Velveteen vs. the Junior Super Patriots (11 page)

“According to the records we got off that repair shop in Red Bluff, it’s a Saturn, medium blue—”

Excitement growing, Swallowtail interrupted, “Back bumper held on with duct tape?”

“Swallowtail, do you have eyes on the target?”

“A car matching that description is heading down one of the local frontage roads, moving west at approximately twenty miles per hour.”

There was a pause as Handheld accessed his internal GPS, running through all available maps of the area. That useful little trick was why he always seemed to get stuck playing base. That, and he was the only one who ever remembered to recharge the headsets. “Swallowtail, withdraw. There’s only one accessible border crossing on that route, and we can beat her there by ten minutes.”

Swallowtail’s breath caught. “You mean. . . ?”

“I do.” She heard the click as he changed frequencies, going from their private channel to the one that would reach the entire team. Voice echoing with authority, he said the words she’d been waiting to hear since this mission was announced, the words that meant they were finally going to prove themselves against a villain worthy of their time:

“JUNIOR SUPER PATRIOTS, WEST COAST DIVISION, THE PARTY’S ON!”

“Oh, you’ll be sorry soon,” she whispered gleefully, and turned, spreading light-display butterfly wings wide as she soared toward the place where the team would be assembling. It was time to show that turncoat that she chose the wrong side when she left The Super Patriots.

On the highway, traffic started to move again.

*

The last sign Velma had passed indicated that she was less than half a mile from the Oregon border, and she was finally starting to relax. Once she crossed the state border, she’d have a clean slate; there was no way Marketing could accuse her of unlicensed use of her powers, since those charges were only valid within the state where the crime occurred, and Oregon didn’t believe in superhuman extradition. Oregon, Hawaii, Arizona, and Vermont: the last states where a superhuman could go to hide from their past sins. They still required licensing, but they wouldn’t give you to Marketing unless you’d actually killed someone. Velma never had. Property damage, yes, but manslaughter, no.

Half a mile, and she’d be free forever.

She was so focused on planning for her new-found freedom that she didn’t see the teenager standing in the road until she was almost on top of him. Shouting, she hauled on the wheel and sent herself into a spin, tires screeching on the road. The smell of burning rubber filled the air. The car came to a stop, almost completely turned around. Gasping for air, Velma clutched the wheel and blinked rapidly, trying to clear her head. She hadn’t hit the kid. She was certain of that much. But where did he
come
from? How was he just
standing
there, in the middle of nowhere? What—

Someone was knocking on the window. Velma lifted her head, wincing as the movement was telegraphed down into her aching shoulders. The kid from the road was standing next to her car, peering in at her. He was dressed a little oddly, she saw, wearing a heavy ski coat buttoned all the way down. It was way too warm to be dressed like that. She blinked at him.

He knocked again.

Wincing even more, Velma undid her seat belt and opened the door, stepping unsteadily out of the car. Her knees were shaking, and she had to fight the urge to get down on all fours and kiss the ground. Thank you, ground, for being there. Thank you, God, for letting me miss that kid.

“Hi,” said the kid, offering her a bright, toothpaste-endorsement smile. “Are you Velma Martinez?”

Under normal circumstances, that question would have set off so many alarm bells inside Velma’s head that she would have been deafened by the sound. Now, shaken by her near miss and dizzy from endorphins, she just blinked at him again, and said, “Yeah. Who’s asking?”

“Oh, I’m sorry—I forgot that we’d never been introduced.” He unbuttoned his jacket in a quick, efficient motion and shrugged it off, revealing the purple and gray spandex costume that it had been concealing. Shining beetles the size of Velma’s clenched fist rushed out of the abandoned jacket, swarming up his legs and clinging to his sides. More of those beetles scurried up his back, pulling a full-face mask over his head. He thrust a fist into the air, and announced, in a voice ringing with the tightly-controlled desire for justice, “I am. . . THE BEDBUG!”

Velma blinked. “Uh,” she said, finally. “I bet you don’t get many dates, do you?”

“Do you dare to mock my might?”

“Yup. I dare.” Velma folded her arms. “So, is that insect control, or are they psychic projections?”

“Psychic pro—don’t distract me!” The Bedbug sounded annoyed, although it was difficult to tell with that mask hiding his entire face. Velma had always hated trying to carry on a conversation with someone in a full-face mask. It was like talking to a wall. “Prepare to face your undoing, evil-doer!”

First rule of escaping an unwanted fight: keep them talking while you figure out a way to get out of the situation. Velma scanned the road around her, feeling her heart rate dropping steadily back toward “normal.” It was sad when being poorly menaced by a teenage superhero was
calming
. “Okay, first, you’ve got the wrong girl, because I am not a doer of evil, nor am I really in the market for an undoing. If that’s what you do. . . look, could you work the word ‘do’ into that sentence a few more times? Because seriously, you’re abusing the language. I don’t want to fight. I just want to get to Oregon.”

“A pity, then, that cheaters finish last!” proclaimed a skinny brunette with blonde-streaked hair as she dropped out of the sky, wide yellow and brown butterfly wings spread behind her. They vanished when she touched down next to The Bedbug. Her costume, Velma saw with disgust, was the same yellow and brown as her wings. Even her mask had been cut to subtly resemble butterfly wings, open wide across her face. “Justice will be yours at last!”

“Do you guys have a bug theme this year or something?” asked Velma, distracted from her survey of possible escape routes by the sinking sensation in her stomach. The Bedbug was unfamiliar, but she recognized the girl. Swallowtail. She’d been on the cover of
Secret Identity
just a few months before, supposedly “speaking candidly” about her battle with anorexia. (As if an energy projector
could
have a battle with anorexia. They burned calories to create their light projections. If Swallowtail were anorexic, she wouldn’t be able to use her powers. The article was just a ploy by Marketing, another way to get a young hero’s face out in the public eye and build the feeling that superheroes were just like everybody else.)

If Swallowtail was here, this wasn’t some random kid trying to prove himself against a retired hero. This was something much, much worse.

This was The Junior Super Patriots, West Coast Division.

*

There’s one thing about the world’s superhuman community that most people would realize, if they really stopped to think about it: there’s really no way to control them if they don’t want to be controlled. Oh, individual powers can generally be suppressed, but there’s no way to un-mutate a mutant, disconnect a magical hero from the belief that fuels them, or somehow transform an alien into a human being. Lobotomies can be used on gadgeteers, but unless the gadgeteer in question has wiped out an elementary school, that’s still classed as unnecessary cruelty. The superhumans police themselves. There’s simply no other way to keep them from taking over the world.

The Super Patriots, Inc. controls ninety-seven percent of the world’s superheroes. That gives them controlling interest in every super team, every super-force, every organization of supers supposedly formed to “watch the watchers.” With all that being simple fact, it stands to reason that there’s one entity deciding who the heroes and the villains really are.

Marketing controls more than just what brand of cereal your children cry for. Marketing names the heroes and the villains, gives them primary colors, and tells you who to root for in the fight.

And Marketing doesn’t take “no” for an answer.

*

Velma took a step backward, toward her car. She could feel her powers gathering, straining for release. That was what you did when you were surrounded by unfriendly supers: you broke out with everything you had, and you fought back. The Bedbug and Swallowtail were still in pose-and-bluster mode, trying to impress her with their color-coordinated outfits and perfect hair. It would have looked silly, if she hadn’t recognized the maneuver. They were waiting for the rest of their team to arrive.

Current lineup, current lineup,
Velma thought frantically, taking another step backward. She hadn’t really been keeping track. Sure, she knew a few—Swallowtail was one, and then there was their current techie, what was his name, Blackberry or iPod or something like that—but beyond that, she’d done her best to put the team entirely out of her mind. She hadn’t wanted to know. And now, what she hadn’t wanted to know was preparing to have a genuine superhero throw-down with her on a frontage road half a mile from the Oregon border.

Sometimes the world really wasn’t fair.

“If you come quietly, we can guarantee that will play a part in your sentencing,” said The Bedbug, still posing heroically. “This doesn’t have to be ugly.”

“Guys, I really don’t think you want to do this,” said Velma, raising her hands, palms outward. “Whatever it is you think I did, whoever it is you think I am, I didn’t do it, and I’m not that person. I’m just trying to get to Portland. Now can you please—”

“THE PARTY’S ON!” shouted a voice from behind her, barely audible over the roar of a motorcycle. Velma whipped around to see a teenage boy in black and orange racing toward her on a tricked-out bike in matching colors, three flying heroes right behind him. Three flying heroes, and—she had to blink to be sure she was seeing this right—a trio of girls riding what looked like a disk of flying peppermint.

“Fucked-up times fucking
infinity
,” she groaned, and with that, the fight was on.

*

The membership of The Junior Super Patriots, West Coast Division, at the time of The Velveteen Incident (SPI Code vm049):

Handheld. Team leader, technopath. Machine control, ability to intercept wireless transmissions within a six-block radius of his current location. Hand-to-hand fighter, no physical powers of any sort. Powers originally acquired through an industrial accident in his father’s special effects lab. Believed to be an altered human, although mutation has not been ruled out.

Swallowtail. Second-in-command, energy projector. Power limitation: all Swallowtail’s energy forms conform in appearance to the Tiger Swallowtail butterfly, native to the West Coast of the United States. Powers originally acquired through exposure to irradiated bug spray released in the Indianapolis Science Museum during her junior entomology course. Of the six students exposed, four are now deceased.

The Bedbug. Energy projector. Power limitation: all Bedbug’s energy forms conform in appearance to an unidentified form of scarab beetle. The Bedbug shares limited psychic communication with his bugs, and can be “stunned” by their destruction. Powers originally acquired through exposure to irradiated bug spray released in the Indianapolis Science Museum. Highly protective of Swallowtail, the only other survivor of the incident.

Super-Cool. Flight, limited invulnerability, super-strength. Powers originally acquired through exposure to irradiated maple syrup. His dose seems to have been more dilute than the doses to which Majesty and Action Dude were exposed; plans are in place to expose him again, hopefully increasing his power levels without further damaging his psyche. Super-Cool is only able to function in combat for an hour before becoming confused and unable to fight.

The Nanny. Psychic projection, limited flight, limited weather control. Power limitations: The Nanny can only fly when holding something which can appear to “catch” the wind (actual functionality not needed; umbrella is preferred, and seems to give her the highest speed). She is unable to fly at all indoors. Her psychic projection functions through control: her commands must be obeyed, provided she can first convince her target of their own “naughtiness.” Definitely a magical hero.

Apex. Flight, super-speed. Mutant, no point of origin known for his powers. Power limitations: none yet identified.

The Candy Sisters: Candy Cane, Candy Corn, and Candy Apple. Mutant daughters of Trick and Treat. There is no known point of origin for their powers. All three are matter manipulators, level five, with no limitations yet identified beyond those imposed by their personas. Research believes these limitations to be self-imposed, and recommends further study when the opportunity presents itself. Should one of the sisters be rendered somehow surplus, the remains would be a great asset to the research division.

Nine super-teens against one out-of-shape, out-of-practice, essentially retired former teen superhero. The odds were clearly stacked in the favor of The Junior Super Patriots, West Coast Division. With this fact presented plainly, the question remains:

What went wrong?

*

Officially cornered, Velma finally gave in to the power that had been pleading to be unleashed, spreading her hands and closing her eyes as she heard the motorcycle racing closer. The toys in the car stirred, awakening to her command. The plush rabbit from the Isley Crawfish Festival. The action figures from the coffee shop. The stuffed frog she’d found abandoned in a gas station parking lot. Even a cartoony wind-up spider from some forgotten fast food special. They all awoke, scuttling and jumping out the open door to surround her in a loose semi-circle.

She heard Swallowtail laughing. “Is that a stuffed
rabbit
? Does she actually think she’s going to defeat us with a
stuffed bunny rabbit
?”

“She walked away, remember? We knew she was crazy.” At least Bedbug sounded uncertain. “I think we should try to take her.”

“She’s just
standing
there . . .”