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Stories from the Verse
Con Version
Chapter 107: Takano 117
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Brown 320
Tomiko awoke and felt small stones in her back, just like on the tiny beach on which she had succumbed to snakebite. Before she could speculate that she somehow survived, a whiff of air hit her nose--too warm for early spring with faint notes of tar and gasoline hydrocarbons in the air, followed by the honk of a horn assuring her she was no longer in the campground above the underground complex. She had transited to a new world, yet again. The best part was that she had lost all the pain of the copperhead bites. The worst part was she had left her Tribe behind whom she had loved. Davey, Torin, Varlax, Peep, Gram, son of Torin, Rami, and the others of the hundred or so Tribe which Emperor Beam and his friends, Lauren her friend, and she herself had brought up out of the technological collapse that had caught up to the underground cave system built by ancient humans. Sealing up her heart hurt for the moment, she reached out and picked up the rope of her kawanaga and coiled the rope before clipping it to her waist.
Opening her eyes, she rolled to her feet. Clear blue sky above a mountain valley in which a large city lay surrounded her as she stood on the white gravel and tar underlay of a flat-roofed building. Telephone and power lines and streetlights ran from nearby wood poles which told her several things. Electricity existed, as did telecommunications, but it was before metal or concrete poles became common for streetlights. Actually, she realized, it hinted at certain things. Perhaps metal was scarce.
Walking over to the building edge, she looked down ten feet to the sidewalk below, and the line of large metal cars, many with tailfins. No, metal was not scarce, she decided, looking down at the shiny behemoths that could hold four adults in the front seat and five in the back. Well dressed couples in suits and dresses were leaving from or going to their cars. The car-going carried paper bags. One of the incomers saw her standing on the edge above him, and gave her a friendly, even respectful, wave. Not knowing what else to do, she waved back. He bent down to a woman next to him, and said loud enough for her to hear.
“Look, honey, Woolworth’s has its own superheroine now.”
She slipped back out of sight before the woman in the ruby dress and pillbox hat could glance up at her. Feeling grubby, and wondering about ‘superheroine’ and ‘Woolworth’s’, but glad she heard English, she jogged to the back edge of the building. It was a slightly taller side, about fifteen feet. She swooped down, and hooked the grapple on the building edge, and dove off into a flip using the rope to slow herself. Lightly, she landed on her feet, flipped the kawanaga free from above her, and recoiled it to clip it to her side. The back alley behind Woolworth’s and several other shops in both directions led to roads on both sides, so she decided to let her verser sense guide her.
Relaxing, she felt her other goods which would have been at her nest camp off to the right sort of, and another sense, that of a verser off in that general direction, too. Setting out at a brisk walk, she came to the street. Looking both ways, she darted across the street, reaching the far side in safety only to hear a police siren sound from behind her. Fearing, she took a deep breath, and turned about. After all, she was Japanese in color, and so far the only being she had seen beside herself with other than white skin had been a Golden Retriever. It had been very cute, but she had no desire for a leash.
A black and white police car pulled up alongside the sidewalk. A smiling uniformed policeman in the passenger’s side had rolled down his window, but did not get out.
“You must be a new superheroine. Welcome to Berkeley, Colorado. Thing is, miss, if you’re not in combat with a villain, we need you to follow the laws. So, no jaywalking, okay?”
She breathed in again, and noted ‘that superheroine thing’ again.
“How do you know I’m not a supervillain?” she asked, and then regretted it.
“Well, a police car pulled up behind you. You turned around and smiled. You didn’t reach for your whip, or cause your eyes to glow. You didn’t get all haughty ‘like how dare you speak to the Lord of Monsters?’” It was clear that this was an imitation of something he had actually heard. “And you didn’t cackle madly, and start boasting of how we could not stop your plan for world domination.”
Tommy was suddenly grateful she had not pulled out her kawanaga, which was not a whip. She had considered it for a brief second. The other two had never crossed her mind.
She turned to go.
“If you don’t mind, for the paperwork, could we have your super name, miss?”
“I’m very new. I don’t have one yet.”
“Huh, well with the whip and the animal furs, and the way you stand, you seem like a Wild Girl to me.”
“Wild Girl? Huh. I don’t know about that one. Now I need to go, officers.”
They waved goodbye and, much relieved, she jog-walked down another alley, and came to another major street, and this time made sure not to jaywalk. A tenth of a mile onward she left the downtown area commercial district behind with a ninety degree turn to the left. This brought her to the beginning of densely packed houses, and she saw a man in the distance running away. Resentfully, she saw that he in his black cloak had cut across the street, but then she saw someone else do it. Ah, the informal social rules that could trip one up. Downtown, don’t cross busy roads except at the intersections or crosswalks, or when you were doing something superhero-like. Suburbs, cross roads when you like as long as it’s safe.
She did not want to talk to him, but checking her verser sense showed that he or someone was in direct line to her equipment. He was running fast, so she put on her sprint mode and ran after him. Despite her best efforts, he was outpacing her, and then he turned to the right around a city park. Relaxing and running at the same time was hard, but she got the sense, and he was one and her gear the other. Looking around, she hopped the metal fence and ran to cut him off across the park. Getting closer, she saw that he was about to turn left again, at the end of the park, and away from her.
“Derek! Slade! Kondor!” she shouted out at him. Those were the only names of male versers she knew but hadn’t met, and of course he wasn’t tall enough to be Johnny Angel or short enough to be Emperor Beam. Besides, the Emperor went about with his entourage most of the time. The running man looked over his shoulder in curiosity, and then stopped. He gestured at himself. She nodded, and came to a halt, gasping for breath. The winter had drained her stamina with lack of food and lack of exercise other than food gathering and hunting.
He walked to her, and she saw some kids come from nearby houses. They were excited.
“Knock her out, J-Man!” one yelled. Others took up the cry.
“How cool! A superfight right on Trelawney Park!”
Hearing this, he paused, and stopped thirty feet away. She pulled herself up as well, ready to defend herself if necessary, but didn’t really think it a wise choice. Catching her breath, she said, “You’re, you’re, a verser.”
Although it was difficult to tell facial expressions under his partial mask hood, she thought he hesitated. He responded with a quiet, controlled voice, “How do you?”--but he paused a moment, and said, “Of course; you’re also a verser. But I don’t think there were any other versers here this morning, so you must have just arrived?”
“Yeah, minutes ago. I haven’t even managed to recover my stuff.”
He laughed. “Tell me about it. Mine was several miles up the mountain,” and he gestured.
“Well, mine should be pretty close; I don’t think I was more than a mile from camp when the snakes bit me.”
“Ouch. That must have been nasty.”
“Yeah, well I think I saved the girl. And I left the people in good hands, I think. So I was on my way to recover it when I realized that you must be the other verser I felt, and the versers I’ve known have mostly been good people, and have usually said that most of the versers they’ve known have been good people, so it seemed that talking to you was my best chance to figure out what was happening here.”
He nodded. “Saved the girl, huh? So you’re already in the superhero business?”
“No, I was only an advisor to a group of people who needed a lot of help. But why did the police think I was a superheroine? That was the word they used. I don’t know--I think in my world, most people would think super heroin was a new drug.”
He laughed at this. “It’s probably your clothes. Most people here dress very conservatively, except for a few in the jazz culture, so strange clothes generally mean that someone is a super, hero, heroine, or villain. So, what’s the story about the clothes?”
“A long one,” she answered. “The short version is that I’ve spent most of the last year trying to survive in a forest with a hundred people who knew less than I did, although we had a lot of help from another verser, an indig who had been raised in the forest, and of course Jesus.”
She wasn’t sure why she had blurted out Jesus, other than that somewhere inside she knew He was responsible for their survival and she was grateful for it. It also occurred to her that she had been worried about what she had begun to think of too much as her people trying to survive without her, and suddenly realized that they didn’t need her, they needed Him, and He was going to continue caring for them.
“So anyway, we just came into spring, and we’ve been keeping warm mostly with furs and hides, campfires and primitive shelters, something between a bird’s nest and a wigwam. Although I was practicing my fighting skills, it was chilly enough that I was wearing my coat and stuff. Didn’t stop the snakes, though. Oh, I’m Tommy, by the way. Tomiko Takano, but everyone calls me Tommy.”
“Oh, dear, that puts me in a bind. I’m Mister Justice, but I only became Mister Justice when I arrived a couple weeks back and the previous Mister Justice passed the mantle to me, so obviously that’s not really my name. But it’s kind of a, what, a protocol? Superheroes have secret identities, and although there are a couple people who know mine, I probably shouldn’t talk about it in public.”
He seemed to ponder for a moment, then said, “Tell you what. Are you hungry? There’s a bus terminal not far from here. I’ll change into my civilian clothes in the bathroom there, and then introduce myself properly and take you to lunch. Sound good?”
“Lunch certainly does sound good--oh, but I have to gather my stuff.”
Mister Justice put a hand to his chin, and then said, “Oh, I know. You go find your things, I’ll go change my clothes, and then we can track each other down using this weird scriff sense. It’s not like there are a lot of other versers around.”
“Sounds good to me,” she said, and then with an awkward goodbye they parted. The half-dozen kids on the far side of the road looked disappointed not to see a fight, but she waved at them, and they waved back before she hiked onward.
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:
