And here’s a, uh, slightly longer thing. xP
Some thank yous are in order! =D
Thank you so much to
GLQ, Shinko, and Tiger, for beta-reading
Thorn and Pixie, for some merch ideas
Reiqua, for the epilogue idea
And Liou, for some old comments that they don’t know that I ran with (and will be pointed out in the post-fic notes). xP
I'm sorry I wasn’t able to participate in the actual Hero City RP (I’d really been looking forward to playing an unscrupulous character.), but you guys did
such an amazing job, and I absolutely loved reading what you guys wrote. =D Hopefully a tiny bit of that admiration comes through in this fic. It’s not a masterpiece, but MAN, did I have fun, and so I hope that you do, too. Thanks for all that crazy inspiration!!
So, influenced by but having no bearing on the main Hero City plotline, I present:
Madge Oddmund Accrues Various Offenses
--
Something of a Prologue
(It’s the one (1) post I actually made in the Hero City RP.)
The street cart was a blinding swath of eye-catching colors and busy product displays.
Blinking and rubbing her bloodshot eyes, Officer Tricia Roberts stared at this apparition blearily. Usually, in most cases, especially after a long shift, she wouldn't even have noticed the cart at all. But Officer Tricia was the first person off of the bullet train and onto the platform of Konnarka Station, and she had almost been run over by it.
It was dazzling and confusing and overwhelming and possessed an extremely compact array of far too many objects: t-shirts, plush toys, figurines, small boxes, bubble gum packages, rolled up posters, and more.
The cart was also supported by a hefty bicycle. And the bicycle was in turn supporting a slightly pudgy woman in a red apron, who leaped off of the contraption and did not apologize whatsoever to Officer Tricia for nearly running her off the platform.
"Tonight is the premiere of the newest season of Hero City, and do you know what you need?" the woman demanded.
"What?" said Officer Tricia--less as an actual response to the woman's inquiry and more as a general confused statement.
"You need to be prepared!" the woman in the apron announced. "And fortunately, I have you covered for all your Hero City needs! I've got some very huggable plush toys that are perfect for clasping during a tense moment, ranging from DUDE BRO to some Nyx Nightshadow dolls from last season!"
"I'm not really in the market for that," said Officer Tricia.
"Oh, then perhaps you're more in the market for a Nikki Notdaysilhouette plush toy? They're much cheaper."
"Not really--"
"I also have some Glitch wristwatches that keep excellent time, very good for setting an alarm for the first episode; they play the theme song. Or some Zenith oven mitts? Have you heard of the new trading cards they've released? I opened a pack myself just last week, and if you can believe it, I found my very own special edition holographic Fireflyman card! Talk about a bargain!"
Officer Tricia's eyes were slowly adjusting to the street cart's staggering display, and she bent down and pointed to a figurine on the second shelf.
"Weren't these Eyescream Man action figures recalled several months ago because they were found to shoot actual lasers?" she asked. Then, seeming to come to her senses, she followed up with, "Ma'am, do you have a permit to be selling your merchandise?"
"Oh, absolutely, Officer!" the woman said. She opened a hatch beneath the display near the bicycle handle and produced a crisp, official-looking certificate.
Officer Tricia studied it, rubbing her eyes again.
"Wait," she said, "this isn't a city permit. This is an award for third place at a spelling bee--"
Looking back up, Officer Tricia suddenly realized that the woman was pedaling away across the train station with her flashy wares and was already almost out into the street outside.
"That's Madge Oddmund's super merchandise, sold at super prices!" the woman's voice carried down the platform as the cart vanished from sight.
Chapter One: Business as Unusual
“Welcome back to Hero City, folks, with me, your host, Wulfric Weisle! Now, keep your eyes and ears open, because we’ve got trouble afoot! That’s right! Villains are cavorting around the city, wreaking havoc! Y’know, normally they say that someone who’s afraid of their own shadow is a coward--but today? Today, that might be any one of us, because it seems the supervillain Darkborn is up to no good!...”
--
Her brow furrowed, Officer Tricia Roberts trod the steps up to the Heraclia Police Department main office.
She was still troubled by that meeting several days ago. It wasn’t that the police department
hadn’t been kept busy, what with this being peak
Hero City season and all. There had been a severe break-in at maximum security facilities; there was the travesty of the Queen’s concert; and according to Chitter, there was currently a rash of supervillain attacks farther in town. In light of all this, logically, Tricia knew that it was borderline
absurd that she was still upset about the colorful street cart that was probably illegal.
And yet, it
did bother her. Because after all-- What kind of police department would they be if they continued to allow petty criminals to slip through the cracks,
just because there
also happened to be a homicidal mob of zombie civilians in town who were possibly drugged and possibly somehow adversely affected by a famous pop idol who may have violently ditched her career to turn resplendently villain?
...In any case, no crime should go unchecked.
Tricia clocked in at the office and immediately approached the secretary’s desk.
“Scott,” she said in a tone she hoped sounded sufficiently serious, “have you ever heard of Madge Oddmund?”
To her dismay, Scott’s face brightened into a wide grin.
“Of course!” he said. “She’s one of my favorite vendors. Check out my collection--” Here he waved to his left, where eight Nimbus plushies all stood at attention on his desk, the farthest of which looked to be several years old and a little faded, as if it had actually been through quite a lot of weathering. “I have no idea how she gets her products so fast,” Scott continued. “Are you trying to get a particular doll from her?”
Tricia grimaced. “Um. No,” she said quickly. “No. I just was wondering... I’m not sure she’s operating with a valid permit.”
“Oh.” Scott’s face fell. “Well, that...that would be a shame. For that, I guess you’d better check in with Lamarsh, see if she’s got anything on file.”
Tricia found Lamarsh thumbing through a file of documents near the water cooler, and she approached with the same question.
“Madge Oddmund?” Lamarsh repeated, not looking up.
“Yes.”
“Oh, yes, Madge Oddmund, of ‘super merch’ or somesuch.” The woman distractedly tucked her file under one arm and split its contents into four parts. “Yeah. Yeah, she’s up to something.”
“You think so, too?” Tricia said, trying not to sound too excited.
“Oh sure,” Lamarsh laughed. “I’ve bought six packs of those trading cards from her for my daughter, and not once--not once!--has she gotten a holographic Fireflyman card. You need any Wulfric Weisles, though, Trish?”
Tricia resisted the urge to groan.
--
Madge Oddmund managed a bright grin and waved off her latest customer. “Come back soon! We get new merch of all your favorites almost every day!”
She had made a
killing so far this season.
Her plushies and t-shirts were almost entirely sold out, and she had sold every last pair of Dynamic rain boots on that one overcast morning. She’d even managed to park her street cart just outside the stadium when the Queen’s concert had gone down; she had been mightily pleased when she’d run out of her superhero-print bandages virtually instantly. Of course, not all customers had been pleasant, and when some belligerent hooligans had tried to trash her cart, Madge had removed one of her recalled Eyescream Man figurines from her apron pocket and shot some lasers at their hats. Thankfully, even hooligans could be too distracted trying to stamp the flames off their headgear to pay attention to the street cart merchant as she pedaled away.
Madge herself had not really taken much away from her meeting with that tired policewoman a few days ago, except that she had, in fact, removed those Eyescream Man action figures from display. Madge wasn’t a monster, after all, and she didn’t want her customers being injured by her merchandise. Lawsuits were expensive.
Today, Madge Oddmund had parked her cart on the platform of Cygnus Cross Station and now waited for the next train to bestow new customers upon her. In the temporary lull, she scrolled down the Chitter feed for leads on her Cyborg: It paid, after all, to know when to be near the action and when to only be near the hype. And at the moment, judging by these particular villain attacks, a standard train station seemed like a good spot to be.
She skimmed through some tags for recent fanfiction, too. It paid, as well, to know which heroes and villains were big with kids, which were hot money, whose plush toys she should tell her supplier to produce in volume, and which action figures she should relegate to the top shelf of her cart.
Madge idly glanced to her top shelf now. It was a real shame about Lady Drake and Ryder. Their product line would have sold
so much better if they’d still been on the show. Kids loved toy motorbikes and arson.
Scrolling through an online writing forum, Madge found a couple new chapters from Flame_gurl13, purple_princess_17, and WORD BRO, among others. It looked like Eyescream Man, Glitch, and Mizshu were still popular, as well as DUDE BRO and Bill Sinclair, not that that was a surprise. Madge made a mental note of this, additionally making a face at some of the prose.
She wouldn’t be caught dead in somebody’s brainless reimagining of the show, where the author retroactively invented frivolous characters and added many-chaptered events that had never even really happened during the heroic battles. It was cringe-worthy and frankly not even
profitable. Although, she supposed--for the heroes themselves, the prize money for actually winning the real show was supposed to be lavish. That must have been a fabulously lucrative enterprise.
But luckily, there were other--better, easier, more streamlined--lucrative opportunities based around
Hero City.
“This is a rip-off!”
Madge looked away from her smartdevice and met the disdainful eyes of a seven-year-old boy who was appraising one of her Tabitha Kingsley umbrellas.
“Tabitha Kingsley’s umbrella is bulletproof, and can shoot darts, and it can glow in the dark, and it’s a
parachute. This thing doesn’t do
anything!”
Madge gauged the boy’s face carefully before turning to find his mother, who was standing a few feet off and seemed to be engrossed by a
Super Script podcast, blaring it at full volume.
“It’s true, it can’t do any of those things,” Madge said to the boy. Then she bent down to his eye level. “I can’t advertise this, but...” She covertly looked to her left and right down the platform. The boy’s face turned from outrage to a shade of intrigued curiosity. And in a voice only a notch above a whisper, Madge went on, “These umbrellas each have their very own personal precipitation deflection shield.”
The boy’s eyes widened, and his grip on the umbrella tightened. “
Really?”
“Absolutely,” Madge said, straightening back up. “Scout’s honor,” she added, even though she had never been a scout and had absolutely no idea what their honor entailed.
“
Wow,” the boy said in awe. He reverentially held the umbrella at arm’s length and then pestered his mother to buy it for him. By the time their train came, Madge Oddmund was a little richer and a little happier. This was definitely going to be a fantastic season for her.
Chapter Two: Customer Service
“...And tonight, folks, the rest of us can all sleep a little sweeter, a little sounder, and a little safer than the night before. It looks like they’ve done it again! The heroes have prevailed against these dastardly villains Darkborn and Screaming Scimitar, and I hope you enjoyed watching that as much as I did! Let’s take a look at some slow-mo action replays...”
--
Later that night, Madge arrived home to her apartment, after locking her street cart down in the garage and after gathering up her cash box. It was a rather innocuous apartment unit except for a new enormous box that had been delivered to her doorstep, which had been unstealthily topped with her doormat. She bustled inside, dragged the box in, and tore the doormat off.
“Hephaestus Fabrications,” the return label read.
She beamed. Her supplier. Jeter always came through.
Back in the days when Madge had just started ordering from Hephaestus Fabrications, the “customer service representative” had attempted, at first, to pretend that the company was bigger than it was. It had had a brilliant but aloof boss, a whole team of designers, state of the art facilities, and dozens of skilled employees. Over the years, however, it had gradually become abundantly evident to Madge that only one person had ever worked at Hephaestus Fabrications; and that person was the only one who ever answered her phone calls, the lone customer service representative, Jeremy Jeter. She had never met the man in person, but she highly suspected that Jeremy Jeter was some sort of unregistered metahuman with the somewhat mundane but
extremely useful ability to manipulate fabric, or something like that.
But of course it wasn’t any of her business, especially because he could churn out high-quality merchandise at a breakneck pace and send it her way before any of the big box stores could even sneeze. If he wanted to be secretive, that was all the better for her.
Madge took out her box cutter and excitedly pulled open the delivery. She was greeted by a layer of t-shirts, and underneath, brightly colored plush toys. She smiled as she sifted through them, then her smile dipped just a touch. She pulled out her smartdevice and dialed a call to Hephaestus Fabrications.
“No BROVERINE plushies in this shipment, Jeter?” she said lightly, not even bothering with a greeting.
“I couldn’t bear it,” replied Jeremy. “Just tell everyone that our production line suffered a mishap.”
“I’ve got your regular DUDE BROs and your CAPTAIN BROMERICAs, but people will want the whole lineup as he comes up with them, you know.”
“Yeah, well, or you can tell them you’re sold out. That’s less of a stretch than the yellow spandex. Did you see the new villain dolls I put in there, though?”
Madge dug a bit deeper into the box and came up with a gasp.
“Pullstring dolls! Fantastic! People
love pullstrings. Very retro. And yet very topical!”
She turned the handyman Gordan Page doll over and pulled its string out:
“I’ll fix your plumbing AND your pathetic societal structure! Muahahahaha!”Madge paused thoughtfully.
“I don’t think that’s what he sounds like,” she said.
“Listen, Oddmund, we only found out about him last night, and I worked off a ten-second internet clip and his voicemail message, so give me a break.”
“Alright, alright. --Ooh! You made a Queen doll, too? That’ll be
great.”
This doll crooned,
“Roses are red / Violets are blue / If illusions are fake / Your heroics are, too.” “Why didn’t you just use one of her songs?” asked Madge.
She could almost hear Jeter’s eyes roll. “Because,” he said, “you’re not paying me enough to infringe on
the Queen’s music copyrights, too.”
“Oh yeah, that reminds me, do you think I could get some more bandages in the next shipment? I’m all out.”
An infuriated breathing bark of a noise. “More
bandages? Do you have any idea how hard those are? It feels like no one sells anything but plastic and latex any more, and
then you’ve got to get the design on there through the opaque sterile packaging, and
cripes, Madge, bandages are a freaking
nightmare, go find some outdated ones from last year on eHarbor. How did you even manage to
sell out already.”
“Because people were bleeding. They wanted to buy bandages,” she said with a shrug. And a pause. “...Although, if possible, the ones printed with Kizuna and Mizshu sold out
first, so they’re probably the most fitting designs anyway.”
Jeremy uttered a small string of mild curses. “I’m raising your rates,” he said finally.
“I’m your only customer, Jeremy!”
“I’ve got other customers.”
“Yeah, from your tailoring whatsit gig. The merch pays better, and you know it.”
“Yeah, well, you may be my main customer, but I’m your best supplier.”
“I paid good money for those Schlich action figures, and you weren’t anywhere
near that transaction.”
“Uh-huh.”
“AND I got those Eyescream Man figurines for
free!”
“You fished the crate out of a dumpster after the recall.”
“Whatever, and I’m still selling those Kizuna dolls, and they cost me a fraction of what I pay you.”
“That’s because they’re
damaged. Or possessed. It doesn’t really matter, they’re creepy as hell, no one’s going to buy them.”
“And that’s why I have a strict ‘No Refunds’ policy. Besides, the creepier they are, the better they are for when kids are playing with their toys and pretending that the villains have, like, summoned a beast from the netherworld to control the heroes.”
“I can almost guarantee you that no little kid has ever voluntarily gone through that scenario with one of those things.”
“Okay, but the
point is, I can get perfectly respectable merchandise from a lot of other sources.”
“On the same day as a character’s introduced?”
“Well--”
“Yeah, case in point. Your rates--up they go!”
“You are a
menace, Jeter, a
menace.”
“Yup, and thank you for your patronage! Call me in a couple days and let me know how quickly you run out of those Page dolls.”
With that, Madge hung up with a scowl. Paying more to Jeremy Jeter, after all these years? No matter how good business was, it was downright scandalous.
Chapter Three: That’s Not All
“...Not only that, it could mean an absolute disgrace!
Good morning, Heraclia! But listen, it hasn’t been a good morning for some of our heroes, and we’d better find out just what happened! How could our former heroes have committed such atrocities? How could they have fallen to such depths? It truly is--”
--
--Downright scandalous. Officer Tricia Roberts had scoured the databases and found absolutely no evidence that Madge Oddmund had ever registered her street cart for use in Heraclia. Moreover, from what Scott had told her, it seemed that the errant street cart had been illegally in business without a license for several years already and had even acquired a steady customer base.
Naturally, the first course of action for Tricia would be to find this Madge Oddmund and shut down her business until she procured a permit. Maybe she’d even get some fines and back taxes on the side.
It was not, thankfully, very difficult to track down Oddmund.
Ha! thought Tricia.
That’s one downside of publicly advertising your terrible business for years.It only took asking around at various street corners and finding a few of Oddmund’s t-shirt-toting customers, and Officer Tricia was rewarded with the fact that Madge Oddmund apparently favored train stations as her sales floor.
Which station largely depended upon whether or not it was a weekday and if there happened to be a hero/villain confrontation in the vicinity. So, all Tricia had to do was ride the rails until she found her unlawful quarry.
She found it on the blue line at Chimera Station, obnoxious bright colors and all. The redheaded, pudgy woman in the red apron was selling Cold Man facial tissues to a gaggle of middle-aged adults.
Now that Tricia had had proper sleep this time, she took extra note of the street cart’s display and even snapped a few photos on her smartdevice. The cart was colorful and crowded, sure, but there were plenty of other potential red flags (besides the ones that the Semaphore Kid action figures were holding).
There was a bold “No Refunds” sign, another sign that read, “You break it, you buy it,” and a handwritten sign that read, “Tripwire crossbow bolt refills sold here!” Tricia also noticed several plush toys that appeared to be brand new. How
had this woman gotten her hands on mass-produced villain plush toys in so short a time? Had she bribed someone? Did she have some other underhanded dealings in addition to her lack of permit?
This thought made Tricia second-guess her plan to charge in and shut Madge Oddmund down. Instead, she sidled up to the colorful cart behind the other customers and pulled a plush Salamandy from the shelf. It was well made, not a single thread out of place, official green colors glimmering in the sunlight. A small tag was sewn into the seams at the plushie’s left leg: On one side was the hero’s name, and on the other side, washing instructions.
Something about this didn’t sit quite right with Tricia.
“Are you a big fan of the Serpentine Sisters?”
And Madge Oddmund was suddenly in her face, having left the other customers.
“If you buy the set of the two, there’s a special discount.”
From this uncouth greeting, Tricia decided that it was highly unlikely that Oddmund remembered having met her. But this time--this time was a chance to corner her or to allow her to admit her legal infraction. Tricia quickly cast her glance back to the street cart, and upon spotting an empty spot on the shelf, seized an idea.
“When will you be getting in more DUDE BRO™ plush toys?” she asked.
“Oh, the classic DUDE BRO I should be getting another shipment of by tomorrow, and--”
“You mean DUDE BRO™.”
Madge Oddmund gave Tricia a squinting, confused look as if the officer had spoken in tongues.
“That’s what I said: DUDE BRO.”
“No,” said Tricia, “you’re not saying it correctly.”
“What’s there to say correctly? That’s his superhero name, isn’t it? DUDE. BRO.”
“You’re completely missing the point of this discussion.”
“The point is that I’ll definitely have more in stock tomorrow.”
Tricia pursed her lips and made another mental note. The street cart merchant was
definitely not inwardly-enunciating the proper trademark that followed after DUDE BRO™. That did not bode well. Certainly, the fact that none of the plush toy tags mentioned HCN’s copyrights
and her lack of a city business permit had to be very clear offenses. Tricia ran through a mental list of crimes and judicial punishments. If Oddmund was violating copyright law, she could potentially even be
arrested--
A buzz on Madge Oddmund’s Cyborg drew her attention away from the officer, who (judging by her furrowed brow) still appeared to be weighing her plushie purchasing options.
Ah! One of the tags she was following on Chitter had brought up some alerts. There was currently a major showdown between Zenith and Nyx Nightshadow at the clock tower, and a large crowd of onlookers had gathered at its base. It was often best to avoid the big
Hero City battles when ample amounts of property damage were going down--but here, there was also a captive audience, a built-in, deeply invested fanbase, gathered a good distance away from the action!
This was an opportunity too good to miss. Her clock tower sales. would be. on.
fire!Madge quickly pocketed her Cyborg and sifted through her hanging array of t-shirts (“DUDE BRO IS MY DUDE, BRO”; “It’s about the spirits you lift, not the boulders you can throw.” -Chet the Flash; “Skate like a Comet!”; “I don’t have TIME for catchphrases, I have people to save!”) until she came to her “Team Zenith” and “Team Nightshadow” buddy shirts and shuffled them to the forefront of her merchandise.
“Sorry, folks,” she called over the rush of air as a train whizzed through the station, “but the street cart will be closing temporarily to move down to the clock tower for further sales. Come see me in your local train stations tomorrow for more super bargains!”
Spurred into motion, Officer Tricia opened her mouth and yanked her badge from her side, but her words were inaudibly smothered by the whine of the incoming train’s brakes. She was still shouting something when she lost sight of Madge Oddmund’s street cart two blocks down.
By the time she finally arrived at the clock tower, sweating and swearing, the crowd had already dispersed, and a haze of unsettled dust hung at the height of the clock tower.
Officer Tricia Roberts turned and tiredly made her way to Hero City Network Headquarters.
“Good afternoon,” she breathlessly told the receptionist, flashing her badge. “I’m here to use your water fountain and to speak with someone in your accounting department.”
--
“Whew! What a clash! I don’t know about you folks at home, but I’m glad that Tripwire is finally behind bars again! You know what else I’m glad for, though? Instant replays! Villainy never sleeps, folks, so our heroes are likewise always ready to jump back in the fray! So let’s follow suit and watch that again!”
--
“You want
what, Roberts?”
Officer Tricia bit her lip and took a deep breath. “Backup, sir,” she told her captain in a steady voice. “I’ve gotten a warrant for Margaret Oddmund’s arrest, but I think she’s slippery. I would find it very helpful to have two or three other officers assigned to this to help me bring her in.”
“Officer Roberts,” Captain Naughton said slowly and carefully, rubbing one of his temples. During the off-season, he would have clocked out hours ago, and the rings under his eyes showed it. “The HPD is stretched a bit thin right now, as you well know. I
cannot spare extra officers for a frivolous street cart merchant who simply never bothered to register for a license.”
“And is in violation of multiple copyright offenses, never paid royalties to HCN, and might have a shade of insubordination--”
“
Officer Roberts,” Captain Naughton said pointedly, and Tricia fell silent. His phone buzzed, and he quickly started drafting a text reply. While doing so, however, he went on heavily, “You
do realize that we are facing heroes turned villain, potential food tampering, theft of highly classified information, break-ins across the city, bank robberies, and hidden traps, all while a number of our officers are sustaining injuries. I couldn’t care less if someone out there is skirting copyright law.”
A lump had formed in Tricia’s throat, and she was starting to regret having bothered her captain at all. The printed financial report she had received from the HCN accountants was clutched tightly in one nervous fist. Still, however, she persisted.
“So--you’re saying that we should just let Madge Oddmund roam free and continue operating illegally? That it doesn’t matter?”
Captain Naughton finished typing his reply and looked up at her grimly. “I’m not saying it doesn’t matter. I’m saying you need to get your priorities in line. We’re facing bigger problems, and I would advise you not to waste any more of your time on it. If, however, for some reason you still feel the compulsion to track this woman down, fine, but I’m
not sparing more officers on it.”
As Captain Naughton finished, his smartdevice buzzed again just as his desk landline rang.
“Good night, Officer Roberts,” he said decisively, reaching for his phone and shooing her out of his office in one harried, fluid motion.
Tricia shut the door on the way out, and she vaguely heard the muffled urgent exchange through the captain’s door. She clutched the HCN printout closer.
If anyone was going to make sure petty criminals still faced justice in this city, it would have to be on her watch.
Chapter Four: The 3:17
“Oh my! So it seems, Heraclia, that there was another major break-in last night alongside more dastardly schemes! But not to worry, folks, because our coverage was delayed for a reason: We didn’t want to blow their cover earlier, but the heroes are in the villains’ hidden lair right now! What have they found within? Have they walked into a trap? Let’s find out!”
--
With a spring in her step, Madge unlocked her street cart that morning and snapped her cash box comfortably under the cart’s hatch with an excited click of her sneakers. If today’s business was anything like yesterday’s, she’d make a bigger profit in the past two days than she’d made all of last week combined.
Oh yes--today was going to be great day. She replenished her empty shelves with not only a fresh stock of Team Zenith and Team Nightshadow shirts, but also with all new plushies, more posters, some socks, and an assortment of masks.
And with that, Madge pedaled her cart up to Central Station, whistling the theme song to
Hero City along the way.
She parked in one of her favorite spots next to a newspaper stand for the Heraclian Beacon. She’d never bothered to ask the proprietor’s name, but they were always happy to share the platform with her. It was a mutually beneficial relationship, and Madge would usually trade them some packs of superhero comic bubble gum for a newspaper and tabloid. (The newspaper may have contained more fact-checked information, but the tabloids were infinitely more entertaining. Monday’s headlines included such gems as: “How compatible are you with DUDE BRO™? Take our quiz to find out!”, “There’s an alien in my gyro!”, “Mizshu’s secrets revealed!! Catburglar mastermind?!”, and “Bigfoot is actually Danderous, the disgraced ex-villain at large!! Details inside!”)
The day progressed quite merrily.
“Should I buy the Sonar bobblehead or the Dynamic bobblehead?” one young woman had inquired while waiting for her train.
Madge had turned theatrically to her sea of bobbleheads. “What do you think? Should she buy both?” she asked, before gently elbowing her cart, making all of them nod vigorously.
“Do you still carry those Gatekeeper lapel pins?” an older man had asked just after he tucked a newspaper under his arm.
A flourish. “I have an entire tin right here! If you buy both the Gate 1 and the Gate 2 pins, the second is 10% off!”
“When will you get more of the posters with the updated cast?” asked a preteen student who had probably been playing hooky.
“I still have a few here!” Madge had extracted a few rolls from the back of the cart. “I’m sure they’ll look stellar pinned up on your wall, just like these publicity shot postcards.”
“What are in the little boxes?” the station janitor had asked idly as she passed.
“Ah!” Madge had exclaimed with a grin. “Inside each box is a miniature plush toy! But which
Hero City character is inside it? You have to buy it and open it to find out!”
“Margaret Oddmund!” shouted a police officer with dark curly hair, coming off the incoming 3:17 train. “The jig is up!”
“I have--” Madge’s steady, bouncy rhythm of salesperson repartee bounced into a mental wall.
Madge did not have particularly good facial memory:
Everyone was a potential customer, after all.
But was this person a customer? This person did not, in fact, appear to be a customer.
“I have a warrant for your arrest!” the police officer continued, bursting from the train car and barreling towards the street cart, police badge extended.
Arrested? Madge’s mind whirled into panicked action. She was
not being arrested. She
couldn’t. She had hundreds of customers, she had fabulous merchandise, she had a cash box full of her own earnings, she had the newspaper stand proprietor staring at her in bewilderment, and there was
no way she was going to be arrested today, not when this had been one of her most profitable seasons ever so far.
Not today!
Madge whisked a plush Auroch from a potential customer’s hands with the rushed explanation of, “Sorry, no sale,” and then threw herself onto the cart’s bicycle. She yanked up the brake and sped away.
“I have charges!” shrieked the voice of the police officer behind her. She was definitely chasing her. The woman raised her voice, not allowing Madge out of earshot. “CHARGES! OPERATING A STREET CART WITHOUT A VALID PERMIT! VIOLATING COPYRIGHT LAWS! SELLING COPYRIGHTED MATERIALS WITHOUT PAYING DUE ROYALTIES!”
Madge suddenly realized that she was pedaling the wrong way. Not only was she going in the opposite direction of the station’s main wheelchair access ramp, but she was going right towards the dead end construction area that had temporarily closed the second exit.
Swearing profusely, Madge swung her head around. Where could she go? Could she turn around and make it past the officer?
The officer, presently, was way too close, catching up, and she breathlessly added, “RESISTING ARREST!”
To Madge’s right, there was a door.
The door was labeled, “Employees Only. Roof Access.”
She screeched to a halt right beside it, practically blocking the doorway, and forcibly ejected her cash box from underneath the handlebar.
Not today.She seized her Eyescream Man action figure from her apron pocket and shot from its eyes a rapid-fire series of lasers at her own street cart.
And it promptly exploded in flames.
But Madge didn’t stay to watch; she clutched her cash box, threw open the roof access door, and pounded up the stairs.
“TRESPASSING!” shouted the distant voice of the police officer.
Madge forced open the door at the top and made her way out, gasping, into the sunlight of the open air overhang. From the overhang, she could see half of the train station below her--the platform, the 3:17 train, the small crowd of people gathered somewhere below, staring at her blazing street cart.
She’d be safe up here. The policewoman wouldn’t be able to get up to the door through the flames.
“PROBABLY SOME KIND OF MUNICIPAL PROPERTY DAMAGE!”
OH, FOR PETE’S SAKE.The police officer kicked open the roof door, appearing significantly sootier than before.
Madge glanced at the 3:17 train just below her.
The Central Station clock told her that it was now 3:16.
“NOPE!” she shouted defiantly to the officer. Madge hefted her cash box and made a flying leap onto the top of the train, quickly scrabbling on the sleek surface to find stability.
The officer jumped and
followed her.
“I SAID, YOU’RE UNDER ARREST, MARGARET ODDMUND!” she yelled, equally defiantly, finding equal footing to Madge on top of the train and flinging an angry finger towards her.
And then, with a sickening lurch, the 3:17 train pulled into motion.
On pure instinct, Madge reached out and snatched the policewoman’s outstretched hand for balance. For a split second Madge felt a wave of disgust at having grabbed and potentially saved the life of the police officer who was trying to arrest her--before that brief emotion was overridden by the even
greater horror at the realization that her escape plan had been
very poorly conceived.The 3:17 train was a bullet train. It was speeding up. Jumping off was not an option now. The train might be relatively slow now while it still had curved tracks ahead, but once it pulled out onto a stretch of straight tracks, not only would the speed make it impossible to stay on top, but by then, they’d pull out onto the open tracks half a mile above the city.
And worse, Madge might drop her cash box, and some undeserving low life thug would nab it.
She had to stop the train before it got to the open tracks.The police officer was still shouting something, but Madge didn’t pay attention to whether or not she was still going on about the arrest or was instead panicking about the train. Without explaining, Madge kicked the officer’s legs sideways, knocking her flat to one side of the train; and still holding onto the officer’s arm, Madge herself slid flat to the opposite side of the train.
There, the two of them counterbalancing each other and precariously draped over the train car like a mutant shawl, and Madge kicked furiously at the window below her.
The knuckles curled around her cash box were white and slick with sweat. The 3:17 by now had long left Central Station behind and was curling through a short urban area. Ahead--the open tracks.
She kicked the window even more fervently, and finally--
finally--some terrified souls in the car below them,
bless them, did what Madge had wanted:
With a deafening whistle the sound of a banshee, someone pulled the train’s emergency brake.
Next there came an agonizing grinding noise, and the train slowly, slowly began to come to a halt, far too close to the open rails. With a final jolt, the train at last came to a total stop. And with that jolt, Madge at last released her death grip on the police officer’s hand, and both of them crashed down onto the ground on their opposite sides of the train.
With a groan, Madge managed to sit up. The windows of the train car were packed with curious spectators pressing their faces against the glass.
“That--THAT’S ANOTHER OFFENSE, ODDMUND!” came the policewoman’s voice from the other side of the train cars--this time, very clearly rattled.
Madge shakily staggered to her feet, checked her cash box for damage, and then, without looking back, hobbled away from the 3:17 train and climbed the fence that led her back into urban Heraclia.
Along the way, she pulled her Cyborg from her apron pocket and pulled up her texting history with Hephaestus Fabrications. And she scrolled up. Way up.
Three years ago, there had been a villain on the
Hero City show called the Puppeteer, who had the ability to manipulate miniature likenesses of himself to do his bidding. About halfway through the season, Madge’s action figures had spontaneously mutinied and attempted to tie her down Gulliver’s Travels-style. And after this particular incident, Jeremy Jeter had texted her an apartment address, accompanied simply by the words, “If you need someplace to lay low.”
And Madge could really use a place to lay low for a while right now.
Chapter Five: Way Too Much Dialogue ‘N Stuff
“I’m afraid no trace of the missing person has been found yet, folks. I’m sure our heroes will find them in the morning, though, no sweat! In the meantime, you night owls, let’s watch that fight between Miss Kingsley and Dr. Espin one more time...”
--
“Maaadge Oddmund.”
“Je-re-my Jeter.”
For her part, Madge hadn’t thought much about what she had imagined Jeremy to look like. He was a gangly man with dark brown hair and a perfectly ironed polo shirt. She supposed the thin face fit him. The only thing she hadn’t expected was that he would be more than a full head taller than she was. He casually and amusedly hung one arm off of the upper doorframe as he in turn took in Madge’s appearance on his doorstep.
For his part, Jeremy hadn’t thought much about what he had imagined Madge to look like, either. She was certainly a lot shorter and stouter than he had imagined. And in most first meetings, he probably would have paid more attention to her green shirt and red apron, but at the moment, he was more preoccupied with the minor details--like how she appeared supremely windswept and was dappled in various shades of black: charred clothing corners, black grease, and dark asphalt. She looked and smelled rather like a car accident.
“So,” Jeremy said with a hint of mockery in his tone, “I take it those handyman pullstring dolls sold well?”
“Oh sure,” Madge replied airily. She readjusted her cash box under her arm; the change inside jangled appreciatively.
“So you need more.”
“Maybe,” Madge said.
There was an awkward pause. Jeremy scratched his chin. Madge rubbed one of her bruises.
“Okay, listen, I need a favor,” she said at last.
“Yeah. Yeah, I thought so,” said Jeremy, somewhat smugly. He looked over Madge’s shoulder down the apartment hallway behind her. “So did you leave your street cart down in the parking lot, or what?”
Madge stood up a little taller. This popped some of her weary joints, and her cash box’s change jingled again.
“Well,” she said slowly, framing the argument with her free hand, “I may have...retired the old street cart.”
Jeremy actually appeared surprised. “Retire” was a word that seemed outside of Madge’s vocabulary, unless it applied to old merchandise that was now hard to find.
“You retired the street cart?” he said, leery.
“It may have suffered an accident today.”
“Did you get run over by a car?”
“No. It was just getting old. Needing some new varnish. New wheels. It’ll be great next time! ...Anyway, can I come in?”
“Okay, now wait just a minute. I know you, Oddmund. Refurbishing your street cart is a business expense. And you do not
do business expenses.”
“That doesn’t change the fact that I need a new one.”
“You don’t need a new one because the old one was fine, so what happened to the street cart?”
“Look, I burned it, okay, can you just please let me--”
“You
BURNED it?”
“It was termite-infested.”
“It was
not. So why did you
burn it?”
“Okay, look,
fine, I needed to make a getaway, I used my Eyescream Man figurine to shoot it, and not only was it a good distraction and barricade, but I’ve got, like, receipts and my contact info in there--”
“Your
contact info?”
“It’s a street cart! If I forget to put the brake on and it rolls down a hill, I want it returned to me!”
“Well, it
can’t be returned to you because you
burned it. So did...did you burn it with all of the merchandise still on it?”
“I...well, yeah.”
“Even the Scaletta snake scarves?”
“I...what? What’s special about those?”
“They were the most difficult things I’ve ever
made. They were a labor of
love. The snake knitting wasn’t too bad, but I don’t do electronics, and it took me
forever to get the colored lights inside to sequence to the music, and
cripes, Madge, I can’t believe you
burned them.”
“Eh, I never liked those scarves anyway. People were always asking me how to wash them, and I had no idea what to tell them.”
“
That’s not an excuse.”
“Forget it, that’s not even the point! That’s not why I’m here! In case you missed it, I said I needed to make a getaway, and
that’s why I’m here, I need to like, not be tracked down by the police at the moment, so maybe I can crash here for a bit ‘til it all blows over?”
“What for? What’d you do--besides burn your street cart and all my merch?”
“Uhhhh... Something about permits and copyrights. And maybe some other stuff, too, that’s not important right now.”
“I told you those spelling bee certificates would only get you so far.”
“They worked fine for
years, Jeter!”
“That’s because you’re one of those terrible people who actually benefits from there being supervillains who consistently sow destruction around the city and distract the authorities.”
“You are
not one to talk, buddy! Lest we forget,
you’re my partner in crime!”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa there, Madge. This is
your enterprise.”
“Why is just
my enterprise?
You’re the supplier!”
“Yes. Yes, I am your supplier. But you, however,
you’re the publicist, the cashier, the shop transportation, the salesperson,
and, don’t forget, you burned my supplies. So, it’s
definitely your enterprise.”
“That’s not even the--!”
Madge was interrupted when Jeremy’s next door neighbor in room 506 pulled open their door and poked his head out. The man was dressed in striped pajamas, and there were heavy bags under his eyes.
“
Mister Jeter,” the man said sharply. “You think you wanna pipe down? It’s after one in the morning, you better know that.”
“Don’t worry, Mr. Sansweet, we’re just wrapping up.”
The neighbor closed his door with a grumble, and Madge looked back to Jeremy expectantly.
“So, are you gonna let me in, or what?” she asked.
Jeremy’s face soured, and he towered over Madge’s height as he evaluated her one more time.
“Five minutes,” he said simply. And without waiting for Madge’s response, he slammed the door in her face.
Stunned and offended, Madge huffed and paced the linoleum in front of his door, checking her Cyborg periodically for the time. Her Cyborg also told her that the HPD’s Chitter account was still preoccupied by various robberies, kidnappings, and general “Top 10 Ways to Stay Safe in Heraclia!” articles. There was no news about a messy train escapade yet, so that was good for her, anyway.
In the distance, however, she heard the sound of a siren. She checked the time again and hammered on Jeremy Jeter’s door.
“That’s
six minutes, Jeremy, see how generous I’ve been? I’ve still got Little Eyescream here, remember, and he’s itching to use his recalled powers--”
Jeremy threw open the door with a scowl. His arms were filled, to Madge’s confusion, with half a dozen bolts of fabric.
“Fine, fine,” he hissed, waving her into his apartment. “Don’t touch anything.”
Madge went in.
The room smelled quietly musty and oaky, like mothballs, and there was a hint of something sour, like lemons.
But it was not the smell of the apartment’s living room that astounded her.
Every single wall--every single shelf--every inch of floor space except for a narrow pathway to what was probably the kitchen--everything was covered in clutter. Specifically, mostly fabrics.
Folded yards of fabric of every color and texture imaginable had been stuffed onto the shelves, so much so that each bookcase appeared from a distance to be a waterfall of textiles. Corners and walls were piled high with more bolts of fabric, along with books about weaving, sewing, quilting, and design. A dusty table loom was propped on a desk behind the door, and only an inch or two had been woven on the warp. An old Yodeler-brand sewing machine rested on a table under a window, surrounded by stacks of clothes and scraps and a porcupine-like pincushion. The floor was populated by more fabric piles and by opaque plastic bags that Madge could guess as to their contents, and on the far wall were two wicker mannequins, one wearing a scarf and another wearing a suit. On the wall near the kitchen, a drafting desk was strewn with papers and drawings and the odd sample of cloth. Somewhere in the middle of the room, there appeared to be a couch and a television set, except that no one could sit on the couch, as it, too, was bedecked in piles of fabric and boxes of yarn. A hat stand-like armature dressed in spools of thread teetered dangerously over the TV, and various loose bobbins were scattered about the TV stand. The only object in the entire room that seemed to be clean and clear was a large, industrial-sized printer.
Jeremy slammed the door behind her, and Madge turned to face him, astonished revulsion covering her face.
“You
live here?” she sputtered.
“Don’t move anything,” Jeremy said gruffly by way of reply. “I know where everything is.”
“Yeah,” said Madge in a voice that was equal parts scoff and awe. “I’m glad you know where your door is.”
Jeremy coughed pointedly. “And now
you know where the door is, too, so you can leave whenever it suits you.”
“If you had a proper business website, I’d leave a comment about how poorly organized the office of Hephaestus Fabrications is.”
Jeremy chose not to deign this with a response. He set down his bolts of fabric on a pile of polyester and pointed around.
“That’s the kitchen. The bathroom. My bedroom. The washers and dryers are downstairs near the lobby,” he added pointedly, again surveying the black smears all over Madge’s arms and apron. “And leave your shoes here by the door.”
“Where am I going to sleep?”
“We’ll pull out the couch.”
Madge looked unconvinced.
“It’s a sleeper sofa.”
Still unconvinced.
“I can move the piles off and make space--
uh uh uh uh uh, no, get away from there, I’ll do it.”
By the time Madge finally settled onto the lumpy sleeper sofa two hours later, four towers of fabric had collapsed, and Jeremy had slammed the door to his bedroom shut after exasperatedly throwing her bed sheets from the closet.
She sidled away from a pile of yarn that looked particularly Frankensteinian in the dark and securely propped her cash box next to her pillow.
So then...
How on
earth was she going to sell merchandise tomorrow?
Chapter Six: Up and Rerunning
“Our dearth of fresh battles and action-filled confrontations is definitely NOT because of our heroes’ lack of leads with regard to finding the missing person. Don’t worry, our heroes are hot on the trail! They can face anything that’s hurled their way, even when things look bleak! If you don’t believe me, just take a look at this rerun from yesterday at the villains’ lair!”
--
Officer Tricia Roberts rubbed her eyes again and blearily slumped over her table at Gyro City. She checked her watch. It was eight in the morning.
She really shouldn’t have let yesterday’s incident with Madge Oddmund escalate that much.
In retrospect, she shouldn’t have jumped on top of the train. In retrospect, she shouldn’t have kicked aside a burning cart instead of dousing it. In retrospect, she shouldn’t have come off the train yelling her arrest intentions early for everyone to hear.
Just how long had it taken to sort out the braked train and explain herself to the conductor and help them reconfigure the city’s train schedule to accommodate her stupid mistakes?
Oddmund’s stupid mistakes, she tried to correct herself. But it was no use. It was still her fault that it had escalated, and Tricia knew this. A good officer surely would have been able to simply quietly walk over to Oddmund, slap some handcuffs on her, and lead her away without incident.
The whole debacle had left her so drained that by the time she was called upon to help the police department scour the city streets for clues about the whereabouts of Bill Sinclair’s son, she was already ready to collapse. Her knees felt ready to give out just thinking about the top of that train. The sheer, abject terror up there kept running through her head.
Not even some cheap restaurant coffee had helped the situation at all.
Her phone buzzed again, and she peered half-heartedly at it: a notice that the search through the northwestern district had come up empty.
Now it was 8:07 in the morning. She’d only been permitted to quit her own unit’s search and take a break an hour ago.
Part of Tricia was still furious with Madge Oddmund and was still desperate to track her down; but another part of her, the part that was slumped over in a booth in Gyro City, the part that was still mentally dangling from a bullet train, couldn’t bear the thought of ever facing her again.
At least, not today. She should probably go home to sleep.
Because surely, with the villains being preoccupied after their lair breach and their kidnapping, there would be no attacks today; and surely, with Oddmund having burned her own cart and gone on the run, there would be nothing that the shoddy street merchant could do today, either.
--
From the cluttered living room of Jeremy Jeter’s apartment, Madge let loose a scream.
“What??” Jeremy came running from the kitchen, a slice of toast and a butter knife still clasped in his hands. “What’s wrong, what’s happened?!”
He found Madge sitting up on the sofa bed and pointing at the television screen, her eyes wide.
“Oh, that?” Jeremy murmured, relaxing and rolling his eyes. “Those are
Hero City reruns from yesterday’s storming the castle. They’ve been showing them all yesterday, all night, and all day today so far.”
“But LOOK!” cried Madge, still pointing feverishly.
Jeremy turned to the TV.
“It’s that battle between Mizshu and Scaletta and Glitch and the Black Cat,” he said indifferently.
“
It’s the BATTLE between Mizshu and Scaletta and Glitch and the BLACK CAT!” Madge said in a high-pitched tone that made Jeremy thankful that his vast collection of fabric somewhat muffled his apartment’s acoustics.
“And?” he prompted, undeterred.
Madge turned to him in restless and ecstatic wonder.
“I was
so disappointed when the roster for this season’s heroes was announced, because nobody was using adorable crime-fighting animal sidekicks.
JEREMY! JETER!!” she added with almost another scream. She whirled to face him on the sofa bed, and Jeremy got the impression that if she had been closer, she would have grabbed him by the collar of his shirt to emphasize her next words: “Nothing in the
world is as marketable as adorable crime-fighting animal sidekicks!!”
Jeremy jabbed his butter knife at the TV. “This cat’s not crime-fighting, and he’s not a sidekick, Madge.”
“But he’s
adorable and he can
talk and he’s
fluffy and he’s got a
tiny little chrome mask, and
we’ve got to sell this, Jeremy.”
Jeremy took a leisurely moment to take a bite of his toast and to run the events of the past day through his head one more time.
“...Aren’t you still lying low to avoid getting arrested?” he asked. Madge made a disdainful, flippant noise and waved her arm in the air.
“Oh, to heck with that. This is more important. It’s a
fluffy villainous talking cat, Jeter!
Hot cakes won’t sell as well as fluffy villainous talking cats!”
Jeremy paused thoughtfully. It
was true that they were losing valuable profits with Madge currently out of commission. And it was
also true that Jeremy had a much smaller queue of tailoring clients this week.
He finished his toast with deliberate slowness.
Still wielding the butter knife, he pointed at Madge, who was still perched precariously on the sofa bed, looking close to squeeing, the money signs practically flying in her eyes.
“Okay,” Jeremy said. “But don’t you dare
burn. anything. Understand?”
Madge made a sound that was half a snort of derision and half a cry of glee.
“Of course, of course, you
know I wouldn’t burn my own assets for no reason! So we can do it?”
“Yes,” said Jeremy. “However...” He appraisingly waved his palm out in the general direction of his guest.
“What?”
He framed her face with his hands.
“I think with your complexion, you’d look good in a Lady Drake disguise.”
Madge’s elation turned to disgust.
“Madge Oddmund is a brand unto herself, and you want me to cosplay?”
“Yeah, well, why not? There was some hubbub a couple days ago with some guy at the university cosplaying DUDE BRO. No one would really look twice at you, and you’d still sell, but without your cart, the police might not know what to look for right away.”
“True...” Now it was Madge’s turn to look thoughtful. “Okay, but not Lady Drake. I need a character that has more face cover. How about Dossier Dame? I’d need a wig, too. And as another bonus, with the outfit, I can probably sell more of those Dossier Dame sunglasses!”
“But you burned everything.”
“I’ve got
some overstock left at home that I can swing by and nab. Assuming that there’s not a stakeout by my apartment.”
“What, you really think that with everything going on, they’re going to watch your apartment?”
“Hey! Hey now, you didn’t see the officer that chased after me yesterday. She was
persistent.”
“I still doubt your apartment is being watched.”
“Don’t underestimate them. I do not go undercover for
nothing.”
“Be that as it may. I’ll start drafting some patterns, and you can go over to your place and grab what you need in the meantime.” Jeremy slid into the kitchen briefly to toss his butter knife in the sink, and he grabbed measuring tape on his way back to Madge.
“So how tall are you?”
--
In spite of having her height measured for the dress, Madge crept up the stairs to her apartment in a winter overcoat that was far too long for her. The coat and the hood did a good job as a discreet cover, but she was tripping over it with every step. And if her apartment was indeed trap-free, she was going to ditch this thing as soon as possible.
She unlocked the door and slunk in. Without turning on the lights, she did a preliminary search, just to make sure that the dark-haired police officer wasn’t going to leap out of her refrigerator with a warrant and a pair of handcuffs.
But the apartment was clear. Madge turned on all the lights, flung off Jeremy’s winter coat, and set about the place, gathering up any merchandise she could still find. Some of her pieces of merchandise here were second rate, but hey, desperate times and adorable diabolical cats called for desperate measures.
She pulled out a box of an assortment of damaged goods. It included several Chlorolad action figures that she’d brought home. They shot a green string tipped with a plastic ivy leaf from his palm when you depressed the button on the back; and when you let go, the string vine retracted back into his arm. Madge had enjoyed advertising with them so much that these ones at home now had strings so tangled that the knots no longer retracted. She’d been meaning to untangle them so she could put them back on the shelf but hadn’t gotten around to it.
And there was that box of discounted Glitch action figures, too. She had only found out why they’d been cheap after buying them: They’d been manufactured improperly, and none of the figurines had heads.
And then there was a small assortment of other knick-knacks and plushies, many of them torn or damaged, probably by Madge herself when digging too far into the packaging when opening a shipment with her box cutter.
But--thank goodness--she still had the crate of Mattress Comet inflatable pool toys. Usually she bought them cheap after the summer season and sold them high the next year, completely skipping the winter season. But they were in perfectly good condition, and they still deflated flat and re-inflated whole. Selling pool toys in November would have to do.
And finally, she gathered up her box of Dossier Dame sunglasses. These were simply surplus; like the Comet pool toys, sunglasses didn’t tend to sell as well during the winter season.
She tried on a pair and modeled them in the mirror. It wasn’t a
great disguise, but the sunglasses did successfully block a large portion of her face. It’d do.
In lieu of her lost street cart, Madge extricated from storage an old, very rusty Mechafalcon wagon. Oiling the wheels didn’t make much difference to the rust, but at least it would be able to carry all of her “new” merchandise to Jeremy Jeter’s apartment.
Before putting the winter overcoat back on, Madge glanced at her crate of Eyescream Man action figures. She’d
love to sell them, too, but since she knew the police might
actually keep an eye out for them, she restrained herself. Another day.
With her rusty wagon loaded up with questionable
Hero City goodness, Madge locked up and made her way back to Jeremy’s lair of fabric.
Once she arrived, Jeremy looked up from his drafting desk with an expression of actual excitement.
“Here, hold this up, see if it’ll fit.” He hopped over several boxes of thread like a steeplechase runner and presented her with several long sheets of thin brown paper--the patterns for the Dossier Dame dress.
“And ha! What do you think of this?” he added, leaning back towards a huge bag of polyester fiberfill and pulling out a small Black Cat plushie from on top.
Madge gasped and took the plush toy in her hands. “It’s perfect!” she cried. “The mask gleams and everything, and he’s
so fluffy. How many of these can you make today, do you think?”
Jeremy grinned. “Plenty. I’ve got the pieces cut already.”
He made his way back to the bag of fiberfill and stationed himself between that and a stack of white fabric. To Madge’s confusion, not only were they the wrong color, but they didn’t look cut at all; they were still squares, and the only way they could be considered cat-shaped would be that they were definitely fabulously floofy.
But Jeremy rummaged into the fiberfill bag and held up a large wad of it. And then, before Madge’s eyes, one of the squares of fluffy white fabric floated into the air of its own accord, suddenly dyed itself black as the color filtered down the length of the square, and divided itself into perfectly cut pieces that wrapped themselves around the wad of filling. A spool of black thread unrolled itself from a secure place on the hat stand-like armature, and it wove itself in and out of the fabric, meshing it together perfectly without even a needle. Next, the fabric fur around the plushie’s eyes was spontaneously shaved, and with levitating silver thread, the chrome mask stitched itself on. A small instructional tag flew from a box under the desk, and the black stitches on the plush leg visibly made space for it as the tag fell neatly into the seams.
With an inaudible
snip, the dangling threads cut themselves off and buried themselves underneath the fabric.
All of it took only a matter of seconds.
“There’s two,” Jeremy said smugly, and tossed the new plushie to Madge, who stood there flabbergasted. She failed to catch it, and her mouth was hanging open.
Jeremy grabbed another wad of stuffing, then another. After the fourth plush Black Cat was lobbed at her, he said finally, “What, did Madge’s motormouth suffer some engine failure?”
“I--” stammered Madge. “That--” Jeremy looked at her expectantly. “You might’ve--you could’ve made
way more plushies in under a day when I paid for them!”
Jeremy rolled his eyes in disappointment. “Designing patterns takes time.”
“And why are you raising my rates? I’m
clearly not paying for the time construction takes.”
“Fabric and stuffing cost money. I mean, honestly. People expect artists to make something from nothing.”
“You’re not really an artist, you’re cheating with metahuman powers.”
“Oh, well,
excuse you, Oddmund. See,
this is why I’m raising your rates, because you’re a jerk to deal with.”
“Well, if you’re pressed for cash, why are you not registered as a metahuman, you could be
swimming in dough!”
“’Cause it’d be
creepy!” Jeremy suddenly looked frazzled. “Everyone knowing you’re weird, and some team of goons in the back keeping tabs on you all the time, knowing personal stuff about you,
it’d be creepy, Madge.”
“And you don’t think this hovel is creepy? Why on earth do you need so much smothering
fabric if you can just magically dye everything?”
“
For crying out loud, fabric isn’t all about color. I can’t change the texture or the material. And if you’re suggesting that silk and denim are interchangeable, you’ve got another thing coming.”
“Yeah, well, this whole overcrowded room is a scam! All this fabric, all this thread, what do you even need a weaving loom for?”
“
Visualization, dangit, it helps to plan around individual thread problems.”
“And I bet you don’t even
use that sewing machine, it’s just there for looks.”
“I use the machine for larger pieces of cloth, that’s why I had to cut the white fluff squares, I can’t do anything bigger than that by hand.”
“ ‘
By hand,’ ” Madge scoffed.
“Cripes, you are such a pain. See, a
lot of people in your shoes would be all, ‘Oh my goodness! What talent! I always knew you had something supernatural on your side, but I never expected it to be such a delight to watch!’ ”
“It wasn’t a delight. You
threw them at me.”
“Because you were unresponsive.”
The argument finally hit a wall, both of them silently stewing in aggravation. Madge just studied Jeremy in sour consternation, and Jeremy just crossed his arms and frowned right back. At last, he leaned back in his chair and took a deep, cleansing breath.
There was a long pause, and he glanced at the rusty wagon behind Madge.
“Anyway,” he went on, as if the dispute hadn’t happened. “After I finish the Dossier Dame costume, I can probably make enough Black Cat plushies for you to sell. Save the prototype one, though--he stays with me.”
Stirred back to movement, Madge tossed the original Black Cat at Jeremy before gathering up the others that had fallen to the floor and adding them to the wagon. She coughed lightly. “Say, I was also wondering--could you make little lab coats to go over the Gordan Page dolls? They’d be really cute, and plus, then I could market them as being both the supervillain AND the secret identity.”
“Patterns, Madge,
patterns,” Jeremy answered with a sigh. “And I can make more plushies, but no more pullstrings, unfortunately. I’m all out of the voice boxes. Because you burned the others.”
Madge slouched and groaned in exasperation. “I really don’t know why you’re still so hung up about that. I’d already paid you for everything on that cart, so it was my loss.”
Jeremy pursed his lips and paused again.
In a softer tone, he said, “It really
isn’t all about money, Madge.”
“Isn’t it, though?” Madge said, quite bemused.
“You don’t secretly have one of those high-and-mighty ideologies about how you want to share beautiful recreations with people who need inspiration?”
Madge shrugged. “What, and you do?”
“Well, maybe not
that high-minded,” Jeremy admitted. “But I do like thinking that someone out there is appreciating what I made.”
“Then you’re probably in the wrong field, y’know,” said Madge. “Still...” she added slowly, “I appreciate you being in this one.”
For a split second, Jeremy was genuinely touched. He was about to say something to this effect, but then Madge went on pragmatically, “You really do give me way better deals and manufacturing timetables than Schlich does.”
Jeremy just gave another exasperated sigh and chucked another plushie at her face.
Chapter Seven: Undercover, Overhead
“I know it’s been a couple days, but I PROMISE we’ll have some new material for you soon, folks! The kidnapped person has not yet been found, but knowing our heroes’ finesse, it’s only a matter of--oh? Hold on, folks, I’m being told something’s happening downtown...”
--
The absolute worst thing about trying to sell merchandise undercover was that Madge had to avoid her favorite selling haunts.
None of the train stations, none of her usual busy street corners, and not even that one spot near the Thai food truck where she used to sell merch very reliably to excited police officers in the southern precincts.
She watched the traffic, and the train overhead concurred as she sighed wistfully. She wondered how long she should wait before deeming the whole “you’re under arrest” affair officially blown over. She fixed her Dossier Dame wig. It was an itchy, if effective, accessory.
“This is a
bath toy?” a mother in heels asked incredulously, holding up one of the Mattress Comet inflatable pool toys.
“Absolutely,” said Madge, adjusting her sunglasses in a way that attempted to look self-assured. “Some people have very large bathtubs.”
“It’s almost life-size. My son hates bath time, and with this, he would never even touch the water.”
“Then think about how much he’ll look forward to taking baths after getting this!”
The woman sniffed disdainfully, replaced the toy in the wagon display, and walked away.
Ugh. People were so close-minded about most merch in this part of town. Madge would have moved to Saturn Street where she had been yesterday, except that she
had sold an astronomical amount of the Black Cat plushies here today so far, and news about them had spread a bit. A few customers even seemed to realize she was probably the same vendor who used to sell in the train stations, but thankfully most of them seemed happy about this fact.
She hadn’t seen a single police officer today--or yesterday, for that matter.
And she had been thinking about how grateful she was for that, and how unlikely that was to change today, when a great, screeching roar sounded somewhere overhead.
--
“A
train crash?” Officer Tricia Roberts repeated in both horror and astonishment, jogging through the foyer, where there was a great commotion as officers spread the news and attempted to file into order. Most of them, including herself, had been called in on short notice.
“Train dangling above the highway gridlock downtown,” replied Captain Naughton. “As a small mercy, freight, not passenger.”
“Was there an accident?” Scott asked, following the development with concern.
“No,” Captain Naughton said. “Sabotage.”
Tricia’s professional thought process froze and took a detour to remember the 3:17 train several days ago; but surely this was too big and too overtly dangerous to actually be the fault of--
“Reports seem to indicate that it was one of the metahumans--the turncoat Glitch.” Naughton turned his smartdevice around to show her a blurry photograph taken from some distance away.
Someone across the foyer called out, and Captain Naughton quickly pocketed the device.
“Alright, everyone!” he projected across the hall. “Evacuation procedures, let’s move!”
Getting to the emergency site was difficult on its own. Trains were out of the question, obviously, and even cars were severely limited by the traffic jams. Where cars were concerned, the best they could do was to drive as far as possible, then go on foot. The police department had a limited amount of helicopters and motorcycles, and if the calls that kept coming in were anything to go by, they
still needed more officers at the scene below the wreck.
But for Madge, getting
away from the emergency site was the difficult part. It would have been one thing if she still had her street cart: All she would have had to do was break off any pending sales and pedal away. But with her Mechafalcon wagon, she had displayed her wares with a blanket and a small lightweight shelf.
A logical person would have abandoned the merchandise and thrown themselves into the mob raging in the general direction of the designated rest stop. And three days ago, Madge
had abandoned her merchandise and run.
But today? Today, enormous dangling train above or not--today she was already trying to financially recover the losses from the 3:17 incident, and she had also promised Jeremy not to lose anything else. And additionally--her old Mechafalcon wagon was
absolutely not going to get blown up, burned, crushed, or abandoned. As a general rule, Madge was not terribly sentimental, but dangit all, she had
some standards. And if she was going to save her wagon
anyway, she might as well try to reload it with all of her merchandise.
This was naturally difficult to do when screaming drivers kept abandoning their cars and trampling her display blanket.
But wait, was that-- Ah yes, good, here came the cavalry.
"CALM DOWN!" shouted the immediately recognizable figure of Tabitha Kingsley from atop a minivan.
"Everyone get away from the train in an orderly fashion! No pushing and no shoving. If you see anybody trapped, wave down either a police officer or a hero! More will be on their way!"This declaration did have the upside of drawing the attention of the panicking, unruly crowd, but it had the downside of directing Madge’s attention to the fact that there were
definitely now police officers on the scene. They must have come to do crowd control.
Shoot.And moreover, there would surely be more officers at the rest stop they were being directed towards. Madge needed to finish grabbing her merch and go somewhere
else. That wouldn’t be too suspicious, right? Just a humble Dossier Dame cosplayer pulling her trusty wagon down an innocuous street that was not below the train. Absolutely. No one would pay any attention to her.
The train was still making slow, grinding, pleading squeaks as it inched off of the railway above. The sound was audible even over the mob’s shrieking. And they
were still shrieking: The hero’s take-charge attitude had definitely helped the mob move in a more methodical fashion, but the thing about fleeing from a giant freight train that might crush you at any given moment was that relief was at best a temporary feeling.
To emphasize this point, a businessman in a blazer plowed straight into Madge and knocked her over, and she collided with the lightweight shelf of plushies that she was trying to get under control. Her sunglasses, along with little Black Cats, Espins, Chlorolads, Sinclairs, and Zeniths were strewn across the pavement.
“
Watch it!” Madge shouted as the man sprinted away. She swore, and with a quick glance back at the precarious train, she spun around and frantically continued to pack her merchandise away, trying to tie down a small tarp on top of it with bungee cord.
“Here,” came a breathless--but kindly--voice behind her. “Let me help you.”
“Thank y--” Madge began, but then she turned and saw who it was.
“YOU!” Madge cried.
“Me!” greeted Officer Tricia Roberts. And, determined to learn from her past mistakes, she did not wait for another response: She grabbed the vendor’s arm that was further away, whipped out a pair of handcuffs, and decisively slapped them over Madge’s wrists.
“Nice wig. Now then,” she said crisply, “let’s get you somewhere--”
--Safe, she had been about to say, but that was when someone from the top of the train tracks threw a grenade at the dangling train, and a great deafening explosion wracked the train and the streets below.
Still trying to keep a hand on Oddmund’s arm, Tricia raised her voice as loud as it would go: “That way!” she shouted to the civilians still amongst the cars, waving her free arm.
Much farther away, a hero in flashing colors was playing tremendously loud scales.
“Hey everyone, it’s time to get out of here!” the hero called.
“Just follow my lead, and you’ll be safe. On the plus side, the rest stop we’re heading to has some pretty alright coffee!”“Follow Scaletta!” Tricia shouted in support, continuing to motion with her arm. “The rest stop is that way!”
Some heard and followed, but--
“Officer!” An overwrought boy rushed up to her, his face streaked in dirt and tears. “Officer, my mom, during the explosion--she’s bleeding, she’s in between those two blue cars over there--please help--please come--”
Tricia’s grip on Oddmund’s arm tightened, but at the same time, she knew.
“I’m not saying it doesn’t matter. I’m saying you need to get your priorities in line,” Captain Naughton had told her.
And indeed, when it came right down to it, it wasn’t even really a choice.
“Stay here,” Tricia told Oddmund, though she knew it to be a futile instruction. “I’ll deal with you later.”
And Officer Tricia Roberts let Madge Oddmund go.
Tricia turned away, and she reassuringly grasped the boy’s hand as she followed him through the tight maze of abandoned cars.
--
Reassuringly grasping her merch-laden wagon behind her and wearing a grimy Dossier Dame dress with a lopsided silver wig, Madge made her way through a tight maze of back alleys.
With some effort given the handcuffs, she pulled out her smartdevice from her back pocket and drafted a text to Hephaestus Fabrications.
“Hi, I don’t know what you’re doing, but I need a hacksaw.”
Chapter Eight: The State of Siege
“I don’t believe this! How could this have happened? This is AWFUL, this is-- I-- This is unheard of! This is-- Yes, I know we’re on the air live, yes, I KNOW, Dennis, stop waving those cue cards at me, I SEE them, I don’t CARE, how could Bill Sinclair have stepped down, at a time like this? What kind of turn of events is this? If this is the marketing department’s sick ploy for more viewers, they sure as hell didn’t inform ME--I can say that word on television! Everyone knows that word! I--FINE, switch me out to show those confession cam scenes again, that’s FINE, I can’t believe this has happened--”
--
“I don’t even--Look, I’m just saying, if you’re gutsy enough to be selling merch on the streets again, you don’t need to be ungratefully crashing on my sofa bed anymore.”
“And
I’m just saying that I am still not in the clear, in case yesterday’s incident didn’t enlighten you, and besides, it saves you postage when mailing my shipments anyway, right?”
“ ‘
It saves me postage.’ ”
“Well, it
does, doesn’t it? And you get instant feedback. Saves you lots of time and money.”
“The price of that hacksaw for those dang handcuffs was well worth at least three shipments’ postage alone, you know.”
“It’s an investment. You never know when you’ll need to take off more handcuffs.”
“How about saving my sanity rather than my checkbook? I hear that’s a pretty worthwhile investment as well.”
“Oh, don’t be so dramatic,
I’m the one who could have been crushed by a looming freight train, and
you would have lost your best customer.”
Madge and Jeremy came to an impasse and evenly glowered at each other.
“Be that as it may,” Jeremy said at length, dropping the washcloth into a drawer, “I appreciate you buying your own groceries, but I am
not cleaning up your dishes.”
He returned to his sewing machine and started loudly hemming up a client’s slacks.
“Then you won’t have any dishes to use yourself while I’m out selling today!” Madge called defiantly over the droning hum of the sewing machine.
“I can’t hear you!” Jeremy shouted, not turning around.
“I’m going out! You’ll be out of dishes!”
“I can go out to eat! I’m not a hermit!”
“That’s
right, you’re a dragon who hoards shiny fabric!”
“Shouldn’t you be out selling some headless Glitch figurines?”
“I’m leaving, I’m leaving, have fun rambling to your sewing machine!”
Geez. Madge slammed the apartment door behind her and wheeled her wagon over to the elevator. She was plenty considerate as a house guest! It wasn’t
her fault that Jeremy’s building had never invested in dishwasher machines.
Then, having second thoughts, she rolled the wagon back to apartment 505 and poked her head back in.
“Just remember that I wouldn’t stay here if I actually had a choice, because your pillars of clutter are really re--”
“OH, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD--”
The racket of the sewing machine briefly stuttered to a halt as Jeremy flicked out an exasperated arm and sent five tiny scraps of fabric flying towards her face. She quickly slammed the door shut again and clawed off the sliver of khaki that had managed to smack her in the eye.
What an attitude! He hadn’t even agreed to make her a new cosplay disguise for today. Honestly, while it
was true that the outfit hadn’t fooled the police officer and that Madge had gotten it irreparably dirty, Jeremy was being wholly unsympathetic.
The elevator pinged its arrival to the fifth floor.
Well, anyway.
Madge would drum up some good business today for sure.
Hero City had been thrown into tumult overnight, and a lot of characters seemed to be more or less having the Dark Moment of their story arcs. It’d be a peak time to profit from the viewers’ anxiety and hype and FEELS. Oh goodness, the feels alone would almost certainly pay for a new street cart at least twice over.
Her cash box jingled as Madge rolled the Mechafalcon wagon into the elevator and made her way down.
She straightened her green shirt and recognizable red apron. Maybe she had been away from her favorite sales hotspots for long enough that she could even market herself as a
“return of Madge Oddmund’s super merchandise.” That’d be a great shtick for sure.
Her brightened mood, however, did not last. By the time she had made her way to Konnarka Station on foot, she found the place--
closed, of all things.
“Hey,” she said pointedly to a man just outside at the bus terminal. “Hey, what’s the big idea? Why’s the train station closed?”
The man looked up from a tabloid headed with “
Hero City Romances! Star-crossed, Star-struck, and Starry-eyed! (Chart insert inside!)”
“It’s a bunch of stations, since that wreck yesterday,” he answered, both weary and annoyed. “Still got a couple lines running, but not that many.”
“Wait. Wait wait wait. Which lines are out?”
“It’s all on the transit’s website, lady, haven’t you been keeping up?” the man said, pulling out his smartdevice from a breast pocket. “The entire green and yellow lines are down. And the blue line from Eridanus to Karkinos Station, and the grey line from Pygmalion to Ariadne. Everything along them is shut down until they sort the damage and security.”
Madge said a frustrated swearword aloud and pulled at her face in aggravation.
“Ugh. Yeah. Yeah, okay,” she muttered, giving a halfhearted wave of thanks to the man. Then she coughed quickly and changed tactics. “...Could I interest you in buying a pair of Sonar headphones, some headless Glitch action figures, or a Black Cat plush toy for a friend?”
The man gave Madge a funny expression and glanced at her wagon, still packed and covered in the tarp.
“Why in the world would I want a Glitch figurine without a head?” he snorted.
“It’s a metaphor,” Madge explained. “It encapsulates the struggle of good and evil that resides within each of the stars of
Hero City. I guarantee they’ll be very difficult to acquire next year.”
The man shook his head and returned to his tabloid. Madge looked at the cover of it again. It featured a grainy photograph of two people at a darkened street corner and a fake close-up shot portraying it as Fireflyman and DUDE BRO enfolded together in a passionate kiss.
Madge turned her squeaky wagon around to go find a bus station with a bit more traffic, or perhaps the nearest train station in operation. As she did so, she pulled out her Cyborg and texted Hephaestus Fabrications: “New merch idea. Plushies for romantic pairings. You can stitch their hands together, or put them together for a hug. I could market it as ‘Buy Two Plushies and Get Free ‘Shipping’ or something, except they wouldn’t be free. Slogan needs work.”
Jeremy did not reply. Still upset about the whole dishes and hacksaw thing, what a drama queen.
Madge made her way to a more central street corner, surrounded on all sides by skyscrapers. She was gratified to sell two Black Cat plushies before she’d even finished setting up.
She’d almost made a third sale when her potential customer in question dropped several plush toys to the pavement and pointed above their head with a gasp. Admittedly, Madge’s eyes followed the trajectory of the fallen toys first before they reluctantly looked up to see what the problem was. Dozens of people all around the busy crosswalks had in fact all stopped and stared at the same thing:
On one of the skyscrapers, an enormous television had suddenly broken off its regular broadcast, only to be replaced by a larger-than-life image of the Queen.
“Look at all these people, helpless during the middle of Hero City Network break in! Honestly, heroes--I’ve escaped you three times now. You don’t want to see it again?”Ah. Standard villain studio takeover. That was all well and good. Those tended to happen every now and again. Madge leaned over to retrieve the dropped plushies from the ground, not really paying attention as the broadcast ran.
“... Third--” the Queen above her was now saying.
“Gyro City and Shawarma Shah, you really need to up your kitchen quality standards. Seriously, bad idea cheating the inspectors, because... You don’t want to make your customers mad
.”Madge tidily straightened the plushies on the lightweight shelf, and she had just approached the prior potential customer to see if they were still interested, when she was interrupted by a horrible crinkling
smash just behind her.
She spun. A woman in a dark suit had just shattered Madge’s entire shelf display with a very durable-looking briefcase. At her feet was a sea of scuffed Dossier Dame sunglasses, shattered Fireflyman nightlights, and several decapitated bobbleheads.
Madge practically pounced on her.
“HEY HEY HEY, you have to pay for that!” she shrieked, waving her printed “You break it, you buy it” sign in the woman’s face.
But the woman turned to Madge with a remarkably blank expression, and without saying a word and without breaking eye contact, she picked up a Dynamic plushie and succinctly tore off its legs.
Madge gasped.
And then the woman blindly seized someone who happened to be crossing the street next to her, and judo threw the man onto Madge’s Mechafalcon wagon.
Madge snapped.
She whipped out her now somewhat worn Eyescream Man figurine from her apron pocket and fired a warning laser at the woman’s feet.
“
OUT!” she screeched. Madge marched over to her wagon, forcibly hauled the stunned man off of it, and tossed him to his feet. (“I knew I shouldn’t have requested this Friday off,” he murmured dizzily.)
“
OUT!” screeched Madge again. She found, however, that she was spared the trouble of having to deal with the woman with the briefcase when the woman dove straight into the street throng and began punching random people who were crossing.
By this point, of course, Madge was far too incensed to consider how bizarre this was, and whirled back to her wagon to start packing up the damage with a vengeance. If any passersby were staring at her, she didn’t care right now. Just
look at all this ruined merchandise!
“No time for dawdling, looks like your work is cut out for you today,” the Queen continued on overhead.
Madge finished packing in record time, this time not even trying to reconcile the shattered objects at her feet. She slapped the bungee cord over the tarp and yanked her wagon off through the crowd down the street, shoving her way through what was quickly becoming a mob-like scuffle.
“Time’s running low, heroes. Act now, or there may not be anything to save soon.”Nominally, Madge was heading towards Lemnos Station, which should have been running. But in reality, Madge’s path was rather haphazard, not only because she was still furious about the damage back at the busy corner, but also because the crowds she encountered were starting to become so frenzied that even Madge was beginning to notice, in spite of herself.
A rattled scream and bout of violence here. A frantic retelling there. Something about a bomb. Something about the HCN CEO’s son. Something about zombies. Something about the mayor. At one point a random person charged at her for no reason, and Madge, impatient and down to her last straw, punched them in the face. At another point, an errant villain in a feather plume hat blasted an enormous ball of black ink the size of a truck wheel right where Madge had been three seconds before, and she shot him a rude hand gesture and a laser from Little Eyescream before plowing on.
And as if all this wasn’t enough, an air raid siren started blaring across the city. An
air raid siren. JUST when Madge finally arrived at the train station. Passengers were pouring out the doors, ushered by a burly policeman.
On another day, Madge would have given the man a very wide berth, but right now, all Madge could process was that all of this sudden madness was a
direct, personal, vulgar insult to her sale prospects today.
“What’s going on?!” she shouted in an accusatory tone to the policeman over the cries and shouts of the crowd, over the siren, over the other five people all trying to ask him near-hysterical questions at once.
“--Then stay with a friend outside the city, don’t go through Saturn Street again--” the policeman was saying. “--I’m sorry you lost your groceries, but this isn’t the time to be concerned about that, just get to the safe house, and get somewhere safe-- What does your brother look like, sir? Give me a description, and we’ll try to find him--”
And then he turned to Madge. In a single glance, he looked her up and down, and his already thunderous brow darkened even more.
He made a point of straightening his badge, which read “Heraclia Police, Captain.”
“The city has entered a state of siege, ma’am,” he answered brusquely. “Go home if it’s nearby, or if home isn’t safe, go to a nearby friend’s house that is, or to the safe house on Seventeenth. Seventeenth,” he repeated, turning, for another anxious person at his elbow. “It’s after Sixteenth. Just a block that way, there should be others, look for the signaling officers--
Naughton here,” he abruptly added, wrenching off his crackling radio from his belt.
Madge was still fuming beside the policeman, glaring at anyone who dared to meet her eyes and mentally cursing whoever was in charge of declaring states of sieges. Was it Mayor Beck? That would be so like her and her campaign promises, to declare Heraclia under attack just because Nyx Nightshadow was trying to kidnap her. Clearing people off the streets wouldn’t help
that, it would only ruin street vendors’ livelihoods, ugh--
“What?” Captain Naughton was barking into the radio, conspicuous and strained. “Are you kidding me?--It’s not enough to have the streets flooded with villains and vigilantes and hypnotized--Yes, this looks just like the debacle at the Queen’s concert--We don’t have
time to double-check that, just make sure the--Yes, yes, I heard you, unregistered metahuman--
Fabric?--”
Unbidden, Madge’s boiling fury suddenly fizzled, and her blood froze.
“Honestly, flying socks? Look,” Naughton blustered into the radio, “he can’t be that dangerous--Enough people are already on the case down by Gyro City and Shawarma Shah--We
can’t spare any more, there are still people stuck on the trains and inside the stations, and we already know they’re a prime target--Just--Yes--You lot can handle this, what Heraclian police academy did you go to, Roberts, metahumans are
not invincible--”
Madge’s brain was spinning. Her frozen mindset was swiftly riling itself back up to boiling rage again.
It had to be Jeremy Jeter. It had to be. He’d gone out to eat after all. That
idiot. That
total, self-consumed idiot.
How could he go out and
stupidly get himself freaking HYPNOTIZED and then go freaking TOUTING HIS ILLEGAL POWERS FOR EVERYONE TO SEE and he was her FREAKING BEST ASSET IN THIS BUSINESS and IF HE GOT HIMSELF ARRESTED FOR MAGICALLY HURLING FREAKING SOCKS AT THE POLICE--A single thought pervaded the fury:
I’m going to kill him.She turned and pushed against the flow of the crowd. And once finally at Jeremy’s apartment, she hammered on the door.
“Jeter, if you’re in there,
I will kill you.” There was no response. The door was locked. He only locked the door during the daytime if he was out. If the door was locked, he was surely out.
He could NOT be out. Madge hammered harder.
“And if you’re
not in there,” she said, a shade of desperation in her voice, “I’m
going to kill you.”
The door was locked. The door was locked.
Well, maybe he was still angry and might refuse to let her in? Sure, that might be likely, sure.
Nervous sweat dripping down her forehead, she dug through her apron pocket. She brought up Eyescream and her box cutter. She shot some lopsided lasers at the door lock, stamped out the small fire that prompted on the floor, and pried the latch bolt aside with the box cutter blade.
She kicked open the door; it anticlimactically hit a tower of fabric with a dull
pwoof sound. Madge shoved inside, dropped her wagon handle to the floor, and checked every room. Jeremy wasn’t here.
Crud, she thought, her grip on the Eyescream action figure tightening.
Crud, crud, CRUD--Madge’s eyes fell on her dirty dishes still on the kitchen counter. She glanced at the clock.
Madge slid the dishes into the sink to soak, for later, and then spun around and barreled out the door. This time, not even waiting for the elevator, she took the stairs down. It wasn’t until around the second floor that she realized she might not have closed the apartment door behind her. Jeremy’s stuff was in there--
her stuff was in there--her
cash box was in there--
She kept going.
I’m going to kill him, she thought as she sprinted past another tenant and back into the street.
I’m going to find him, I’m going to save him, and then I will kill him.Trains suspended. Buses suspended. Freaking state of siege. Madge already had a stitch in her side as she panted and kept running. She half-hoped that Beck
had been kidnapped, because it would serve her right, this was heinously inconvenient. At this rate, Jeremy was sure to be arrested already by the time Madge finally got to the Gyro City area by Saturn Street.
At least she knew she was heading in the right direction. Violent, dispersing mob folk with tzatziki sauce staining their shirts were good for that. Soon they were everywhere.
But it wasn’t until Madge stumbled over a civilian lying in the middle of the road that she knew she was actually
very close. She fell cleanly and sharply to the pavement and looked back to glower at the person who had tripped her: He was bound and gagged entirely by socks and torn shreds of cloth.
“Bleeding
hell, Jeremy,” she cursed under her breath, still gasping for air. She took out her box cutter and (despite the muffled shrieks of the gagged man) sawed through the man’s cloth handcuffs and tore out his gag.
“Where did he go?” she demanded.
The bewildered man sat up and rubbed his wrists gratefully. Wide-eyed, he shook his head, however. “I--I don’t know,” he said. “All of them came rushing out at once, and--”
Madge got up, her lungs still burning for air, and set off down the street again.
I’m going to kill him.There was a policeman tied to a parking meter with a strand of a “we’re open!” flag. Madge tore though his bonds and barked her question at him, too. She left him to undo his own cloth leg shackles himself as she dashed in the direction he had indicated.
Three more incapacitated police officers and four more gagged civilians. Her good old box cutter sliced all their homemade handcuffs and secured directions from all of them. And now there was a trail of sundered fabric all along the way--tattered shirts, dirty socks, torn pennants, and ahead, an entire awning had been ripped down from a mom and pop store.
I’m going to kill him, now where the hell is he.“
Oddmund!” An irate shout elicited her attention; she had almost sped past another police officer, this one tied to a street lamp with what appeared to be an entire street’s worth of rainbow bunting, making the officer look somewhat like a very festive victim at the stake. Madge backtracked and jogged up to her, already reaching out her box cutter when she peeled back one of the flags from the officer’s face--
“Wait a minute!” Madge cried indignantly. “It’s
you again!” What kind of hellish luck was this. It was that same curly-haired policewoman who had tailed Madge onto the 3:17 train and gifted her handcuffs yesterday. “What are
you doing here?! Why are you everywhere?!”
“I’m a police officer!” the woman said defensively. “We go where there’s trouble and we try to mitigate it!
You’re the one who’s everywhere and causing trouble, so why are
you here?”
“I’m just trying to find the guy who did all this--” Madge said, waving at the bunting.
“Why?” said the officer. “You’re a civilian, you should be indoors. Do you know him?”
“No,” said Madge, quickly.
As if in response to this, what seemed to be a strip of the awning spontaneously flew out of nowhere and smacked into Madge’s knees from behind; she keeled over and hit the pavement again, this time face first.
“Just let me
help,” the policewoman hissed. “If you can cut the buntings--”
“You’re just going to throw handcuffs at me!” Madge sputtered, wiping the gravel off her face and getting up. Which direction had the awning bit come from?
“I already used my handcuffs on you
yesterday! Listen, do you honestly think facing a fine or a short sentence is worse than letting this--”
The awning scrap smacked straight into Madge’s eyes with such return energy that she reeled backwards. She clawed at it feverishly; but an invisible force seemed to be digging it into her face.
“Your left!” the policewoman shouted somewhere behind her. “To your left!”
Madge withdrew Little Eyescream from her pocket and blindly, frantically shot a wide arc of lasers to the left. The awning’s pressure against her eyes instantly lessened, and she ripped it off. An open trash can had apparently gone up in flames, and a line of charred black marked the lasers’ path into a cramped alley.
“JEREMY!” Madge screeched, storming in that direction, action figure first. “Get a hold of yourself, for the love of--”
The scrap of awning peeled itself off from the ground and made a return for her face. This time, prepared and on edge, Madge wheeled and set the lasers on it midair: It burst into flames and curled in on itself, as if cringing.
But then, still writhing, still burning, the scrap of fabric made an agonized but swift, dogged beeline for her nonetheless.
Madge screamed and, for lack of a better hiding place on this side of the street, darted behind the policewoman still tied to the street lamp.
The flaming cloth melted into ash before it could reach Madge, but--naturally, because they were having such a stellar streak of luck already--not before it set fire to the policewoman’s bunting. That was just freaking
great, even if it was a slow burn, she’d probably burn to death if Madge didn’t do anything. Fabric manipulation was such a
stupid superpower, and if Jeremy didn’t kill this horrible policewoman, Madge was still determined to kill
him.
Madge swore aloud, very passionately, and absolutely hating herself, vehemently began to saw through the dozens of layers of bunting string wrappings with the box cutter.
Heraclian police officers must have trained for being burned at the stake, though, because the woman was taking all of this with remarkable relative calm.
“Nine o’ clock and two!” she barked, still tied too tight to turn around to face Madge.
“What?” Madge demanded. “What do you--”
Her question was answered when two more ripped shards of the same awning smacked at her from opposite sides of the street lamp--one into her eyes again, and the other wrangling with her wrists. Her box cutter flew from her hands and skittered onto the pavement some feet away as she stumbled backwards again. Thankfully, her left hand was still clenched around the Eyescream figurine, and she managed to ignite the would-be handcuffs before they finished, which made it easier to rip off the blindfold once more. She flung both scraps of fabric to the pavement and fired lasers at them with a feverish vengeance.
At least until Little Eyescream fired a laser that was thinner than normal, then another that didn’t quite reach all the way to the ground, and finally another that did nothing more than simply light the figurine’s eyes red.
“
Schlich!!” Madge yelled. Freaking
Schlich and their cheapskate production lines, skimping on their figurines’ batteries--
“Oddmund--”
Oh, right, police officer who might burn to death or asphyxiate. Madge cast her glance around for her box cutter before diving for it and returning to the hostage at the street lamp.
“We have to draw him out of the alley,” she told Madge urgently, this time her voice not doing quite as good a job of sounding calm. Madge glanced up as she kept cutting. She could see a glimmer of Jeremy’s polo shirt while the rest of him was just barely out of sight.
“Right, right,” she conceded.
“Awning at three o’ clock and fi--”
“
Lady!” Madge cried in exasperation. She’d had to stop cutting the bunting strings again because she now had to wrestle with two hand-sized fabric shards. She managed to hack through one with her box cutter, but that only created
three scraps that were out for blood. “Don’t just
tell me things!
Distract him for me, will you? He’s a massive
jerk, rile him up for someone else, dangit!”
“You said you didn’t know him!”
“That’s because he’s only my--my
friend--” Madge choked on the word as if it was a repulsive thought to have friends, but then her brain quickly caught up with her. “Business associate!” she fiercely corrected herself. “Business associa--!”
But then she was doing more than only choking on words, because she lost her grip on the three fabric shards, and this time, rather than aiming for her face, they closed around her throat, and Madge staggered and fell to her side, still wrestling with them.
Even while unable to turn around to Madge, and even while struggling to remain calm herself in the face of her ignited bonds, Tricia Roberts could tell something was wrong. Oddmund did not seem like the sort of person to cut herself off mid-sentence when acting defensive. And if she had--something must be wrong.
Of course, everything seemed wrong right now. Tricia had been tied to a street lamp with buntings by a hypnotized stranger during a city-wide state of siege, and the person who finally came to her aid was the petty criminal she’d been fruitlessly and destructively chasing all week long who then set her bonds on literal fire.
Oddmund was stubborn, and crooked, and a reckless nuisance, and a bigger hassle than any random street merchant had any right to be. But now even with her, something was wrong.
And Tricia was swept by a sudden, desperate need to set something right, to help abet every single overwhelming thing that was wrong right now. That was all she had wanted this week, really, to set things right with the world. She’d never meant for any of it to spiral as far out of hand as it repeatedly had. And this far gone now, it didn’t matter anymore whose fault any of it was. Tricia just needed to right something wrong. And Oddmund had only asked for a distraction--only a distraction to try to tip the scales.
“Hey,” Tricia said, looking back searchingly towards the alley where the metahuman was. “Hey--Hey! You, sir--You’re a--a--” she stammered. If she’d been able to move, she would have shaken her fist for emphasis. “You’re a poor excuse for a friend to anybody!” she shouted sharply. She wished Oddmund could help her. Tricia didn’t know anything about this guy.
“Seriously, and in the midst of all this to boot?” she continued, loudly and defiantly, in spite of herself. “And not to mention this ridiculous property damage, you’re definitely going to pay for that awning you’ve ripped apart with your bare hands, I--I mean,
that is another
STRIKE!” The flames around Tricia, while in places superficial, had slowly inched up the buntings and were floating around her right side. Tricia looked away and forged on still. “And--and all those socks you stole from people? I mean, you’d
have to be hypnotized to think
that was a good idea, the district will smell terrible for
weeks. Weeks. That’s
got to be an offense. I’m mentally writing you up!
Mentally writing you up! With this attitude, you’ll never get anywhere! Crouching in an alley like a common pickpocket--and I bet that alley is a dead end, just like your efforts! Try something better! It’s disgusting--
you’re disgusting, and you have
no shame! NO! SHAME! It’s DESPICABLE!” she shouted, enunciating and drawing out the last word with something of an infuriated warble.
The pressure around Madge’s neck finally began to lessen, and then the fabric scraps peeled off, flying away upwards at Tricia. With a great shuddering gasp, Madge pushed herself to her knees, trembling and coughing and sputtering for air.
Hearing her, Tricia’s voice continued to shout. “Yeah, see,
this is what I’m talking about!” The fabric had caught fire as well, and could only graze Tricia before dissolving into ashes. “You and Oddmund are both great at racking up offenses, but if you were someone who was capable of thinking things through, instead of just tearing through everything with no regard for the consequences--I don’t know, hypnotism isn’t an excu--an excu-hu-huse--” She finally broke down coughing, unable to hold out any longer.
Meanwhile, ears ringing and black splotches disappearing from her vision to be quickly replaced by dancing orange flames, Madge dizzily staggered back upright and continued to hack where she could at Tricia’s buntings, her momentary haze of thankful relief swiftly turning back to aggravation. She needed a sword, not a box cutter--how could she get through all of these layers of bunting when parts were on
fire?Out of the corner of her eye, Madge again caught a glimpse of the rest of the ruined awning from which Jeremy was using only ripped pieces. It was draped over an overturned recycling bin like an enormous tablecloth.
Distract him for me, will you?“You’re also--you’re an enormous idiot!” Madge told Jeremy, as loud as her voice could manage at the moment. Madge allowed herself to step back from the flames for just a moment, willing Tricia to hang in there. She ducked two flying cloth shards and hobblingly sprinted toward the tablecloth of an awning. “And it won’t work, none of it!” she shouted to Jeremy along the way. “You said you can’t control large pieces of fabric--I guess that’s just too much for you to handle--” With a lunge, she threw herself beneath the fallen awning, and wearing it like a cloak and wielding it like a shield against the pummeling smaller scraps, she fled back to where Tricia was--and flapped out the awning madly, striking the flames with a decisive, desperate
smack. “You never clean your living room--you can’t make a little BROVERINE plushie--you can’t even go out to lunch without having an incident--the one time you actually leave your stupid hermit hole, you wind up creating such a disaster area that crouching in a freaking alley now won’t reverse all of the exposure you’ve blown up in your own face--”
Smack--again at the burning buntings.
Jeremy had finally been elicited at last from the alley, his face a disconcerting hue of vacant fury. He seemed to have been goaded by Madge’s fabric taunt, too, and was trying to do something with the awning: Its edges flushed with a vibrant purple the shade of a bruise, but then the color drained away again.
“Yeah--Yeah, try that again, you loser!” Madge shouted.
Smack--she hit the burning buntings again. As she pulled the awning back and struck once more, its edges momentarily flickered with crimson.
“You’re such an
idiot!” Madge cried again, her voice ragged as she continued to smack the awning. Somehow, the fact that Jeremy did not verbally respond to
anything she said was far more terrifying than being strangled by him. He just stared with that silent, void rage, no response, no comebacks, no quips, no smug glowers. The only audible responses were from Tricia, who was coughing and hacking uncontrollably, and the effort shook her entire body. “
I’m not finished yet!” Madge barked at her, partly to tell her not to die and partly to tell her she still had more complaints for Jeremy; some of her terror and aggravation and fury leaked into her voice.
And back to Jeremy: “And you could do so much better--
so much better, you know that?” Madge demanded of him breathlessly, still trying to smother the flames. “ ‘I have other clients,’
shut. up, you’re a
tailor, you like
making things, you make things for
me, but
freaking hell, Jeremy, you’re powerful enough to bring an entire city block to its knees and yet you spend your time cowering in your apartment and altering people’s suits at home and catering to
me. If you really wanted your stuff to be appreciated, you’d
stop hiding behind me and my sales and stop taking advantage of my taking advantage of you only because you’re
scared of being exposed as a metahuman with
super lame powers, you’re an
idiot, Jeremy! AN
IDIOT AND A
COWARD! And you NEED! TO WAKE UP! AND GET! A DANG GRIP! SO I CAN KILL YOU!”
Madge smacked the bunting flames one last time, and finally a dark, simmering, concluding cloud of smoke billowed up. She tried to fan the cloud away with a full sweep of the awning, and then she flung it aside, dove back to the street lamp, and started cutting the buntings again with renewed ferocity, peeling back the charred remains of the outer flags.
At last, from beneath Madge’s clammy hands, the buntings loosened, and Tricia fell from them--still coughing--but breathing--into Madge’s shaking arms. She dragged her several feet away and then whirled back to Jeremy, who was still standing by the awning, fixing it with that empty stare of violent determination as the cloth’s edges turned various colors that then dissipated. The effort seemed to be excruciating; he dizzily teetered a little on his heels as he glared at the awning in unfocused anger.
Madge came at him running. He was too tall for her to punt him in the face.
She settled for his gut.
Jeremy immediately doubled over and collapsed onto the pavement.
“Good--good comeback,” said Madge, breathing hard. “Put it on the next t-shirt.”
Still sputtering, Tricia piped up from behind in a rasp. “Is--is he--?”
“I think he’s unconscious,” Madge said. She bent down and fixed Jeremy with a pointed scowl that was utterly wasted on him. “I didn’t
actually kill him.” Then she shoved him onto the scorched awning and rolled him up like a burrito.
“Let’s get him someplace else,” she said, and hoisted Tricia up from the street.
Chapter Nine: Fine, Fine
“Well, my goodness! My goodness! Folks, I hope you’re all safe and sound out there. Thank you for persevering alongside us--all of us! You know that we at HCN couldn’t do anything we do without your support, and it’s important to remember what our heroes have taught us: We’re always stronger as a team!
Now, I don’t know how the station will ever top that confrontation, but you know, that’s just what we’ll have to do. After all, we’re only in the beginning of the season! This is only another new beginning, folks! Who knows what other adventures our heroes will have in the coming weeks? Stay tuned--there’s only one way to find out. So let’s find out together.”
--
Jeremy Jeter awoke with a splitting headache and a sore torso. Also, he was cold. Had he left his jacket on the chair in Shawarma Shah?
With a low groan, he opened his eyes to find himself in a room that somehow felt like a police station, and he felt a twinge of unease and confusion. Filing cabinets lined the far wall, and a small desk was nearby.
At the desk, there was a policewoman with a tube of humidified oxygen running beneath her nose. She was bent over the desk and appeared to be asleep.
Madge Oddmund was sitting in a chair beside this desk and beside Jeremy’s cot with her arms folded. She was covered in bruises, dirt, ink, sweat, and soot. She rather looked and smelled as if she had run a marathon through the nine circles of hell.
She was glaring at him very pointedly.
Jeremy returned her gaze and rubbed his forehead.
“...Why do I feel like I need to apologize for something?” he asked. For a moment, it looked like Madge’s shoulders relaxed in relief when he spoke. But only for a moment.
“Because you should!” she barked. “You owe me BIG time!”
Jeremy opened his mouth.
“BIG TIME!” Madge repeated.
“But what--”
“Do you have
any idea how expensive your bail was?!”
“Uh--”
“It was
EXORBITANT, that’s what it
was!” If Madge had had her cash box with her, she would have fervently shaken it to emphasize its emptiness.
“But wait,” said Jeremy, still confused, “wait a minute, why did
you have to bail
me out, aren’t
you the one who’s dripping in charges?”
“Look, buddy, it turns out--hey, I dunno, assaulting officers as a completely unregistered metahuman is extremely illegal and twenty times as expensive as selling merch without a license!”
“Assaulting officers?”
“The
only reason you’re not in ADMAX right this second, Jeremy, is because
I paid an exorbitantly priced bail and
because they cut you an inch of slack from being
freaking hypnotized.”
“Hypnotized?” Jeremy paused. “...Oh,” he said at length--but then his face continued to fall as the implication of this slowly sank in. “
Oh. Ohhhhhh,
crap.”
He squashed himself a bit deeper into the pillow and massaged his forehead again.
“What the hell did I do, Madge?”
“Oh.
Well!” Madge said, and she clapped her hands once, eagerly scooted up her chair, crossed her legs, and started counting off her fingers.
“As best as we can figure, you sauntered out of the restaurant all glossy-eyed after the Queen did her thing, then you joined the mob of other hypnotized folks, where you all proceeded to attack anything that moved, which in
most people’s cases meant punching or martial arts or pummeling with plastic eating utensils, but in your case, you beat up and bound and/or gagged at
least five civilians and five police officers--Tricia Roberts here included--with whatever fabric you could find in the streets, including banners, shirts, and stolen socks, all while managing to avoid the heroes who were trying to corral you zombies.”
Jeremy glanced at the policewoman slumped over the small desk. He blanched again as Madge continued. She sounded as if she quite enjoyed rattling off his offenses, in spite of how upset her face looked.
“So,” she went on, “then I arrived on the scene, Tricia was tied up with street bunting flags, and you blinded and tripped me with flying awning bits and literally nearly strangled me with cloth, and meanwhile Tricia’s buntings had caught fire from Little Eyescream lasers, but you were still trying to kill us, so we both wound up distracting you and goading you into trying to color-change a giant piece of fabric until you passed out, and I may have kicked you in the stomach, but you seriously deserved it.”
Madge put her feet down and leaned back in the chair, crossing her arms again. “All while being a particularly dangerous and conspicuous unregistered metahuman, of course.”
Jeremy moaned again and slapped the pillow on top of his face.
“...Cripes,” he managed, muffled.
Then he peeked from behind the pillow and craned his neck back to Madge.
“I did all that, didn’t I.”
“Sure did, buster.”
“So--so they all know?”
“Hard to miss.”
“I--I didn’t--
hurt anyone, did I?”
“Well, I mean, really, you hurt a
ton of people, but if you’re asking if you actually wound up
killing anyone--the answer is no.”
Jeremy let out a rattling breath and leaned back in the bed.
“Cripes,” he said again. “...I’m so sorry, Madge.”
Her mouth twitched in a way that let him know that the apology was accepted, and then she waved her arm airily.
“Mind you, you also ruined my sales prospects today, too, on top of the bail, so.” She let this sentence dangle.
“And what about her?” Jeremy asked, nodding to Tricia.
“Oh, she’ll be fine. I think the oxygen is temporary. Besides, she’s fallen off a train before and navigated screaming mobs, she’s par the course for the HPD, a regular
Hero City stunt double and crash course dummy.”
“You’re hilarious,” Tricia said, deadpan, without moving an inch on the desk. She found herself feeling slightly gratified when Jeremy visibly jumped. Just because everything was fine now didn’t mean she had to be all chummy about it.
“Oh, I’m--I’m so sorry, Officer--Roberts, Madge said?” Jeremy sputtered. “I’m so sorry for whatever I did to you, I really didn’t mean--” He glanced at Madge again, somehow wanting another fill-in for what he had missed.
“Burning street buntings,” Madge supplied.
“But you said the fire was from the Eyescream figurine, so that’s really more up your alley, isn’t it?”
“It still wouldn’t have happened if you weren’t brainlessly tearing apart
poor local businesses’ awnings and buntings and completely messing them up by flying them in people’s faces.”
“If you’re still somehow implying that you’re upset about losing your business sales for today, how about instead you think of that poor fast food joint and how so much of their customer base is going to swear off shawarma now.”
“Oh, they’ll be fine, they’re a chain, they can just pull an ad campaign where a health inspector becomes their new mascot. Who knows, maybe they’ll need plush toys for their kiddie plates, and you can help with them.”
“And together you’re both insufferable,” Tricia interrupted, and she finally pushed herself up from the desk and propped her head in her hands, looking quite exasperated. “Apology accepted, however, Mr. Jeter,” she added. “And I’m glad you sound less like a hypnotee and more like a reasonable type. Oddmund’s earlier descriptions of you were not all terribly complimentary.”
“Ah, well,” Jeremy said, turning back to her and relaxing a little. “Madge Oddmund is not a very good gauge of character.”
“I resent that,” Madge said.
“Of course you do. You resent a lot of things that are reasonable and true.”
“Well, I resent that remark, too, because it’s
both unreasonable
and untrue.”
“Then that just proves how skewed your judgment is, really.”
“Oh sure, and
your judgment is beyond reproach, Mr. I’m-hypnotized-so-I’ll-just-hurl-magic-flying-putrid-socks-at-pedestrians.”
“Oddmund is also a very poor judge of good escape routes,” Tricia put in belatedly, though sounding thoroughly apathetic at this banter. She wondered if these two were always like this, or if this was some twisted version of their shared relief. Either way, it was tedious.
“Escape routes?” Jeremy managed a smile. Madge rolled her eyes.
“She runs into dead ends, onto train roofs, and behind street lamps,” Tricia said. “Honestly, not sure why it took me so long to bring her in.”
Jeremy appeared to be enjoying hearing about Madge’s missteps just as much as Madge had seemed to enjoy rattling off his own offenses. “See, listen to this, Madge,” he said. “The police deserve more endorsements than you give them.”
“The only good endorsements are from heroes for their products,” Madge said bitterly.
Then there was a quiet pause. Jeremy’s face slowly turned a bit more forlorn and serious, and he finally looked to Tricia with a gulp.
“So--so, um, speaking of bringing people in, if Madge paid my bail, am I--am I good to go home now, or--?”
“Ah, well, no,” Tricia said, pulling out a notebook from her jacket pocket. “The department will need an official statement from you about the whole thing, even though it probably won’t be substantial, like all the rest of the hypnotees’ accounts, but it’s procedure. You also may want to take note of the people you injured and places you damaged if you’d like to extend your apologies and offer assistance; and doing so would help cement your non-hypnotized good standing, as well.” She paused and looked up from her notebook; in the slight silence, her oxygen gave a faint
puff sound before she finally went on. “And of course we’re going to need you to register your metahuman powers.”
Jeremy only greeted this with a dismayed expression that he then tried to exchange with Madge, but Madge simply raised her eyebrows and put her hands up in a gesture that was half an empowering “It’s all you” and half an unhelpful “Not my problem.”
Tricia coughed and went on. “Mr. Jeter,” she said, drawing his attention back, “do you know
why it’s important that the city have records of metahumans? It’s not to keep an eye on them or to put them under scrutiny or even to recruit them to a reality TV show. It’s to prevent instances like
this, where someone goes rogue, and we find that we have absolutely no idea how to combat them if they hurt civilians.”
Jeremy bit his lip and nodded sullenly, resignedly sinking into his pillow again. He paused, then pointed to Madge.
“And what about her?” he asked. “It sounds like you’re the officer who was after her, right? Is she cleared of charges, too?”
“Oh, we sorted out most of that while you were passed out,” Tricia said, this time actually sounding rather pleased. She flipped through her notebook to an earlier page. “Fine for lack of permit, back taxes, and assorted other fines paid--”
“More like
extorted,” Madge put in bitterly, but Tricia ignored her.
“--And a permit registration form is currently under review.” Tricia actually smiled in satisfaction this time, knowing that, despite the absolutely absurd amount of trouble, she
had ultimately succeeded in getting her petty criminal to abide by the law. It had been a relatively small wrong, but still a wrong, and now that the three of them were here safely, she could savor that victory.
Her eyes lingered on the notebook page, however, and she added, “The rest of the offenses--” Here, Tricia coughed several times very purposefully and gestured sardonically to her notebook, before speaking quickly, as if detailing a maddening footnote. “...The insubordination, the resisting arrest, the trespassing, the minor municipal property damage, the incident in which a train’s emergency brake was pulled, the second resisting arrest, the breaking and entering, and the reckless self-endangerment during a state of siege--” Jeremy stared at her in impressed bewilderment. “--We’ve made a deal and I agreed not to press further charges.”
“Oh--well, that’s great, isn’t it?” Jeremy said brightly, turning to Madge.
Madge, however, looked viciously sour. Jeremy’s headachy brain backtracked and caught upon the phrase “made a deal.”
He sat up straight on the bed and looked at Madge in alarm, glancing only briefly at Tricia.
“There’s something else, isn’t there?” he demanded, distressed. “What else did you promise them, Madge? What else are they making you do?”
Madge avoided eye contact with both of them, and then to the floor in a voice of poison, she answered, “...I have to...”
“Yeah?” Jeremy anxiously wrung his blanket around one hand.
“I have to...”
Tricia heavily rolled her eyes.
“I have to...” Madge steeled her shoulders, and with a great shudder, she went on: “I have to...
pay royalties to HCN.”
Jeremy squinted and craned his neck forward, as if unsure he had heard correctly, but after glancing at Tricia, who shrugged, and back to the gloomy Madge, he then threw back his head and fell into the cot, laughing aloud.
“Oh, shut up,” said Madge.
Something of an Epilogue
Lots of notes, rambles, and bonuses in no particular order:
I have so much to say about this thing, even more than what’s here, aaaaaaa XD
- The epilogue picture is a depiction of part of Reiqua’s post in the epilogue
here! =D (I’m only 14 months late, wooooo~) Thank you, Reiqua. ^^ (And thank you, Danae, for being a reliable customer.)
- I feel like there’s an inevitable question about how much of this story I had planned when I posted that one time in the RP. xD The answer is almost nothing. Poor Jeremy didn’t even really exist as a concept (at least, not beyond “I’unno, maybe Madge has a middleman supplier or something because I don’t know anything about how she gets merch”) until I belatedly read the RP and was brainstorming. The Hero City RP story made everything possible. \ o /
- Here are Liou’s small comments in the HC Skypechat that I grabbed and ran far away with:
But moreso:
So thank you, Liou, for pinging me with a name mention to remind me about that, because the second I belatedly saw this message, I cackled mischievously because I knew what I needed Madge to do somewhere in her fic. >D Without that, the 3:17 train scene might not have happened, and then where would we be? =D
- ...Speaking of the 3:17, don’t try that at home, kids
- I was stupidly proud of this obscure blink-and-you-miss-it excerpt. XD (High fives if you see why.)
- Way back in September 2016 when the game was going on, I planned to have Madge sell that one Chet the Flash t-shirt shown. But as a bonus, I also wrote the quotation context and had wanted to put it in a spoiler box after the hypothetical post. xP
“It’s about the spirits you lift, not the boulders you can throw.” -Chet the Flash
“...Although throwing boulders would be really handy if a villain is after you or if you gotta smash something in a timely manner, so not to downplay the super-strength folks or anything, you know.” -Chet the Flash
“Heck, the super-strength guys are really pretty great, I mean, not to endorse anyone (I DO want to win this competition, haha), but nothing sets my heart aflutter quite like watching Bionic Biceps lift a garbage truck over their head and hurl it at a villain’s mecha.” -Chet the Flash
“Haha, CLASSIC.” -Chet the Flash
“Okay but yeah, it’s about lifting spirits, not lifting garbage trucks. That’s the main takeaway here. Do not attempt to lift garbage trucks. That can be a federal offense.” -Chet the Flash
- And finally, here are a bunch of random conversations that I wrote down in my brainstorming notes, but they didn’t make it into the fic. I imagine they still happen, just in that interim between the last chapter and the epilogue or sometime else offscreen.
Jeremy and Madge:
“You mean you actually like DUDE BRO?”
“Of course I do. He’s great.”
A pause. Jeremy stared at Madge, who looked thoroughly unconcerned, before something shifted slightly in Jeremy’s revolted gaze.
Then they both spoke in unison--Madge with obvious confirmation and Jeremy with resigned disgust:
“...Because he sells merch.”
Madge and Jeremy:
“I got another idea. You know those supposedly off-brand plushies?”
“Ugh, yeah. I hate those. The materials cost the same either way, so it’s not right that you sell them for cheaper.”
“Fake ones give customers more satisfaction when they buy a regular plush; makes them feel like they’re getting the better deal when there’s a worse alternative.”
“Alright, so what’s the idea?”
“Okay--hear me out: Limited Edition alternate color schemes.”
((Because those were a thing in the epilogue posts, and Madge would be so on board with that. xD))
Tricia and Madge:
“You did throw away all those recalled Eyescream Man action figures, yes?”
“<_< >_> ...Yes.”
“...They nearly killed me, Oddmund.”
“What’s the police definition of ‘throw away,’ exactly?”
Madge and Jeremy:
)z I had to cut him off a few times and edit in grawlix. Shame on him.
)z I had to cut him off a few times and edit in grawlix. Shame on him.
