents from the trampling doom that had befallen them.

  Time slowed down.

  In front of me, smiling that brilliantly white smile that could only be achieved by Magnifresh Magnificent Tooth Polish, stood Magnificent Man. I opened my mouth, I turned to point, but before I could utter a single word of what had happened to my parents, a Magnificent Man action figure was shoved into my hand and I was being hustled away by store employees in cheap and ill-fitting Liberty Gang member costumes.

  Eventually, I found Lane, but by then the damage was already done. Mom and dad were gone. Whisked away to Maxima City General, where they would spend the night being treated for fractures, bruises, and a number of other injuries as a result of the stampede.

  Sure, they lived. They weren’t even permanently damaged, but boy, Lane and I sure were. That day was the day we discovered our heroes were only in it for the fortune and glory. As soon as we got home, we went into the backyard and burned that Magnificent Man limited edition action figure in the barbeque pit, using our Magnificent Man comics as kindling. Over the blaze, we renounced the Liberty Gang and pledged our allegiance to the Coalition of Evil.