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Stories from the Verse
Con Version
Chapter 113: Takano 119
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Cooper 36
The hot shower lasted for thirty truly glorious minutes until cold water arrived, and she hopped out onto the slick linoleum. Only her training in martial arts kept her from planting herself as she skidded about until she caught herself on the toilet and wall.
“Modern world, Tommy. Modern world.” Pretty much nothing in the campground had been as slick as water-covered linoleum; the bathroom and shower floors had been cement. Getting herself dressed in the furs and her other clothes made her wince. She had tried to keep them clean, but the campground had not been well suited to that. Taking a dollar, she went to the front counter where the attendant, a cute boy with curly black hair, gave her change, and told her where the laundromat was. A quarter mile walk with her clothes in her larger backpack, acquired mostly in the suburban 1960’s world, brought her to Tubs O’Suds. The clear glass windows in front showed women talking in chairs, or folding clothes, or changing out loads of washed clothes to head to the dryers. Inside, she smelled the scent of warm clothes, and caught more than a few eyes.
A middle-aged matron walked over to her, sizing her up, and her backpack of clothes.
“Looks like you just escaped from a supervillains’ lair, dearie. Here.” Some quick advice and Tommy got the hang of it and, reminded of what she already knew, soon enough she had her clothes washing. Forcing herself to speak up, she began talking to another lady next to her. Much of it was ordinary chit-chat about the soap operas she watched. In this world’s version of soap operas not only could you have evil twin brothers, you could have good future selves who traveled back to the past to stop their evil past selves, and help their good twin brother by making an android copy of themselves to fake a death, and somewhere about there she lost track of the extraordinarily intricate plot of Secret Identities. The local sports teams, including the best high school team in the city, the Berkeley Street High Bombers, were doing well this year with a chance at the Colorado State Championship. Also, she got to hear the actually thrilling story of how the lady had her pearl necklace stolen right off her neck by Robinette, but William Tell Junior, so handsome, had stopped Robinette and brought her the pearls back even though ‘that no good girl thief got away’. Tommy absorbed information, and made acquaintances who might become friends. As she was about to leave, the first matron came up to her with a pale blonde girl a few years older in appearance than Tomiko in tow.
“You can change in the bathroom. And Kelly Anne, my daughter, remembered this had been left here a few weeks back.”
The pale blonde leaned forward and handed a simple black domino mask to Tommy.
“In case you’re a superheroine,” she said quietly and the two girls shared an us-girls-only smile.
“I’m thinking about it.”
Tommy got dressed in the tiny bathroom, and left feeling much better. Walking back, the dark blue skirt swishing around her knees, she felt great relief. Clean. Warm. Full. In her right hand, she carried the jacket and hat, still smelly even after being washed.
On the sidewalk across the street, a beagle on a leash held by a lady walking with her child began yapping almost hysterically. Suddenly a manhole in the street erupted, spun into the air, and clattered to the asphalt. The few cars skidded to a halt. and a man leapt up out of the manhole followed by slower moving people with purple cloth bands about their necks. He was tall, skinny, shirtless, and under his skin purple lights moved about. Black tights and boots and wild tangled hair down his back competed for attention with eyes that glowed orange.
“I am the Sewer Savage! You all will be my slaves in my underground kingdom. I will teach you how to survive on toxic waste and nuclear radiation after the corporations poison the environment and the Commies nuke the planet. We alone will survive! If you come with me willingly, I will give you a high place.” He bellowed.
No one took his offer seriously, and everyone started running away screaming. He motioned to his eight ‘followers’ who looked like dispirited shambling wrecks dressed in rags that had once been nice clothing. They moved out, with purple bands of fabric stretched in their hands, ready to entangle those they got close to.
Tommy considered running as well, but the people here had been so nice to her. Plus, she really had considered being a superheroine. It's what Lauren would do. The final straw was seeing the beagle barking ferociously at two of the purple banded people as it kept itself between its lady and her child and danger. If a thirty pound dog could face off against two opponents, she could do no less. Dropping her jacket and hat as encumbrances, she pulled out her domino mask and slipped it on.
Sewer Savage spun toward her and shouted.
“You’re going to lose.”
“Truth triumphs!” she shouted back, and spun up her kawanaga. Looping it around one of the shamblers’s legs was easy. The man toppled over, and fumbled slowly trying to get loose. Regretting the necessity, she kicked him in the stomach, and as he retched, she yanked her weapon free.
“Get her!” he hollered, and all seven of the remaining shamblers turned from their previous pursuits and started her way. She flicked out the kawanaga, and tripped a shambling woman, and another kick to the stomach incapacitated her. That left one a bit close to her right, so she danced back. Taking a chance, she threw the hook, catching it in the next man’s badly shredded suit jacket, and sprinted past him, yanking him off his feet to land hard on his back. A shambler turned toward her, and stepping off a sidewalk fell her way so that she had to dodge blindly to the right. Hands touched her head, and something soft but reeking of chemical scents touched her. Suddenly she sagged, and it might have been over then, but she heard a tussle and a growl, and the hands fell away. Slowly, as if in a dream, she turned and saw the beagle dragging her foe from behind where he had ambushed her. The man fell over at the beagle’s insistent tugs as it bit into his leg and hung on.
Suddenly, her mind cleared, and she dove into a roll to evade two shamblers coming right at her from both sides. The diving roll went over the beagle, and she came up with him licking her face.
“Good dog. Go protect your owner.” She let him down and assessed the battlefield. Two were in front of her. The one the beagle had dropped was done for now, and so were the others except for one who was out of position almost on the far side of the street.
“I told you I would win. Freedom and justice beat slavery and lies. This is the triumph of truth!” she shouted, and got her kawanaga ready for the two in front of her, but they had paused. Even the one on the far side had stopped.
“Get her!” Sewer Savage yelled angrily. They moved. She remembered how she had felt when she assumed that a purple band had touched her forehead for a second. She thought the cause had been some sort of contact drug absorbed through the skin which made its victims very suggestible and passive.
“No! Get him!” she yelled back and pointed at the supervillain who was still standing in the street near the manhole. They turned slowly toward him.
“No, you morons! Get her!”
“Get him!” She figured short and direct was the best. Suddenly, all three of them moaned, put their hands to their heads, and slumped to the ground.
“You’ve overloaded their brains,” Sewer Savage said loudly, but not yelling anymore. The others were also unconscious, and the innocent civilians were farther down the street in safety, either hurrying away, or watching the fight. “Most people are meant to be slaves. They need someone to protect them from the wolves in the world.”
“You look like a wolf to me, or maybe a dog who took on a skunk,” she retorted. He raised his right hand above his head, and the purple lights under his skin ran over and up his arm, and purple lightning danced about his right hand. She spun up her kawanaga, and prepared to dodge. Both heard a roar coming closer in the sky, and she looked up. A man with an odd face mask and wings was flying down toward her from high above, as if he had launched from the mountain in the near distance.
“The Eagle! You get lucky today, little girl.” Sewer Savage snarled, and then jumped into the open manhole. A fwumph a few seconds later spilled black, greasy smoke into the air out of the manhole in a small cloud covering his escape. Just the slightest scent of it made Tommy back up, as it combined all sorts of garbalicious smells into an extremely potent repellant.
The Eagle flew by overhead, and shouted down to her through his bizarre face mask, “Good job!” before he circled back around, and started climbing slower through the air back to his mountain roost with twin jets of flame from his backpack wingjet system propelling him upward. Tommy blew out her breath, and coiled back her kawanaga before walking over to get her jacket and hat. Walking away, she got numerous thumbs-up, and back pats and some cheers from the few people on the street. They wanted to know her name, but she had no name to give them. Instead, she just waved until she got out of sight, and then took off her domino mask. The next people to meet her just gave her courteous nods as if she were an ordinary person on the street.
It was weird.
She went back, and eventually put on the jacket and hat because her hand got tired of carrying them. She looked forward to a bath to get rid of any grime from those shamblers she had freed, or their master, the Savage. It would be heavenly.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
