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Stories from the Verse
Con Version
Chapter 105: Cooper 34
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Brown 319
Cooper finished turning Major Pain over to the police, who double cuffed him with one on his wrists and the other on his ankles before putting him in the back of a police car. Private Problem was brought out, cuffed, and gagged, and still unconscious, for the same fate. Attempting to accept their thanks graciously, he then ran off, trying to get in a good five minute run back toward the railroad station. It was part of his effort to familiarize himself with the city.
Running around Trelawney Park, a large expanse of grass and trees for baseball or picnicking along with some very tall swings and teeter totters and little animal figures on bouncing metal coils, he heard a female voice gasp out from behind him.
“Derek? Slade? Kondor.” None of those names meant anything to him, but he was also the only person around since the park was empty. So he turned about and saw a curiously dressed Oriental girl. Looking closer, he decided she was Japanese–but far odder was her hide and fur jacket, and the rope and grappling hook at her waist. She was also nearly completely gassed out.
Clearly she had been trying to reach him, and so he began to walk back toward her wondering what was going on. Off to his right, he heard some kids run out of several houses on the far side of the street, with their screen doors screeching.
“Superfight!” he heard, and that made his mind reevaluate the situation. The girl, for she looked perhaps sixteen, might be a supervillain. She straightened up, and while she was still clearly struggling to catch her breath her hand went to her rope and hook with skilled experience. It was clearly not a weapon that the locals of this time and place would have had much use for. She could be a super ninja. His mind flashed back to the news the other night about the Korean Conflict, as they called it–as if calling something ‘not a war’ might make it less bad. Would the Chinese Communist Party hire a ninja clan to attack him? No, that was just too ridiculous. He had barely started on his career as a superhero. In all likelihood, the Chicoms were probably not even aware he existed. Still, the situation called for caution, and polite inquiry. However, before he figured out what to ask, she gasped out something between a question and a greeting, which caught him completely off guard.
“You’re, you’re a verser.”
There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with eleven other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #511: Characters Change. Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter. It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
