belt.”
She looked him up and down, focusing on the gold insignia on his chest. “But aren’t you a little short—I mean, young—to be fighting monsters?”
“The only complaints I’ve gotten from the monsters I’ve fought is how sore they’re going to be in the morning,” Superkid responded, dancing on his feet and jabbing the air. Then he grinned and spread out his arms. “So what do you say? Will you teach me?”
The karate woman thought about it. The lizard muttered, “Just what he needs: a more efficient way to deliver pain.”
Ignoring the beast, Jennifer asked our hero, “Would your mother approve?”
“I’ll talk to her about it,” Superkid said evasively.
Jennifer hesitated. But at last she said, “Very well, I accept you as my pupil.”
Superkid whooped, throwing his fist into the air. Then he declared, “Let all evil villains beware. Superkid’s about to get even more dangerous!”
“Not if I can help it!” hissed the giant lizard as it wheeled around. It snapped at Superkid who leaped backwards. The karate woman jabbed its neck and it reacted with a squeal. Superkid ran to its head and jumped onto its snout.
“What are you doing?” Jennifer cried.
The fearless kid didn’t answer. Instead he sucked in a big breath, looked the giant lizard straight in the eye, and then puffed out the biggest breath that he could.
The lizard’s reaction was its most violent yet. Superkid was thrown when it wheeled around, screaming, “My eye! It’s melting! I think I’m going blind! Gah!” The scaly behemoth charged as fast as it could back to where it came.
Jennifer hurried to her fallen charge. “Are you okay?”
It certainly hadn’t been the most graceful way to end a battle but our charming young hero managed to grunt, “Feeling pretty good,” as he struggled to sit. Jennifer wrapped her arm around his back and began to help him to his feet.
This could very easily have been mistaken as a romantic moment if you ignored the age gap between the karate woman and the heroic kid. This was exactly what the media did when they swooped in on the two.
“A hero wounded fatally during the battle with a massive reptile, and his faithful lover taking him home to recover,” said a reporter as she scribbled it down. Then she turned to the pair who had looked up in surprise. “But tell us, Superkid, how did you defeat that monster?”
“Well actually, she did most of the fighting,” said Superkid, pointing at Jennifer.
His modesty was lost on them. He hadn’t even finished his answer when the next reporter asked, “How long have you two been together?”
Jennifer opened her mouth to make the correction, but another reporter cut in with another question for the fearless kid, “What’s next for you?”
And so it went. Question after question was lobbed at Superkid while the reporters completely ignored Jennifer. She was finding it harder and harder to resist the urge to grab one of the reporters by the collar and hurl him into a telephone pole. How dare they ignore her and paint her as some damsel in distress! How dare they treat her inferior! Especially to a kid!
The kid was doing his best to set them straight. But using their training in the art of roundabout questioning, the reporters forced him to answer their questions in such a way that he had no choice but to admit he was a hero—not that he wasn’t.
“You made sure that monster won’t come back?” a reporter asked.
“I doubt it will, but uh…”
“This is your third battle won, correct?”
“Well, actually…”
“Will this victory be an effective message to other villains that you are not someone to toy with?”
“I suppose…”
It wasn’t his fault. Really it wasn’t. But still Jennifer couldn’t help hating the kid for all the attention he was getting. She couldn’t help but hate how the reporters were putting him on the pedestal while they gave her the shaft. She really couldn’t help it…
And so it began. The seeds of antipathy for our hero had been planted in her heart.
The story in the papers the next day was one of terror and excitement—one that was sure to be a legend in Poolington. Unfortunately, containing the aspects of legends, most of the story wasn’t really true. According to the Poolington News, it was a giant mutant turtle spewing fire that had kidnapped a beautiful maiden. Then Superkid came and rescued this helpless maiden by dropping the evil turtle into a vat of radioactive sludge--then the story speculated on whether the monster would make a dramatic return for an epic rematch, but that was beside the point. We know the true story. It was a giant lizard with bad taste in humor.
As pressing as was the concern for the accuracy of the type of monster, Jennifer was more concerned with the victim of the monster—the “helpless maiden.”
“Reporters,” she snarled, crumpling the paper into a wad. “Liars, every single one of them!” She tossed the wad into the wastebasket just as there was a knock on her door.
She sighed. “Come in.”
The hero entered and said brightly, “Am I late?”
She glanced at the clock. “No. Actually, you’re kind of early.”
“Shall we begin then?”
She glared at Superkid, whose innocent smile became a concerned look. He asked, “What’s the matter?”
She shook herself, realizing that it wasn’t the kid’s fault that the media had insulted her. In fact, looking back, he had tried to set the record straight.
She shook herself again, fixed a smile on her face and answered, “Sorry, I was just thinking.” She posed herself in a karate stance and said, “Very well. Let us begin.”
And begin they did. As every good master should, she taught him the basics first. After an indeterminate amount of time (because it would be utterly inconvenient for the villains to have to wait for his training to be completed before they could challenge him, by which time he’d be along in his years and they would have died of old age), he mastered the basics and was ready to move on to the advanced moves. After another indeterminate amount of time, he mastered these. He was Jennifer’s best pupil—ever! She was quite impressed and even taught him some of her secret moves. Now he was a true crime-fighter—able to hold his own against any opponent…
Well, almost any opponent…
But hold on a moment. I’m getting ahead of myself. Opponent-wise, he was actually unsurpassed in his skills. Monsters came regularly into town, looking to try their luck at squashing the fearless kid, and all left in shame. They were nothing more than practice dummies to Superkid. To the media, though, each successive battle was a proven mark of Superkid’s role as a superhero.
No one acknowledged his master’s role in these battles even though she used the monsters to demonstrate techniques to her pupil. No one considered her worthy of their idolization. She was nothing more than the fearless kid’s love interest. And it irritated her.
After each story depicting her as the helpless maiden, that irritation grew. Soon that irritation turned into jealousy… and soon that jealousy became full blown hate. She tried to control it. Tried to shrug it off. But day after day that hate grew and festered.
Until finally it happened.
It happened on a day that was like any other day. The sun was shining. The birds were singing. And the citizens were reading the latest of Superkid’s escapades in the papers… Jennifer Ambers happened to be one of them.
“The nerve of those jerks!” she exploded. “I did most of the fighting on that giant centipede! But they made me, ‘Once again, the helpless victim of the ferocious monster’! Do they think we women are not as good as men? That we are only meant to be helpless damsels in distress? Are we less than a mere kid?”
Just then, there was a knock on the door.
“And there’s the big hero coming for the thanks he deserves!” she snapped, stomping to the door and yanking it open.
Our hero—who deserved every thanks that was possible to give to him—immed
iately backed off. He had heard the remark and the tone it had been made in, and he knew the kind of damage she could do—especially when she was in a rage.
“Uh—is today a bad day?” he asked cautiously from a safe distance, which was about a street’s width.
“What do you mean?” she asked, trying not to sound angry.
“You sound like you could use a nap.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“It’s uh… what my mom does… when she’s stressed.”
The karate woman took a few deep breaths, releasing the tension in her. Then, at last, she let out a great sigh.
“It’s okay,” she said in a far calmer tone. “It’s nothing. Come in…”
She was interrupted by screams.
“Now what?” she groaned, clapping a hand to her face.
Superkid turned and hurried into the street. He muttered to himself, “What giant animal is it this time?” When he reached the main street, the giant animal this time made him gasp.
“You’re back!”
“And you’re still here, I see,” countered the giant spider. “Good. Now I can wreak my revenge. That dump truck was full of garbage! I trudged through that remorseless desert for weeks trying to find enough water to wash away the smell!”
“I guess you never found it,” Superkid responded, wrinkling his nose.
The gargantuan arachnid sneered. “Still comedic as ever, I see. But be warned, Superkid, I won’t go down so easily this time.”
“Thanks for the warning,” said Superkid, grinning mischievously. “Allow me to return the favor by warning you that I’ve