Yesterday's Heroes (Consortium of Chaos Book 1) (29 page)

“Player two deposit coin.  Player
two deposit coin.”

Wyatt slammed his fist against the
marque for the
Freedom Squad: The Arcade Game.

“GODDAMMIT!”  He pointed down at
one of the six joysticks on the huge arcade cabinet.  “It’s that stupid
controller!  It doesn’t work!”

Harlot rolled her eyes.  They were
standing in her collection display room, and had been playing this game for almost
an hour now and he didn’t seem to be getting any better at it.  For someone who
spent his entire life trying to improve his reflexes, he apparently had
no
hand eye coordination.  “The controller works fine, Wyatt.  You just suck at
this.”  The Fabricator character she was controlling moved onto the next level
and began smashing mutant snowmen with a giant hammer.  “Don’t be a sore
loser.”

He pointed at the screen.  “No,
no.  This is all the MACHINE’S fault!  What the hell kind of scam is this
thing?!?”

She laughed.  “It’s just a game.”

He shook his head.  “Who programmed
this!?!  HUH!?!  Why are they talking so weird?”

Fabricator jumped and started
climbing up a large Christmas tree.

“Because the code was written
overseas, and no one bothered to proof read the translation before releasing it
in the states.”

Wyatt didn’t seem to be paying any
attention to her explanation.  “And there is no WAY that Dauntless would be
taken down by a
robotic hyena
, okay!  He’s got impervious skin!  Their
teeth couldn’t break it!”

She laughed again.  “I told you not
to pick him.  There were five
other
characters you could have gone with,
but oh no, you have to be Mr. Alien Big shot in a cape.”

He scowled and pointed to the red
joystick.  “Fine.  Let me play ME then.”

She took her eyes off the screen
and looked over at him to see if he was actually serious.  To her utter
astonishment, he seemed to expect her to give up her spot at the “Fabricator”
joystick.  Wow.  “Hell no!  Listen, I called it.  He’s the best character in
the game!  Your Freedom Power is unstoppable!”

His eyes narrowed.  “I don’t even
know what that is.”  He pointed at the screen.  “I’ve never done that in my
life!”

She rolled her eyes as electronic
Fabricator was dodging hand grenades thrown by elves.  “They…they had to take
some artistic licenses…”  Fabricator flew over the elves on telekinetic wings,
blasting at them with a grenade launcher he seemed to suddenly have.  “But the
game is accurate
in spirit.”

Wyatt fished in his pocket for more
quarters.  “Yes, yes.  I’m sure.”  He looked at the different controller
options.  “So, who should I play then?”

She shrugged.  “They basically all
suck but you.  Sorry.  Mr. Fahrenheit does a fire attack that’s fairly good. 
Baller used to be a good choice, but Cynic broke the “B” button last week and
Holly and OverDriver haven’t fixed it yet.”

Wyatt gave an elaborate sigh and
deposited money into the yellow “Honey Badger” joystick slot.  “I gotta say, it
feels kind of weird playing him, after our recent problems.  I mean, I…”  He
glared at the screen as electronic Wyatt turned himself into a giant
telekinetic robot.  “Now that’s just silly!  A robot?!?  Did they pay
ANY
attention to what I’m capable of?  What’s that?  My Voltron attack or
something?”

She shook her head.  “Hey, you
think you know more about your powers than the good people at Tiltavision? 
Huh?  Cause this game looks very accurate to ME!”  She slammed her hand down on
the special power button and electronic Wyatt opened up on the flesh eating
robot reindeer with his chest-mounted Gatling gun.  “Look on the bright side,
at least you’re legitimately IN the game, everyone else was just illegally
lifted.”

Wyatt’s Honey Badger character
dropped from the sky next to Fabricator and began punching the air randomly.  “What
do you mean?”

“Well, Poacher was renamed ‘Ivory
Hunter,’ and Tyrant is ‘Despot,’ and Holly is ‘SIN-der Claus,’ and…”

Wyatt pressed the jump button
trying to get Badger up onto the roof of the toy shop.  He failed.  “Actually,
that one’s not bad.”

Harlot nodded.  “Yeah, we thought
so too.  She actually took a vote on whether she should change her name to that
or not, but decided against it.”

“Probably a good idea.”  He swore
as a snowman knocked Badger down and started stabbing him with its carrot
nose.  “How about you?  You in here someplace?”

She shook her head.  “Nope.  ‘Fraid
not.  When it first came out, I went to the mall and played it for HOURS trying
to see.”  She frowned.  “But sadly, I’m not.  I thought for a while that the
‘Trumpet Strumpet’ character MIGHT be an amalgam of me and Troubadour?  Cause
she dresses like me but plays instruments like him, but I interviewed one of the
programmers for my blog a few years back, and he said that it was based on Enmity
instead.  Major bummer.”

“Yes, I feel for you.  Look on the
bright side; at least you weren’t edited out of the movie.  Better to not be
there at all, then be told that you’re boring and made into a gray space alien
instead.”

She gasped.  “I KNOW!  That was
totally unfair!  Your character would have OWNED that film!”  Her eyes
narrowed.  “Instead, they turn you into some sort of hybrid with The Visitor,
and to make matters WORSE, they have that airhead newspaper reporter choose
DAUNTLESS over YOU!”  She laughed, the very idea driving her to the brink of
insanity.  “I mean…
COME ON!
  The Gatling gun mounted to your chest in
this game is more realistic than THAT!  NO ONE would choose that guy over you! 
You’re awesome!”

He smiled.  “Well, thank you for
that vote of confidence.”  Badger stepped on a landmine and he swore again.  “That
woman was a bitch, anyway.  Pete and I were on set one day as consultants or
whatever, right?  And she comes over and starts hitting on me.  So, I take her
to this Italian place, just to be nice, I mean, she needs to do some research
or whatever.  I had no interest in her, but figured, why not?  So, I get there
and she’s got the place SWARMING with reporters!  She sold the whole ‘date’
angle to the press and wanted me to sit there!  I go to walk out, and she tries
to stop me by offering to share the money the studio and papers were willing to
pay for our fake relationship.  I’m like;
listen lady, I’m not a prostitute,
okay?  I won’t take money to lie to people.”

She laughed.  “You’re such a Boy Scout,
Wyatt.  It’s adorable.”  She paused.  “…I KNEW I hated that bitch…”

Wyatt frantically pressed the “A”
button.  “I mean, I have integrity.  ETHICS.  What?  Like I’m going to throw
all of that away, just so I can get a few million dollars and bang some blonde
Oscar winner?  I don’t
THINK SO!”

Her mouth fell open.  “Millions? 
As in MILLIONS millions!?!  And you said NO!?!”  She paused.  “Wait…
Jessica
Henderson
offered you SEX for the publicity stunt?  JESS HEDERSON!?!”

Wyatt nodded, not bothering to take
his eyes off the screen.  “Yeah.  Girl offered to do some stuff to me that
would make
poacher
blush.”  He made a disgusted face.  “It was
embarrassing.  I tried to let her down gently and remind her that I had NO
intention of lying to people, and I had ABSOLUTELY no intention of taking a
fake relationship to that level.”  His eyes narrowed in concentration as he
focused his Badgerbombs on SIN-ter Claus’s gingerbread hideout.  “What the hell
did she THINK I was going to do, huh?  Like I had spent my whole life trying to
fight for ethical behavior and to treat people with respect, and then I’d just
forget all about it so that I could get into her pants?  I barely knew her! 
Even worse, the studio was PAYING her to go out with me! 
What kind of
person is that!?!”

“Prostitute.  That’s called a ‘
prostitute
.’” 
Her eyes narrowed.  “Also known as a
cheap whore
.”

He sighed.  “So Peter started
dating her instead, and bought himself a Lamborghini with the money the studio
gave him.”  He shook his head.  “The woman was a terrible actress.  Just
terrible.”

Harlot nodded, mentally reminding herself
to add the woman’s name to the Consortium’s “Enemies List” on the dry erase
board in the War Room…

“I’ll say.  When she was trying to
keep Dauntless from flying off to stop that comet from destroying Earth in the
movie, I swear to god I was laughing.  And her acting was even WORSE in the
sequel!”

He rolled his eyes.  “Oh god!  THE
SEQUEL!  I voted we make them rename it ‘
The Alan Smithee Squad
’ or
something, just to hide the shame of being associated with it.”

She frowned.  “Umm…I should
probably tell you that the reason it was so bad?  Um…”  She looked down at the
controls.  “Yeah.  Vaudeville and Narrator totally wrote that piece of shit. 
They just wanted to mess with you guys.”

He slammed a hand down on the
control panel.  “I KNEW IT!  I TOLD them there was no
way
that someone
could write that and intend it to be serious!  The bad guy is killer mold? 
Dauntless gains the ability to fight crime alongside his own external skeletal
system, which he names ‘Edna,’ and which can turn into a flying saucer and
chauffer him around, and is also in love with him? 
WHAT THE HELL!?!”

She laughed.  “Yeah.  We uh…we had
a contest to see who could come up with the funniest one for you guys, and then
Vaudeville would push it through the studio for us.”  She nodded.  “Mine was
MUCH better though.  I had you show up, and totally beat down that NOT you guy from
the first film, and get the girl.  A NEW girl.  A BETTER girl.”  She paused. 
“Who was named
Trollope
.”

He turned to stare at her for a
moment.  “…You wrote
fan fiction
about me?”

She laughed.  “NO!  Of course not! 
I’m not some obsessed psycho, okay?  I thought we’d established that already.” 
Electronic Fabricator dodged a red laser beam shot from Rudolph’s nose.  “It
was a
screenplay.  
It was a serious work of
literature
.”

“Yeah.  Sounds awesome.”  He
smiled.  “And Mary-Sue…I mean,
Trollope
?  I’m guessing, she’s NOT an ace
newspaper reporter, is she?”

She snorted.  “Hell no!  She killed
THAT skanky bitch in act one.  No, she was TOTALLY evil.  She kidnaps Fabricator
and there would have been this whole romance thing before they had to go stop
some time travel guy from changing the world into an evil alternate version of
itself.”  She nodded excitedly.  “It had INFINITE summer movie potential, but
with a lot of heart too.”

He looked concerned.  “I don’t
know.  I don’t buy it.”

“Don’t buy what?”

“Their romance.  I don’t buy it.”

She scowled at him.  “Their romance
would have been BEAUTIFUL, Wyatt.  Okay?  So, shut up!”  She sighed.  “But
Jamie and Cory’s version was the one we went with.  Personally, I think it just
got more votes cause it had Boring Reporter Girl going undercover in that strip
club to get the information on the government’s secret Saturn based assassin
team.”  She shook her head sadly.  “Hard to get most of the guys in the
Consortium to vote against THAT much nudity and gratuitous violence.”

Badger continued punching SIN-ter
Claus in the face until she fell to the ground blinking.

“YES!”  He pointed at his Badger
character on the screen.  “Now I’m sorry I killed him!  He’s
awesome!
” 
He smiled as his points were totaled.  “I didn’t like the movie.  I literally
wasn’t interested in seeing that girl naked when they offered to PAY me to look
at her in person, I’m certainly NOT going to pay the theater to see her.  I
went to go see the
Famer Frank
movie with some Make-a-Wish kids, instead.” 
He nodded.  “It was actually pretty good.  I downloaded some of the songs to my
iPod, and the kids were
awesome
.”

She stared at him.  “So…you missed
going to the premiere of a movie, about YOU, featuring the country’s sexiest
woman,
incredibly
naked in explicit detail, because you were taking terminally
ill kids to a movie about a rooster puppet?”

He nodded.  “Well, it wasn’t ONLY
about the rooster.  Farmer Frank was in there too.  And Baaaaabs the Sheep.” 
He laughed.  “You ever see her?  She does this thing where…”

His words were cut off as she
kissed him.  He pushed him back against the arcade game, not even caring that
the next level was starting.

“You’re such a good man, Wyatt.”

“Not really, no.”

“You’re a HERO.”

“Was.  Kind of.  But not anymore;
I’m a villain now.”

“You regret not taking the money
and the girl, and not disappointing the kids?”

He shook his head and looked
confused.  “No.  Why would I?”

She beamed.  “See?  H-E-R-O.”

“V-I-L-L…”  He paused.  “Wait…is it
‘A-I-N’ or ‘I-A-N’?”  He frowned.  “I always screw that up.  Spelling isn’t my
thing, because the tutors my parents hired for us really didn’t stay around
long…Especially not after we lost that one professor back in the Cretaceous and
left without him.”  He paused, looking serious for a moment.  “We think the raptors
got him.”  He shook his head sadly.  “…Poor Professor Beardsly.”

She ran her hand down his face.  “Your
stories are always just the saddest things, honey.”  She hugged him.  “Poor
baby.”

He grabbed her around the waist and
leaned down to whisper in her ear.  “Does that door have a lock?  I think I
want to act out some scenes in your Trollope movie…”

She smiled and nodded.  She locked
it, and then ran back to him.  The second she was within reach, his arms were
around her again.  He kissed her, his mouth plundering hers.  She moaned as he
pressed her back against the arcade game.  She pushed him away and traced a
hand down his chest.  “Now…where were we at the museum before we were
interrupted?”