Big Superhero Action (2 page)

“Girls?”

“Few.”

“What was his family like?”

“His dad was a cop. His older brother’s in the Sheriff’s. He tried to get in. Then he tried to get into the Department.”

“Never made it?”

“Naw. He never really fit in anyway. He’s a gun freak who never got any pussy. Never even got high.”

“Ever see him violent?”

“No.”

The Blue Boss Mustang pulled up back in front of the auto body place.

“That it?” Dwight said.

The Blue Boss thought about it.

“Yeah, that’s it. Get the fuck out.”

Dwight got out, grabbed his crotch, shot back a yank at the Mustang.

Just then the results came in. Blue Boss already had the answer from the finger read of the big guy’s DNA. The big guy was Sonny Ditlow with an OSD face change.

A
ir Brutalia still had daily flights to the city. The government wanted to shut it down. You never knew the day there would be no Air Brutalia. One day the flights would be one-way only—in or out. Then zero flights. The Army had soldiers at the checkpoints. Forget taking off your shoes, they pulled you out of the line and cammed you, asked you your purpose in going there.

Nicole answered, “To be a superhero again.”

There was no wrong answer. Anyone with a boarding pass went through. The airport newsstand had two Rolling Stone covers, one with the Carousel one with Dr. Playground. She bought both. She planned to get back into a Brutalia state of mind.

There were two white men in the seats in front of her talking loudly.

“Remember when Eric took a hit on the OSD? He got
ka-rushhed
, man. The OSD pulls people trying to crack that market and totally fucks them over.”

“Ignorance is profit. They took in billions until it got out about the Limit. They’re fucking the Arabs and Chinese now. And try to sue the OSD. This isn’t the Mafia, these people shoot down fighter jets. They can do whatever the fuck they want.”

“Uh-huh. Brutal.”

“They own that tech. Forget Vegas, okay? Literally what happens in Brutalia stays in Brutalia.”

“Okay, exactly how does that work, the Limit? What are the rules?”

“The Brutalia Limit is the point where superpowers stop existing. Those with superpowers lose them outside the city. You can’t export that. So you can’t monetize Brutalia outside Brutalia.”

“Nobody’s cracked it yet.”

“That’s been really hard to do. How do you do that? You can’t do it.”

“Does that apply to coldwave energy too?”

“I know a guy who tried to export coldwave technology from there and he got
rrrraped
. He was stuck with a useless investment in tech that didn’t exist. It wasn’t even content, it was thin air.”

“Fuuuck.”

“If he goes back to Brutalia, that changes in one instant. But you have to stay there.”

In Atlanta she had to tell everyone she was from Washington D.C. She had to act like Brutalia was new information. Holy shit what’s next? She was a twelve year old again, sleeping on the couch in the Curtis family’s shitty apartment. Aunt Heidi and her two-inch nails, the thugged-out kids. The alarm clock set for seven, the school uniform, the thugged-out school that was like going back to Kindergarten. She had an escape route in case her mind changed, thousands in an online checking account. It enabled her to slip out of the apartment, book a flight on Air Brutalia. On the plane she phoned Mom.

Mom said, “You lied to your Aunt Heidi. I never told you to come back.”

“I couldn’t tell her I was sick to death of them and Atlanta.”

“So you’re going back to…that stuff?”

“Yes.”

“Did you forget what made you give that up?”

“It’s a risk I can take.”

“What’s changed?”

“I’m two years wiser now.”

“I want you to see me when you get here.”

“I will.”

Turn off all devices.

The plane was over Brutalia. Dampness sprouted all over her as the tiny gold and brown lights below slanted. That was the start.

Nicole couldn’t get to the washroom, had to stay in her seat, so she covered herself with an airline blanket, jammed her forehead against the window. She would have to look weird for a while. She ducked her head under the blanket, curled underneath. The dampness turned her clothes to a bath towel. She kept a hand pressed to her mouth so the sounds wouldn’t escape. The tingling started in her toes, rolled up her legs in a wave, hit her pink where her restored hymen made her a virgin twice. A moan came out. She sensed the head in the next seat turning her way. The wave rolled up her chest, the tide hit her brain and the roots of her hair to where the strands ended. She hid shivering. The dampness slowly faded her back to dryness but the clothes stayed damp. The shivering faded. She peeked out from the blanket. The city lights hung below beyond the blackness of the wing.

And if she had turned so would the sirens out there somewhere be turning at the same time, freaking and pinking and growing for the first time in two years. They would know she was back in town. But there was something different this time. She could share their bodies now. She shared their transformation so it was six times the transition. She covered her mouth with both hands. She was Mermaid Gangster rising from her spike heeled boots.

She jumped into Mom’s psyche. She could do that now.
It was like putting on her clothes and shoes when she was five except today it wasn’t oversized high heels it was being age forty, the decades longer of being a grown up. She was in the kitchen holding a skinny bottle of Chardonnay, tipping it over a plastic glass, pouring over two ice cubes. The background: the TV running. It was a movie. Michael Jackson onstage. The movie was his post-death concert movie. Mom was a huge Michael Jackson fan. But she wasn’t paying attention to the TV it was only on for company. There was a twinge somewhere between pain and wonderment. It came from having a child taken from her to somewhere beyond her control or her imagination. Leaving a strange hole inside her heart and her brain. The child now returning to become what wasn’t her child but still her child. She had gotten her out of that city but now she was coming back. There was nothing she could do about it either way. God couldn’t speak louder with a clearer voice but the voice of God was not something we were ever meant to hear directly. She went to the living room window, peeked through the closed blinds at the wall of the next apartment building, felt a gratitude for the sheltering darkness of night.

Nicole shed the blanket, uncurled herself into uprightness. No one would notice she was no longer twelve, had grown three inches and was now an adult. Now she was Gingiri again. To be or die, this was her natural state.

The plane was full. Every flight was full today even flights to Brutalia. She waited for the assholes to clear the aisle before making her exit. She had no carry-on bag, no luggage, had left Atlanta in Atlanta. Then she left BIA, hit the late winter east coast cold dressed for mild Atlanta weather. She could see her breath. She could feel the cold but here it had no effect on her. Temperature had no effect on Sirens. The sign said it was 30 degrees but she was in a wifebeater top and jeggings. She needed her Siren costume again.

The irony was the $$$ she had to spend to fly to the only place where she had the superpower of flight. She needed no taxicab or rental car to cross the city. She took to the air. When Sirens did it there were no corny shots of them flying like Superman, Siren flight was less visible, too sudden to follow with the eyes, seen as a streak of blue crossing the sky. Then they landed
Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon
style upon imaginary pink wires that elegantly landed them on their spike heels.

It was weird being back in a place that for two years had been more dream than reality. Gingiri toured above the vastness of a city twice the size of NYC. She flew over the freeways, the factories, their spires and smokestacks, the coldwave power plants, the sky scraping skyscrapers, the Brutalist architecture. Brutalia Way ran the city from end to end, southwest to northeast, lining up the major locations along its course. The KM Building, AXIS headquarters. The canals. The Pegasus Building with the marble winged horse on top, now OSD headquarters. The Brutalia Post Building with its 24/7 headline crawl. The buildings were all big and square for blocks and blocks that looked color coded, blocks of blue, grey, red brick, brown, white…blocks and blocks of unoccupied office buildings, apartment buildings, the city a crowded Monopoly board. The Brutalia Forest, the one place inside the city where trees existed. Stretches of urban blahhh, graffiti-tagged streets patrolled by amateur superheroes. She knew where the Sirens were now, homed in on them. They were together and waiting for her at their hangout.

Megatalia Mall was the largest mall in the U.S. It had every chain operating in North America and a number of chains from Europe. It had luxury car dealerships. It had a White Castle and a cosmetic surgeon. It had stores that weren’t chains making those their only satellite stores. Southeast corner outside the Mangamaxx. There they were like when they’d been twelve, the five loitering outside. They all looked old enough now and were in full splendor. Gingiri looked like a loser as her Keds ambled her their way toward them.

They all had the stylish little S on their foreheads, Gingiri too. Siren wear was a fusion of Goth, sailor manga, ‘90s kinderwhore and the movie
Sucker Punch
. They were pierced and tattooed between the bangs and the spike heels.

Girlfinger was the scientist of the Siren Syndicate. She wore the lab coat. She had invented Siren Six, upgrading the recreational drug every six months. She handled the beakers, drew the montage of spinning nuclei and chemical compounds, ended with the seawater-green powder that became the end product.

Kafka Kardashian invented the weapons, the Siren guns, the Siren explosives and laser grenades, the Siren sword and handbag-sized samurai blade. With Girlfinger she had invented the compound that turned the blood of Sirens when spilled into a poisonous weapon. Mermaid Gangster always had her working on a faster-working compound.

Captain Madame X specialized in vehicles, engineering and design, built the Siren cycles, did the maintenance on the Hummers. On her drawing board were the Sirenwing and the Sirenmarine.

Sailor Star was the Siren sensei who invented Siren martial arts and trained the Sirens until they could spar in their sleep. She believed a martial art should first look sexy.

Gingiri was the psychic Siren. She could read guilt or innocence. She was the one with the superpower of flight. She was the one with her own connection to the city. She was the one who translated the city for them. The city had a language and she could hear it and it told her where to find any person within the city.

Mermaid Gangster had the fastest regeneration powers of the six. A Siren could take a .357 in the chest and it would be three days of breakfast in bed and daytime TV. MG, in one minute it was a sunburn. She was the head of Siren operations. Her name was more than a sense of style it was both her psychological profile and her resume. In her child state she had turned shoplifting into an operation where she delivered whatever the client ordered to order. She had specialized in top designer labels swiped from the top showrooms or off the trucks from New York. In the fashion trade the extremely hip knew to talk to her first. She had a wardrobe that was ahead of the curve for NYC runway models.

Mermaid Gangster started the Sirenitude.

“Six girls in six pools. One shockwave, six shocks. Six girls in one coma for six months…”

Gingiri picked it up, “…Six girls sleep, six sirens wake…”

“…Six sirens wake as super sirens …”

“…Super sirens wake with six super powers…”

“…and six are one as one is six. We waited.”

“Here?”

“Yeah.”

“Every night?”

“Since you called.”

“I just flew in.”

“We know. The moment you entered Brutalia air space we turned back.”

“Me too.”

Mermaid Gangster said, “How did you stand it?”

Gingiri: “I don’t know.”

“You still scared of the city?”

“That wasn’t it and you know it. It almost killed me.”

“Nobody’s ever seen or heard of any little yellow war. It must be in your head.”

“Fucking
duh
. I’m a psychic. That’s the point.”

“Nothing will happen to you. We will kill your enemies.”

“Whatever,” Gingiri said. “I’ll take my chances.”

“See? Once you go super you can’t go back.”

“Guess not.”

“Meanwhile we spend two years being twelve again. Fuck you, Gingiri.”

“Not my problem, MG.”

“Your head is wanted.”

“Except you can’t have it. So say hi to tampons again and shut the fuck up.”

Mermaid Gangster took a handful of Gingiri’s face, shoved her back against the brick mall wall. “You have to earn your way back.”

“Then forget it,” Gingiri muttered around black leather glove. “I’m not on the team.”

Mermaid Gangster let go her face. “Don’t be stupid, stupid.”

Gingiri heard that, laughed.

That made Mermaid Gangster laugh. The tension broke and the others landed on Gingiri with shoves and hugs until they were all wet-eyed and pink-nosed.

MG said, “If you leave again I’ll kill you.”

“Maybe I will, maybe you won’t.”

“Better not.”

Kafka Kardashian said, “You need clothes.”

Sailor Star: “You must be starving.”

“Now we can eat,” Mermaid Gangster said, “and never gain weight. Miss that, bitches?”

They took Gingiri to where their camo pattern paisley and coral pink Hummer 3 was parked across two spaces, where mall security and everyone else kept their distance.

M
idtown into Alphaland then through Alphaland into Little Hell.

Condemned buildings grew like jungles, rolling black vistas beyond Brutalia’s dead industrial core. They flew above dark narrow streets in a decrepit white 1975 Delta 88 convertible. When twice they passed the same KM frozen foods billboard, Martian Justice knew they were lost.