“Well, he shan’t come, so you had best come up with another plan,” said Victory Anna. “I could cobble something together in a surface- to-air missile array…”
“No.” Velveteen dropped her hand. “He’s coming. You three wait here.” This said, she stormed toward the captain’s cabin, her furious pose only slightly spoiled by the twitching of her costume’s plush rabbit tail. She didn’t knock. She just went inside. The door slammed behind her.
Jackie and the Princess exchanged a look.
“This is either going to end really well, or really poorly,” said Jackie.
“How about we all just stand on the carpet for right now?” suggested the Princess, whose mother had not, after all, raised any fools. “Just in case.”
The three remaining heroines moved, and waited.
Jolly Roger was sitting at the captain’s table, morosely staring into his mug of rum, when he heard the cabin door slam. He didn’t look up until Velveteen’s palms impacted with the surface of the table, and she snarled, “You are going to help us, whether you want to or not. So stop fucking around and get your things.”
“This is part of the narrative, you know.” He looked up, and for the first time, Velveteen realized how tired he looked. “The wicked pirate captain, lured out of retirement by the needy young maiden who came from so far away. I couldn’t have said yes to you the first time if I’d wanted to.”
“Did you want to?”
“No.” He took a swig of rum. “Lass, this is a bad idea. Whatever they’ve taken from you, count yourself lucky that they left you with your life, and let it go. Walk away.”
“I can’t do that.”
“I think you’ll find you can; you just don’t want to, and that’s something very different indeed. You’re alive. You’re free. If the presence of your day-glow friend means anything, you’re being scouted to serve the Winter. Go with her, make a new life there, and never think about The Super Patriots again.”
“They took my best friend.” They took my childhood, they took my first love but they did it so badly that I can’t even be sure of saving my second love; they took so much, and they gave so little…
“They took my true love.” You’re not the only one who’s lost something.
“So help us stop them from doing this to anyone else.” Jolly Roger sighed. “The Super Patriots aren’t the source of all the evil in the world. If you take them down, there will still be villains. There will still be great, world-shattering events. Things will still go wrong. There just won’t be a single central face to put on your problems.”
“When you were there, when you were a part of the team, did you mind-control the trainees?”
“What?” Jolly Roger blinked before shaking his head. “No. Supermodel was making their worst impulses stronger, but none of us knew about that. They were all with us willingly. I’d swear to that.”
“Well, that’s changed. We know, for a fact, that the trainee heroes are being mind-controlled. They’re literally creating the people they want us to be. And there’s a lot of data to support that, beyond my experiences. According to the power registry, one in every fifteen heroes is psychic. Telepathy, or empathy, or some other power that affects the brain. So how come we have all these teams made up of bruisers and teleporters and energy manipulators—even the occasional animus or fairy tale princess—but almost no one has a telepath? Where are they all going?”
“I—”
“They’re manufacturing supervillains now, did you realize that? They said I was a supervillain, when all I ever did was walk away from them. I didn’t want to be controlled, and so they said I was evil. I was never evil. My only crime was wanting to be left alone.”
“Funny thing that,” muttered Jolly Roger, and raised his mug of rum.
Velveteen stared at him for a moment. Finally, she shook her head. “You were my hero, you know,” she said. “Even before I left, you were the one I looked up to, because you were the one who was brave enough to leave when you needed to. And now you’re not even willing to stand up for people who have no power to stand up for themselves. You’d just leave them, and all the children who are going to come after them. You’re no brave pirate captain. You’re a coward.”
“At last, you’re starting to understand the situation.” Jolly Roger shook his head. “I’m sorry, lass. Whatever it is you came here hoping for, it’s not going to happen.”
“If you won’t come with us, will you at least tell us if there are any weak spots? I’ve never seen the CEO. No one has. It’s just the heroes, and the staff from Marketing and Legal—”
“Don’t be silly. The CEO is a man named Michael Wellman. He was Majesty’s sidekick for a while, until he lost his powers.”
Velveteen blinked. “No, it’s not.”
“What?” Now it was Jolly Roger’s turn to blink. “What do you mean?”
“Michael Wellman died in the fight that killed Majesty. Right before you left. How do you not know that? There’s a statue of him in the foyer of the Marketing wing.”
“But…”
“The CEO who took over for him was never named in public, to avoid possible assassination attempts.”
“I…” Jolly Roger stopped, straightening, a new coolness coming into his eyes. “Lass, what is the current lineup of The Super Patriots?”
“Uh. West Coast Division is Action Dude, Sparkle Bright, Uncertainty, Imagineer, Mechamation, and Jack O’Lope. They brought in Firecracker from the Midwest Division as a stand-in for Sparkle Bright while she was unavailable, but I’m not sure if she’s still affiliated with the team. Midwest Division is Trick, Treat, Cosmo-not, Dotty Gale, and Firecracker, usually. East Coast Division is the American Dream, Flash Flood, Deadbolt, Second Chance, Firefly, and I think Leading Lady? I’m not sure who’s in South these days.”
“Are any of them psychic in any way? Not telepaths—just straight up psychics.” “Yes, sort of. The Nanny from the West Coast junior team is some sort of empath, although she’s pretty much limited to knowing whether someone has been naughty. And I think she has to be in the room with them for that to work.” Velveteen shook her head. “Everyone else has physical powers, or manipulates energy. Oh, and Imagineer is a techno-path. So she’s psychic, but only when she’s dealing with machines.”
“I see.” Jolly Roger took a deep breath. Then he downed the last of his rum in a single gulp, stood, and slammed the mug into the table. “Tell your friends I’ll have cabins made up for them. We set sail with the tide.”
“I—what?”
“You wanted a pirate, lass. Well, you’ve got one, and we’re going to pillage The Super Patriots before our fight is through.”
“But you said—”
“You asked for my help. I’m giving it to you. Don’t question, or you might make me change my mind, and you wouldn’t want to do that, now, would you?”
“No, sir,” said Velveteen. “I’ll tell the others.” She turned to flee the cabin.
“And give back my ship!” he shouted after her. The door slammed. He sighed, shoulders sagging.
He should have seen it. He should have guessed. There were so many clues, so many signs, but ah, he’d been so tired, and the fight had been so hard; he hadn’t wanted to complicate things. Slowly, he turned to the closed cabinet that hung on the back wall, watching over everything he did. He couldn’t see her portrait, but he didn’t need to. Some things were too beautiful to be contained by something as simple as a sheet of polished oak.
“Oh, love,” he said, resting his fingers against the cabinet door. “What have you done? What have I allowed you to do?”
Safely shut away, the painted face of his beloved did not answer.
The four heroines found themselves sharing a cabin, which was less ideal than it could have been, given Jackie’s tendency to slowly drop the temperature of a room while she slept, and the way that all the ship’s rats really wanted to snuggle with the Princess. Still, they had individual hammocks and plenty of
blankets, and Victory Anna was able to cobble a space heater from a bunch of pieces she’d found in the hold. (None of them asked. Where Victory Anna’s inventions were concerned, not asking was the only safe course of action, or at least the only course of action that allowed them to avoid headaches.)
“So you got your man,” said Jackie, leaning out of her hammock to peer down at Velveteen. “I gotta say, I didn’t think you’d pull it off.”
“Neither did I,” said Velveteen. “I’m still not quite sure how I swung it.”
“What comes next?” asked the Princess.
“We go out and find our army.” Velveteen folded her hands behind her head, staring up at the ceiling, or at least, staring up at Jackie in her hammock. “We gather every superhuman with a grudge, and we sail right through their gates. They should have left us alone. They should have left me alone.”
“Ah,” said Jackie. “So what you’re saying is that things are finally going to get fun around here.”
“Here’s hoping,” said Velveteen. “Good night, all.”
The four girls slept as the Phantom Doll sailed proudly through the clouds with Jolly Roger at the helm, the world’s last great hero, heading home at last.
VELVETEEN
vs.
Everyone
THE APPEARANCE OF THE PHANTOM Doll in the evening sky caught the world’s attention in an instant. Jolly Roger’s disappearance had never quite faded from the public consciousness: he was the first and greatest mystery of the superheroic age, the hero in whose wake all others followed. He was the one who did not die and rise again, or die and stay dead—a rarer but still possible occurrence. He was the one who simply vanished, leaving everything behind.
Children raced to their windows, only to be shoved aside by parents who had been children themselves when the Phantom Doll last sailed the skies. Blurry photos cropped up on every social media network, while the rare clear shots of the high-masted ship silhouetted against the rising moon were jealously watermarked by the lucky photographers who had taken them.
And on a rooftop in San Diego, a woman stood, her hooded face turned toward the sky, and waited. She had been waiting for a very long time.
“Let me get this straight,” said Jackie. She crossed her arms, frowning at the woman in the bunny-eared headband. “You seriously have no plan beyond ‘let’s go and hit them until the candy comes out.’ Because not all of them contain candy. Candy is not a default filling.”
“Then we hit them until the kidneys come out,” said Velveteen grimly. She looked around the circle of costumed heroes. “This is our only shot. Don’t you get that? We need to do this now, before Sparkle Bright tells Marketing everything she knows about us.”
“If she hasn’t already,” added the Princess. Both Velveteen and Victory Anna turned to glare at her. She blinked. “What? You know it’s something we have to consider. They’ve had her long enough that she could have spilled every bean she’s got.”
“She hasn’t,” said Velveteen. “She never told them she was spending time as Blacklight; that means she’s got some resistance to their mind games. Not much, maybe, but enough that she can keep her secrets for at least a little while. They’d be coming after us by now if she’d talked. She knows about my trip to Vegas, and that means she knows I was planning to look for Jolly Roger.”
“And if The Super Patriots knew that, they’d have stopped us by now,” said the Princess slowly. “All right. I like your logic. Still don’t like your plan, though.”
“What do you want us to do?” asked Jackie.
“It’s like I said before,” said Velveteen. “Now we get our army.”
David Mickelstein—better known as “the Claw,” especially now that he was committed to the supervillainous lifestyle—was preparing for a full frontal assault on Captain John’s Steak and Seafood when a hand tapped him on the shoulder. He turned, raising his claws defensively, and stopped as he saw the woman standing behind him, her bunny-eared headband in her hands. She was back in uniform, a domino mask covering her face, and she was beautiful.
“Aaron never knew how lucky he was,” he said.
Velveteen blinked. “What?”
“Nothing! Er. What are you doing here? Are you here to thwart me? Because I don’t think this is your territory.”
“David…” Velveteen smiled. “Don’t you miss being a hero? Don’t you want the opportunity to right a real injustice?”
He wanted to say that the lobsters even now being boiled to death inside that building were his brethren, and that their deaths were a real injustice. He wanted to ask where she was when he was being sidelined more and more as “difficult to market.” He wanted to know what gave her the right to ask him a question like that.
“Yes,” he said. “Why?”
“Because I’m finally going to take on The Super Patriots, and I need your help.”
The Claw snorted. “Oh, yeah? You and what army?”
To his surprise, Velveteen smiled. “Look up,” she said.
He looked up. He blinked. And he said, in an awed tone, “I’m in.”
* * *
Dead Ringer drew her bell as she crept up on the mugger she’d been stalking. In a moment, he would understand why most sensible villains stayed far from her territory—which, if she was being honest with herself, was why she was reduced to chasing muggers, rather than sinking her teeth into a juicy supervillain of her very own. Still, anything was better than nothing, which was why she was so put out when a beam of what looked like solid neon gas lanced out of the shadows and hit the mugger in the chest, flinging him into a pile of garbage cans.
“What the—?”
“You may, of course, manage your vocabulary as you see fit, but I would prefer you not swear in my immediate vicinity,” said a prim female voice. A short, curvy redheaded woman in a tight corset and impractical-looking boots stepped out of the shadows. There was a tiny top hat perched at a jaunty angle atop her head. Dead Ringer couldn’t take her eyes off of it. “I believe you are the sonic heroine known as ‘Dead Ringer’ in this reality, is that correct?”
“Yes…” Dead Ringer eyed her warily. “Who are you?”
“My code name is Victory Anna. I, and my compatriots, have been shabbily treated by The Super Patriots, and have amassed sufficient proof to show that they are not acting in a heroic manner, and that we are thus not behaving villainously if we choose to go against them. We wished to extend an invitation for you to join us in this campaign.”
Dead Ringer paused for a long moment, puzzling through that, before she asked, “Are you saying you have proof that The Super Patriots have been fucking us all over for years?”
“Not in such crass terms, but yes,” said Victory Anna, a flicker of irritation crossing her face. “Will you stand with us?”
“I’ve been waiting for this moment since the day I left the fold.” Dead Ringer returned her bell to its place by her side, a slow smile splitting her face. “Just tell me who I get to hit.”
“That’s the spirit,” said Victory Anna. “Now, if you would simply come with me…”
The doorbell rang, interrupting what was otherwise promising to be an excellent argument about the virtues of hockey played on an indoor rink vs. hockey played on a naturally frozen surface. “I’ll get it,” said Misty, hopping to her feet. Gordon and Ethan watched her go for a moment, admiring the process of her walking away, and then went back to the argument at hand. Misty shook her head. Boys would be boys. She was smiling when she reached and opened the front door.
Her smile died.
“No,” she said, and tried to slam the door in the face of the woman standing on the porch.
Jackie was too fast for her. Quick as a wink, her fingers were wrapped around the edge of the door, sending frost racing across the wood. “Misty, please,” she said. “Is that any way to greet an old friend?”
“A friend? You’re a friend now? You come here, you tell Tad you need him in Portland, that there’s a girl h
e ‘simply must meet,’ she’s perfect for him, and by the way, you’ll owe him if he’ll at least give it a try. The next thing we know here, we’re getting the notice of his death. And not even a funeral!” Misty glared at Jackie like she was willing the other woman’s flesh to melt from ice into water. “You have a lot of nerve showing your face here, Jacqueline Frost.”
“Misty? Is there a problem?” Ethan loomed up behind her in the doorway. Even in his human form, he resembled nothing so much as a grizzly on the verge of losing its temper. His eyes narrowed as he looked at Jackie. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“Tad made his own choices,” Jackie said. “A lot of us haven’t been given that luxury. Is Gordon here? Because I came to talk to all three of you, and I’m going to talk to all three of you. The only question is whether I do it standing on the porch, where all your neighbors can see, or whether I do it inside, where you have the home team advantage.”
“Our neighbors know what we do for a living,” said Misty dismissively.
“Sure they do. That means they’ll be happy to come outside and get a show.” Jackie pulled herself closer to the open door. “Let me in. For Tad’s sake, let me in.”
Misty and Ethan exchanged a look. Then, finally, they stepped out of the way, and Jackie Frost was allowed to enter the home of the famous Canadian heroes, Poutine, the Grizzly, and Gastown.
The bar where the Fairy Tale Girls spent their off-hours was located in a part of Fairyland that the Princess generally tried to avoid. It’s not that it was rough, although it was; being friends with Jackie Frost had forced her to relax a great deal about going into places people thought of as “rough.” It’s that it was a mixed up maelstrom of fairy tales ideas and concepts, some so old that they’d been virtually forgotten outside of Fairyland, and going there tended to upset her stomach.