#338: Untold Tales of Gothametropolis York and Paradopolis: Foundations
Author's Note: I wasn't that happy with this chapter as it stood. It was short and linear, which was good, but it lacked the pace and feel of an Untold Tale and didn't seem to wow the readers too much. So I've gone back and thrown in a B-story to back it up. Every second section is new but the A-story parts remain unchanged. Hopefully the juxtaposition will allow both the storylines the chance to stand out with suitable "breakways" between events. And the "Foundations" theme seemed to be the best issue to throw the second story in to anyhow.
Previously: A Change of Plans
The light carrier plane touched down on a tiny rain-slicked airstrip just before dawn. It was a thousand miles south of its expected destination. Jay Boaz calculated from the patterns of city lighting he'd seen from the cabin window that this was probably upstate Gothametropolis York.
“We're here,” the handsome man in the sharp Italian business suit told him. “Let's go.”
Hatman considered decking Emilio Cacciatore then tackling the other two gunsels that had diverted his flight away from the Arctic circle but without his powers he couldn't be sure of the safety of the cabin crew. He rose and walked ahead of the slick enforcer down onto the tarmac.
A 1935 Model J Duesenburg stood on the edge of the runway. The driver got out and opened the back door for Hatman to enter the capacious interior.
“What do you want, Boss Deadeyes?” Jay Boaz demanded as he settled into the leather upholstery.
Anthony Vendredi had the coldest expression of any gangster Hatman has ever met, a perfect mix of poker face and death mask. Perhaps that wasn't surprising given how Boss Deadeyes had ruled GMY's gangland eighty years earlier and had somehow returned from the grave to claim his territory once again. The mobster still affected the pinstriped suit and bootlace tie of another era. There was a white carnation on his lapel.
“I wanted a conversation, Hatman,” Deadeyes answered. “Just a talk. Sorry about the inconvenience. I hope Emilio behaved himself?”
“He made a date with the stewardess,” Boaz answered, “but I gather that was in spite of, not because of, the hijacking.”
Boss Deadeyes nodded in acknowledgement that his long-time hitman hadn't changed in the best part of a century. He tapped on the shoulder of the car's driver. “Go take a walk, Carlos,” he ordered. “Maybe there's more stews in there what like guys with some style?”
Hatman watched the young turk go over to join Cacciatore and the others and waited for Vendredi to make his move.
“I know about your powers problem,” Boss Deadeyes told the capped crusader.
“What problem would that be,” Jay bluffed.
“That you don't got none any more. Don't worry. The guy at State what leaked the news won't be leaking it again. Nobody but me knows about it.”
“That's a big comfort.”
Deadeyes pulled an Havana El Ray del Mundo from his cigar case, looked at Hatman, reconsidered, and politely put it away again. “I've got an offer for you, Boaz.”
“An offer I can't refuse?” Hatman couldn't resist saying it.
“Well, it's risky, dumb, and only an incurable bleeding heart would even consider it. And it'll likely get you dead. So yeah, I don't think you're gonna refuse.”
“I'm retired,” said Hatman.
“So you got time to take a short ride with me. I show you something, you make a choice. You decide to walk away then the plane's here to take you to obscurity up in some Eskimo paradise I can't even pronounce.”
“I'm not working for you, Deadeyes.”
“Wouldn't want you, Boaz. I like straight-shooters, even when they're cops, but I don't take 'em on the payroll. Only feds that take my cash don't declare it to their bosses. But there's something you gotta see.”
Jay Boaz tossed the dice. “Show me.”
***
“So this Paradopolis university is like the Lemans’ Hall of Training, where functionaries are prepared for a life of skilled service,” suggested Vespiir. The exiled seeress slave from the distant world of Caph was valiantly trying to deal with a life very different from any she’d known.
“Nah. It’s a place to be yourself, meet some boys, party, and maybe attend a few classes,” suggested Samantha Bonnington, the young superheroine the tabloids called Fashion Accessory. “Mostly it’s a time to get away from authority and find out who you are as a person, and who you’re going to be.”
“And to experiment with new and interesting accelerants,” added Kerry Shepherdson. “It was only the old chemistry block I was banned from. Nobody said I couldn’t go into the newly rebuilt one.”
The three girls were in Kerry’s round-walled lighthouse room, packing to go to college. Kerry was hastily removing the yards of wrapping paper Nanny Greenwood had used on her possessions and jumbling her things up into her rucksack so they felt to be hers again. She kept the tissue paper for later though. It burned really well. FA was folding cellophane-sealed dresses into Louis Vatton luggage, occasionally metamorphosing the contents if she decided they were too last season. Vespiir was carefully storing the new garments she’d been provided with and hoping she could remember the strange clothing protocols of her new environment. Humans had dress codes and taboos as complicated in their own way as Caphan ones.
“Will we be flogged every single day?” Vespiir worried. “I do not like being flogged.”
“Depends which sorority we go for,” FA grinned. “But I’m thinking anybody who tries any hard hazing on Kare might be shopping for a new dorm.”
“The worst they can do is suspend you or expel you,” Kerry shrugged. “Maybe have you arrested if you’re careless leaving evidence.”
Vespiir’s hands unconsciously reached up to the gypsy scarf covering the outcast brand on her forehead. “I do not like hanging in chains either,” she confessed. “I am a very poor student in matters of proper discipline.”
“Not that kind of suspension, Vesp,” Samantha clarified. “Not the kind of expulsion they did to you either. Look, we sign up to classes, we find guys who take notes, we flirt with the guys who take notes, they make copies of the notes…”
“Or we just make then give us the notes in exchange for keeping their eyebrows and body hair,” offered Kerry, who wasn’t free to flirt just now.
“There will be males there?” Vespiir worried. “Masters? Or merely eunuchs?”
“Depends whether they hand over their notes,” suggested Kerry.
“What if they try to raid us?” Vespiir frowned. She hadn’t yet worked out the best place to conceal her needle-point houri daggers in the bizarre concealing clothing she was expected to wear on campus.
“Then Darwin wins again,” Kerry shrugged.
FA nodded. “Or we could just tell Gaz. And sell tickets.”
“Or Master Daanny,” suggested Vespiir, glancing at Kerry.
“Not so much,” the probability arsonist considered. “Danny doesn’t have that much of a sense of humour about come things. He might… overreact.”
“Speaking of the Juniors’ resident archvillain-in-training,” FA asked, “what time is he showing us this campus house he’s supposed to have found for us?”
Kerry hammered the top pair of Doc Martins down into her crowded rucksack. It had all fit when Nanny had packed it, plus ten pounds of tissue wrapping. ““He said straight after breakfast. So for Danny I’d guess that would be around noon.”
There was a tentative knock on the door, and the sound of Visionary retreating behind some fireproof object. “It’s me. Can I come in? Are you decent?”
“I hope we’re not,” Samantha moued. “What a horrible thing to say about a girl.”
“I guess you can come in if you’re delivering stuff,” Kerry decided. “Did you bring me a going away present? Is it a car? Please don’t let it be anything lame like stuff you’d have.”
Vespiir clutched Kerry’s arm. “What are you doing?” she gasped. “That is Lord Viisionary! You cannot offer him such disrespect. He will have you cast out!”
Fashion Accessory soothed the Caphan. “It’s a language translation thing. I know the Shoggoth did something so you can understand English, but this is deep Kerry-speak. Kare asks about a present, busts teach’s chops about a car and all, and what she’s actually saying is I love you and I’m really going to miss you, Vizh, and will you still love me when I’m not living here any more?”
“Shut up,” Kerry growled. “Hair is flammable, you know.”
Vizh ventured to peer round the door. When he was reasonably sure it was safe he took off the baseball helmet and put down the fire bucket. “Are you sure you don’t want me to drive you girls down to campus in the Pinto? I taped the rear bumper back on just in case.”
“If you ever bring that dweebmobile within two miles of campus or do anything to indicate that you have ever even met me there’s going to be a whole new geological fault line under your lighthouse,” Kerry warned.
“And now she’s telling him that he’ll always be in her heart and his inspiration will light the steps of her academic life,” Vespiir surmised.
“Nope,” frowned FA. “I think she means that.”
***
Just off Eecee Street in the oldest, poorest corner of Gothametropolis York was a sprawling greystone building that had seen much better days. The ornate brickwork around the two arched entrances was crumbling. The doors and walls were covered with graffiti. Most of the windows were boarded up and the rest were protected with ugly iron grilles and barbed wire. A defaced sign identified the place as the Gothametropolis York Civic Relief Foundation.
Boss Deadeyes' CAR smoothed to halt beside a pile of abandoned tyres and a burned out motor home. “Here we are,” the ganglord told Hatman.
“Okay,” responded Jay Boaz neutrally. He followed Deadeyes out of the car. A cluster of brooding gangboys took a look at Cacciatore and Kauffman sliding out behind Vendredi and Hatman and prudently melted away into the alleys.
“This is the Foundation,” Deadeyes told Hatman. “Charity institute, set up around the time Civil War vets needed aid an' comfort when they got back home to GMY. Lots of fancy endowments, built schools, the Mercy hospital, some new housing, all that stuff.” He pointed to the almost derelict building. “Built this place too. Gym in the back. A snot-nosed kid called Tony Vendredi learned to box here a real long time ago.”
“It's in a bad way,” Hatman noted. “I volunteer down at Mac Fleetwoods's Zero Street Mission and this makes that place look like a palace.”
“Yeah, it's seen better days,” agreed the Boss. “This is as far as I go. You go inside and take a look-see.” He turned to get back in his car.
“You're not coming in?”
“I wouldn't be doing no favours if I walked through that door. Not to you, not to this place. I done what I can. I walked you here.”
The crime boss of Gothametropolis York sat back in his Deusy and Kauffman drove him away.
***
Kerry leaned out of the side of Samantha Bonnington’s sleek red sports car. “So where’s this house?” she demanded
“End of that drive,” Danny directed. “You can’t miss it.”
“Is it after that derelict Bates motel murdershack?” asked Fashion Accessory.
Danny’s silence alerted her.
“No,” she said. “Not that – that… that.”
“It’s not too rotten,” Danny denied. “It’s a fixer upper.”
“Looks flammable,” noted Kerry.
“It’s not,” Danny denied again. He had a feeling he’d be using his powers quite a lot today.
“I liketh it,” Harlagaz chimed in, shifting his weight and making FA’s suspension complain. “Tis like unto the estates of the Nosferaten of Undeadgaard.”
“There aren’t any undead in there,” Danny denied.
“There was death inside,” Vespiir contributed, then clapped her hand over her mouth. Nobody had bidden her to speak.
“Tis well, Lady Vespiir,” Gaz assured her gently. “Amongst friends thou shalt talk freely, and any who gainsay it shall be smitten to the uppermost.”
“Yeah,” agreed Kerry. “Really, Vesp, you have something you wanna say, you chime in. Especially if you’re telling us that Danny’s best attempt to get us on-campus housing has dead people problems.”
“The death was years ago, Firecracker,” Denial promised his girlfriend. “There was some kind of frat stunt that went wrong. Some kid and a girl drowned in a barrel. The fraternity got shut down and the house has been derelict ever since.”
“Is it haunted?” asked Harlagaz hopefully. “I doth dibs any goblins or trolls.”
“If it was kind of said to be haunted would that affect my access rites to your attic?” Danny checked with Kerry. “Or more importantly, your basement?”
Samantha pulled her car up on a leaf-choked driveway. “Does this place even have electricity?” she wondered. “Or indoor toilets.”
“It’s not outdated or unsanitary,” Danny denied desperately. “And it isn’t built on an old Indian burial ground. Not entirely.”
“And you want us to live here?” Samantha Bonnington asked, dismayed. “You want us to even walk near it?”
Denial jumped out of the car. “Look, you wanted a place on the edge of campus. You wanted a house we could all move in to. You wanted it cheap.”
“Yeah, but we also wanted it to have a roof,” Kerry argued.
“You wanted to not be living in Vizh’s lighthouse,” Danny countered. “And it does have a roof. And it doesn’t leak. Mostly.”
“That can be fixethed,” promised Harlagaz. “A proper tempest and soon we shall be enjoying the elements most blowfully.”
Kerry turned to the newest and certainly shyest of the Juniors. “Whatta you think, Vesp? Could we be happy here? Is this the place for our college experience?”
Vespiir looked up at the looming old manse. “I think we could be happy here,” she ventured. She decided it would be best not to mention the rest just yet. She didn’t want to be cast out again.
“I get to decorate,” insisted FA. “I get to pick the fabrics and colours and Kerry gets to not set them on fire and Gaz gets to not cover the walls with dead animal skins.”
“How if they are but stunned yet firmly fixethed?” offered the demihemigod.
“How many bedrooms and bathrooms?” Kerry demanded.
“Four beds, one and a half baths,” Danny said with absolute accuracy. “Plenty of space. If we share some.”
“We’d better save a spot on the wall for Vizh to nail Danny,” Fashion Accessory calculated.
“Okay, we’ll dorm here for now till we get things sorted,” Kerry agreed. “There should be enough room for five of us in Spooky Hollow here.”
“Six,” Vespiir said quietly. “Seven later.”
Kerry pulled at the door handle. It came off in her hand. Then the door fell inwards.
“That didn’t happen,” denied Danny.
Kerry pulled the door handle. The door fell on top of her.
“This house fights back,” complained Denial.
“I can’t believe you got permission for us to live here,” FA admitted. “I can’t beluieve it’s not been demolished yet.”
“It took a bit of doing to deny my way to getting us declared Paradopolis U’s first superhero-only fraternity,” Danny admitted. “Specially since I’m not actually enrolled as a student. But I’m good. So this place is all ours.”
Harlagaz strode across the threshold and put his foot through a floorboard.
“Welcome,” Danny winced, “to Omega House.”
***
Jay Boaz ventured into the darkened interior of the Foundation. To his left were old wooden wall-plaques with faded gold lettering listing patrons who'd supported the charity a long time ago. Hatman recognised some of the old money family names: Dean, Waltz, Reed, Greye, Anton, Waldegrave, McKinley, Gale. The lists ended around the 1960s though.
The way through to the interior was padlocked shut. A cardboard sign was thumbtacked to the door saying 'Closed till further notice'. A battered spinner rack and a rickety table offered pamphlets on drug rehab and pregnancy testing and English as a second language and tenants' rights. The smell of cooking bacon came from a small door under the stairs.
“Hello there?” Hatman called. “Anybody home?”
The door slammed open and a tiny man with improbable whiskers flew out at him wielding a baseball bat. “You don't get to...” the old-timer began before seeing who was there. He paused in mid-warning. “Oh. Sorry, bud. Was expecting someone else.”
“So I see. Security problems?”
“Everything problems, kid.”
Jay Boaz wasn't wearing his trademark H-cap. In fact he was bare headed. He realised that the whiskered defender hadn't recognised the former leader of the Lair Legion. A hatless Hatman was effectively in disguise. “I, uh, came to take a look round.”
The bat came up again. “Another surveyor, huh? Or do you call yourself a developer?”
“No. No, I don't. Er, I was just curious. I've not been in here before.”
“And the kids with the flick-knives didn't discourage you any?”
“I think they were somewhere else.” Hatman worked out the perfect tactical distraction. “I think your bacon's burning.”
The caretaker yelped and hurried back into his below-stairs office to save his breakfast. Hatman peered in through the door to the cluttered interior. “You live here?”
The janitor kicked aside the mattress and sleeping bag. “There's a flat out back comes with the job but it got kind of burned out,” he explained. “Don't know where I'll sleep after this.”
“After what?”
“After they shut the place and tear it down.” He scooped strips of well-done streaky bacon onto wedges of hand-sliced bread. “You want some?”
“Sure,” agreed Jay, accepting the peace offering along with a tin mug of hot sweet tea. “What do you mean, shut it down?”
The janitor – a proudly-polished ancient desk-plate named him as Mr J. Jupiter – gestured all around him at the Foundation building. “The trustees are restructuring,” he explained. “They're closing the centre and selling it off for development. Same with all the old houses out back, and the gym, and the playing courts and all.” He laughed hollowly. “Playing courts. Been a while since we had any sport there but for knife-fighting.”
“That's a shame,” Hatman said. Had Deadeyes brought him here to give a donation?
“A shame, yeah. When I first came here with my pa we used to have basketball tournaments with the GIs back from the war. There was nets for batting practice. There was, what, two, three hundred kids came down here and played while their mas and pas picked up their food packages. Long time ago now, though.”
Hatman nodded. “What happened?”
Jupiter shrugged. “Times change. This ain't such a good time for charity. The Foundation didn't do so good in that stock market crash and a lot of the old trustees kind of left and the new ones... Well, Director Jeffries had to retire after his mugging and we've had nine new Directors since then and none lasted more than a month and some less'n a day. Nobody's left on staff now but me, cause there's no money to pay them. So the trustees are selling off the assets and they've got some fancy new business plan. Ellie says...”
“Ellie?”
“Ellie Copper. From the Free Law Centre? Well, back when there was a Free Law Centre here. Think she operates outta her kitchen now. She wasn't happy about the new plans, but she's just one kid just outta law school and Mayor Klein's legal team just chewed her up and spat her...”
Hatman's eyebrows narrowed. “Velma Klein? What's she got to do with this?”
“It's the Mayor what's helped recruit the new trustees,” Jupiter explained. “She's the one that's helped set up the asset sales and got a proper price for the land. Her people are planning the new investments for the Foundation.”
“Right,” said Hatman with a new determination. “Get me Ellie Copper on the phone right now. I want to speak with her, stat.”
***
Harlagaz popped a brew from the cool-box and tossed another one across the room to Danny Lyle. Denial caught it and pulled the tab, still glowering.
“’Tis not so bad,” Gaz consoled the young supervillain. “I think yon house hath style. It couldst use a mead hall, mayhap, but otherwise…”
“So you don’t think it’s ‘a rotting festering deathtrap that only a mad supervillain would consider using as his evil lair assuming he couldn’t actually afford anywhere with working plumbing or roof tiles’, then?”
“Mine ladies Kerry and Samantha were perhaps a trifle round in their reproofs,” Harlagaz suggested. “They wilt warm to the place.”
“That’s my worry with Kes,” admitted Danny. “She might really warm to it. There’s only so far a denial power can go with a really determined pyromaniac.”
“I mean they wilt come to see that thou hadst a vision of what this place may be.”
“Visions were why Vespiir ran screaming out of the rear bedroom,” Danny sighed. “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. I mean the five of us shacking up together on campus. Maybe Kes and I aren’t ready?”
“Twill be an interesting time for the nonce,” conceded the demihemigod. “Already mine lady Fashion Accessory hath prepared a rota to stock and cleaneth the fridge and mine lady Kerry hath set fire to the list. And we do not yet haveth a fridge.”
Danny chugged another mouthful. “I never learn. I was actually jazzed when I managed to get this place leased to us. I had to be specially sneaky to get the Triple-Omega fraternity reactivated so we could qualify for college financial aid and stuff. I had to fake more than a hundred ninety pledges to get us here. A lot of them were called Smith. But I thought… I dunno.”
“Thou hast never dwelled with anyone since thy days at yon orphanage,” understood Harlagaz. “Your heart yearned to be with friends and family where you couldst belong. Now you fear it may not be as you dreamed it would be.”
“I guess. I just… I know me and Kes won’t last forever. It’s like fire and… slime. But I don’t want her to work that out yet. I don’t want to lose her too soon.”
“I thinketh – and tis not often I doth think – I thinketh thou dost underestimate the fair Kerry Shepherdson. A man must act upon his heart’s desires. A man must venture much to gain much. So you hast come here, and you have brought us here with thee. Now we shalt have the adventure.”
Danny crushed the can and hurled it towards the cardboard box in the corner. “Okay, let’s go back to not talking about this stuff,” he suggested.
“Most verily,” agreed Harlagaz.
“Strikes me that this place will look better once we’ve got carpets down and furniture in. We should do something about that before the girls get back. Maybe they’ll like it better then.”
“Tis sooth. Mine lady Samantha can criticise the décor and transform the colours and suchlike. Mine lady Vespiir can weave things. And mine lady Kerry can, um, maketh them explode.”
Danny grinned. “Sounds like a plan. So where do we get the furnishings?”
“We couldst raid yon other fraternities and carry off theirs?” suggested Harlagaz.
“Really sounds like a plan,” agreed Denial. “Let’s go!”
***
Ellie Copper made Hatman feel old. When legal counsel looked like she should be going to a senior prom it was a bad sign. She came into the Foundation with a belligerent stride and a can of mace. “What's the problem now, Judge?” she asked Jupiter.
“Judge?” questioned Hatman.
The caretaker tapped his deskplate. “Judgement Jupiter, my folks christened me. Most folks round here just call me Judge. Well, when there was folks round here they did.”
“What's this?” Ellie demanded, eyeing Hatman suspiciously. “I warn you, we're filing injunction against...”
“I'm on your side, I think,” Jay promised her. “Look, Judge gave me a bacon buttie and everything.
“He wants to know how things got this bad,” Jupiter explained.
Ellie snorted. “And you dragged me all the way here past those... you dragged me all the way here because of that?”
“Well, he's the first guy to take any interest for as long as I can remember, so yeah. Besides, there's something about him... I kind of like it.”
The legal advisor looked Jay Boaz up and down. “What do you want to know?” she demanded.
“Some things about the board,” Hatman suggested. “Details about this land sale deal and where the money's being invested. How the land was valued. What's happening to any old trust covenants that protect the charity's assets. What happened to the various Directors.”
“You sure you want to know that?” Ellie checked, “because it's not pretty. They keep telling me that it’s a different world out there now, that it needs different solutions. They say a decaying old centre like this isn't the solution, that it's holding up a new mall or something. They've got all the answers and all the money and about fifty full-time lawyers who can just spend all day filing paperwork while I...” Her voice broke a little bit. “This place closes end of the week. It's game over.”
“I don't like to throw in a game till it's done,” said Jay Boaz. “So tell me...”
The doors of the centre slammed open. A half dozen of the thugs in gang colours shouldered their way into the foyer. Ellie caught her breath. Judge looked back at the alcove where his bat lay.
“You were told not to come back down here, Ell-eee,” a youth with eyebrow studs said. “But here you are.”
“I'm not frightened of you,” the lawyer answered; but she sounded frightened. She was right to be scared.
“We were hoping you'd be dumb enough to return, Ell-eee. We've been looking forward to it. We've been making big plans.”
“You just get out of here,” Judge warned them, whiskers quivering. He came up to the neck of the shortest of the gangbangers. “This is Foundation property.”
“Or what?” sneered another thug. “You'll grampaw us to death?”
“Or I will beat the living crap out of each and every one of you,” promised Hatman. “You get one chance to walk out of here. This is it.”
Stud-brow sneered. “Who do you think you are, hero?”
Jay Boaz told him. Then Jay Boaz showed him.
Then Jay Boaz showed them all.
***
The student bar on the edge of campus was crowded with excited new freshmen and women. Danny denied the Juniors a way to some suddenly-vacant seating. FA used her ability to attract any straight male waiter within fifty yards to bring them a pitcher of beer.
Vespiir listened to the weedy young man with the guitar sitting on a bar stool on the tiny stage in the corner. “He is not very good, is he?”
“He art like unto grimpenhounds tearing apart a hrothenfjall,” Harlagaz noted. “Pass me yon peanuts for the nonce and I shalt put him from his misery.”
FA was just delighted that the Caphan girl had finally made the breakthrough to criticising men. “You think you could sing better, Vesp?” she asked.
Vespiir nodded.
“Then why not do it?”
“I do not know many Earth songs, though.”
“You wanna try out?” Kerry asked. “I think an opening’s about to become available for an entertainer.” Across the room the young man yelped as his guitar strings caught fire; and it wasn’t an electric guitar.
“I wilt accompany thee through the throng, Lady Vespiir” Harlagaz declared. He shouldered a couple of football jocks aside and lifted a booth out of the Caphan’s way.
A crowd of girls in expensive-looking gear sniffed as Vespiir walked past them with her eyes downcast. “Caphan makeup? That’s so last year’s slutwear.”
“Silver accessories with those shoes?” sneered FA back. “And you’re really critiquing her choices? And you didn’t think underwear would be a good addition to your ensemble with those micro-dresses?”
“We have underwear,” snapped back one of the girls.
“Really?” Samantha Bonnington asked sceptically. “Check again.”
Danny poured out the drinks. “And so the college experience begins,” he said.
Vespiir took her place on the podium. “Will she be okay?” Kerry asked anxiously. “I mean, she’s so shy…”
The Caphan looked up and her eyes sparkled. The crowded bar went suddenly quiet. “This is an Earth ballad,” she announced, “by the bard Dyylan. It is called Where have all the flowers gone?.”
She began to sing.
“I’m thinking Caphan makeup might be coming back in,” Samantha noted as she watched the bar.
“I’m thinking Vespiir’s gonna be doing okay for drinks for the rest of the evening,” Danny suggested. “Maybe the rest of her entire time at college.”
Later, when the Caphan was allowed to sit back with her friends and Harlagaz had glared away her admirers, the Juniors had time to look through the registration documents for tomorrow.
“Can you deny this stuff, Danny?” Kerry checked.
“And rob you of the college experience?” Denial asked.
“You know how well these things could burn stuffed down your pants?”
“Tis not so hard to fill out yon formeths,” Harlagaz said. “Mine father hast told me of the secret. Thou justeth puts N/A in each of yon little boxes. Save for the one asking about sex. There one must write Yea.”
“We need to decide what classes we’re signing up for, though,” FA argued. “We need to work out which ones will have the best-looking guys in them, which ones will attract the boys who have good prospects of becoming millionaire sugar-daddies, who the least ugly professors are…”
Vespiir looked down at the paperwork with a worried frown. “I am to… to write upon these?” she checked. On Caph pleasure slaves were forbidden to read or write. “What of inscribing my qualifications? My record of accomplishments was erased when I was outcast?”
“We’ll find some new ones,” Danny promised. “Nobody will mind.”
“Okay, I’ll be looking at art and textiles and design,” Samantha considered. “And phys. ed. as a minor because that’s where the athletes are.”
Gaz looked hard at the brochures. “Where art the classes in reaving and wenching?” he demanded. “Mythology? I art going to that one. ‘Twill be an easy pass, for I knowest much juicy information about mine relatives. And see here. They hast courses on sport. Mayhap I wilt try for yon football team for the nonce?”
“Kare?” prompted Danny.
“Chemistry. Physics. Resistant materials,” said the probability arsonist with a manic little smile.
“Still chasing that dream of building a transnuclear weapon, huh?” her boyfriend shuddered.
“Of course not,” Kerry denied. She looked back at the paperwork. “Why stop at one?”
“What about you, Vesp?” FA asked, seeing that the Caphan had already filled in most of her forms. “Music, dance, drama, poetry? That’s a heavy schedule.”
Vespiir didn’t mind. “I have been told by a wise tent-sister that exiles have unique chances to increase their worth. I am following the advice of the Lady Saamantha.”
Just then a young man with big round spectacles dodged his way past Gaz’s guard and slipped in beside the Caphan. “Hey, hi guys, I’m Jagger. Nice set, green girl. Welcome to campus, folks.”
“At ease, big guy,” Kerry told the demihemigod. “He’s just being friendly. You can tell because he’s not a screaming ball of burning flame right now staggering for the fire exit.”
Jagger was a little confused but pressed on. “Anyway, I’m with the college newspaper and I was hoping for a few comments…”
“See my agent,” Fashion Accessory interrupted him, “although I don’t think you can make my fee scale.”
“A few comments on that new fraternity that’s set up on campus. Maybe you haven’t heard yet but there’s this metahuman-only frat got a house on the fringe.”
“Metahumans only?” said Danny. “Sounds interesting.”
“It is interesting,” Jagger agreed. “And controversial, given how a quarter of the campus got demolished by Ultizon just three days ago. Some faculty and students think this might bring more supervillain attention to the university, leading to destruction and loss of life. Or at least loss of credits. I’m trying to get reactions from ordinary freshmen like yourselves.”
“Ordinary?” objected FA.
“You want my reaction?” noted Kerry. “Really?”
“You mayest not yet have kenned who we art, herald,” Harlagaz declared. “I am named…”
“Yeah, neo-pagan Odinist,” Jagger said dismissively. “There’s a society meets on Wednesday nights. Led by a guy called Brunning who believes in hard iron and Aryan supremacy and puts the beatdown on any who say differently. Don’t talk to me.”
“Doth he now?” said Gaz quietly. “I shalt be going to yon meeting.”
Jagger shook his head. “Look guys, no offence, but we see freshers every year, and it’s always the same. The pagan muscle men. The Caphan wannabees. The fashion victims. The Fonzies. The grunge metal emos.”
“The what?” demanded Kerry.
“This is college. Be what you have to be. We don’t judge. I just want a quote or two about whether you’re for or against teenaged superheroes on campus.”
Danny folded his arm round Kerry. “Are they cute?” he asked. “I could really go for a cute teenaged superheroine right now.”
“I’m the wrong guy to ask,” shrugged Jagger. “I came out in my first year here. But a lot of people say Stacy Royale’s pretty hot, so…”
FA leaned forward. “Who?”
“Stacy Royale? The Black Princess or whatever she calls herself?”
Kerry frowned. The peanut bowl shattered. “The Black Princess of Young Heckfire is on this campus?”
“That’s what I’m talking about,” Jagger replied. “Weren’t you listening? There’s a new fraternity, Alpha Alpha Gamma, although some people are calling it Young Heckfire, yeah. They’re setting up now here on campus. We’ve got superheroes. Do you have a quote?”
Danny had one.
***
Elinor Copper had been to some strange places with the clients at the Free Clinic. All Saints Cemetery after dark wasn't one of them.
“I still have mace,” she warned Hatman.
“But you've also got that first edition copy of Walt Whitman as well, right?” Jay Boaz checked. “There's some people you don’t want to get on the wrong side of. Best to bring a gift.”
“This is a graveyard, Mr Hatman. There's nobody here who's not dead. Except for some courting couples in the bushes.”
“That's true. Call me Jay.”
“So how are we taking a legal meeting here? Why in the cemetery?”
Hatman paused beside a ruined old mausoleum. “Because you told me you were having trouble getting access to the original trust deeds and charity covenants. You said you were outnumbered and outgunned by Velma Klein's legal team, that they were eating you alive. So I'm calling in a favour and I'm talking to some folks who really know how to eat people alive.”
“I don't understand.”
“I looked at those honour boards on the wall of the Foundation. Those names. Ancient benefactors who set up the charity a hundred and fifty-odd years back. One was Phineas Greye.”
“So?”
Hatman pointed to the shadows behind the lawyer. “So this is him.”
Ellie whirled round. A wrinkled old man with a liver-spotted face stood there. He wore carpet slippers and a rather faded quilted dressing gown. He had a document case under one arm. “Good evening, Jay,” said the Abyssal Greye, dean of the scholar-ghouls under Gothametropolis. “I understand you have a legal problem? My colleagues and I have around six thousand years of litigation experience between us and an unparalleled library of local documentation. How may we be of service?”
***
“Okay, as first days go I thought that went well,” Kerry summarised. “I mean apart from having to live with the Addams family and that campus police enquiry about where all the furniture had gone from the Wrichards Dorm and finding out that Young Heckfire are our neighbours.”
“Who can say where yon furnishings hath gone?” said Gaz innocently. “By the way, this institute hath a shocking lack of cattle to raid. Something must be done. Mayhap a complaint to yon student council?”
“So the sofas and lamps and stuff I had to spend all afternoon transmuting into something that I didn’t want Kerry to burn have nothing to do with that?” FA checked.
“Nothing at all,” Danny promised.
“Well if a supervillain called Denial tells me that then I don’t need to worry,” snorted Samantha Bonnington. She approached the rickety porch of Omega House.
“There is someone within,” Vespiir warned. “He is not happy.”
Harlagaz rushed into the house. “Avaunt, foul intruder, ere I smitheth thee to the uppermost!”
Dr Evershall, Dean of Paradopolis U., flinched as he was threatened with a designer coffee table.
“Hold it, Gaz-man,” Danny advised. “I don’t think this is your typical burglar.”
Dr Evershall stood up and straightened down his jacket. “Hmph. I am the Dean of this institution and I have every right to inspect the lodgings of one of our newest fraternities. Check your charter.”
Kerry strode up to the grey man. “So you’ve inspected. Hi. What now?”
“Now the warning,” the Dean told them. “I don’t want you to be under any misconception. I was against admitting you all to this place of learning from the start. I was overruled by a board that was seduced by big donations and the lure of publicity, but I know this to be a gross error that will bring only disgrace and ruin to this institution.”
“The man has a point, Firecracker” admitted Danny.
“On the top of his head,” hissed Kerry.
“So I have come to warn you. As far as I’m concerned you are all liabilities. I am waiting for you to screw up – and I know you will. The first incident, the very first excuse I have, and you will be gone from this place. History. Expelled.”
“But not flogged?” checked Vespiir. “Or cast out to ruffians for them to torment?”
“Anything, any infringement whatsoever, and it will be my pleasure to see you gone,” Dr Evershall emphasised. “Understand?”
“Oh yes,” said Kerry through clenched teeth.
“Kes…” warned Danny, placing a restraining hand on her shoulder.
Kerry shrugged it off. “I understand, Dean. Thanks. You know why?”
“Why?”
“Because up till now I wasn’t sure about all of this. Away from the Lighthouse of Chastity, sure, but college? Learning? Not so much. And Danny’s house sucks – no offence, lover – and we’ve got Young Heckfire setting up in a palace down the street with their daddies’ credit cards and there’s an awful lot of tools and dweebs and prats and plonkers swarming your corridors to be honest. So I was really, seriously, thinking of chucking it all right at the start. And then you came along with your pep talk.”
Dr Evershall frowned. “So?”
“So now I’m staying,” Kerry told him. “We all are. We’re staying and fighting, because we do not back down from threats. We’re staying and winning because we do not lose.” She smiled at the Dean. “And it’s all because of you. So thanks.”
“What? But…”
“Out House stands firm,” Vespiir told him, “and this shall be our tent.”
“Right,” agreed FA. “We came, we saw, we rocked to the maximum.”
“What they saideth,” approved Harkagaz.
“I’ll go get the coffee on, shall I?” Danny asked the others. “Seeing as we’ll be here for a while.”
***
Velma Klein stalked into the board room of the Civic Relief Foundation flanked by a dozen lawyers from Sneek, Grabbitt, and Thuggery, the richest legal practice in GMY. She glared across the table at Ellie Copper and Judge Jupiter. “What's all this nonsense now?” she demanded, dropping a thick file of depositions and injunctions onto the desk.
“That,” Ellie told her, “would be the legal paperwork from the various residual trustees and Foundation members we’ve contacted to deselect the current board of trustees and appoint a new one.”
The Mayor of Gothametropolis York turned to Augustus Grabbitt, senior partner, and said, “Sic her.”
“She's in her first year at the bar,” sneered Grabbitt. “This will almost be amusing.”
The door opened. Two more people in came. Velma Klein recognised them. “You!”
“Us,” agreed Hatman. “I don't like bullies who gang up on someone for doing the right thing. It irritates me. I don’t like elected officials who abuse their offices. It makes me want to do something about it.” He pointed to the lawyers and turned to his companion. “Sic 'em. Please.”
“Oh, my pleasure,” grinned Lisa L Waltz wickedly. “Gentlemen, look to your briefs.”
“What the hell are you doing here, Hatman?” demanded Velma Klein. “Haven't you got enough on your hands taking over the world with your little superhero buddies?”
“Right now I'm not with the Legion,” clarified the capped crusader. “Right now I'm working with Ellie and Mr Jupiter and a bunch of folks who'd like to see this Foundation restored to its former functions. We're going to be checking its assets very carefully using a bunch of unique resources I happen to have available to me, and then we'll be looking to get this place reopened. Then we can start on welfare issues and civil liberties cases here in Gothametropolis York. Just like the old days.”
“I'd say this was a clear case of Te capiam, cunicule sceleste,” noted Lisa. [Trans: “I’ll get you, you rascally rabbit!”] “Or even Age. Fac ut gaudeam.” [“Go ahead. Make my day.”]
“You don't have funding,” warned Klein. “You don't have staff. You don't even have a Director. Every single one of them decided it was healthier to work elsewhere.”
“We've got an anonymous donation from a prominent local businessman, “Hatman reported. “That should tide us over till the compensation claims and incompetence damages come in and we're back on our feet.”
“And the new board meets Monday,” Ellie responded. “We're offering Mr Boaz the job of Foundation Director.”
Velma Klein's face set. “You're what?”
Hatman leaned across the table and smiled like a shark. “I'm looking forward to moving to GMY to get things going. I'm looking forward to working with you to make this city a better place. I’m looking forward to your upcoming re-election campaign, Madame Mayor.”
“I love the smell of bacon cooking,” said Judge Jupiter.
***
Next Time: All the stuff we talked about last time. Probably. Unless I get distracted again.
***
You Plugged me, You Dirty Footnote:
Boss Deadeyes (Antony Vendredi), a 1930s gang racketeer, was been raised from the dead and has reclaimed his place as “boss” of Gothametropolis York’s criminal underworld. He possesses the supernatural ability to kill with touch, but can delay the effect for as long as he likes. With his reanimated comrades-in-crime, dapper hit man Emilio Cacciatore, accountant Ishmael Levi, and nightclub singer Myra Mason, and with modern-day henchman Carlos “E-Razor” Kauffman, the Boss is seeking to reunite the fragmented GMY mobs. This has not made him popular with corrupt city Mayor Velma Klein and her allies who have recruited specialist help to “resolve” the situation.
Deadeyes #1: Dead Heat - they buried Antony Ventredi over sixty years ago; now he's back.
Deadeyes #2: Deadfellas - Boss Deadeyes is rebuilding his empire; so he needs his associates.
Deadeyes #3: Get Deadeyes - concerning the adjustments and alliances of a new crime boss.
Deadeyes #4: The Turpin Hill Mob - featuring Ventredi's closest dead associates.
The Abyssal Greye is the senior scholar amongst the Ghouls Under Gothametropolis, a scholarly band of undead civic fathers who shuffle beneath the cemetery in their carpet slippers researching from ancient tomes. The Abyssal Greye and the Scholar-Ghouls of Gothametropolis have long dwelled beneath the All Saints Cemetery that occupies much land between the city and Sheldon River. Some of them claim to be founding fathers of Gothametropolis. These undead can integrate the memories and personalities of those whose brains they eat, and over the centuries have carefully preserved a fine selection of great thinkers. The Abyssal Greye is their Dean. The Scholar-Ghouls are some of the least intrusive of the shadow-denizens of the old city, and have even assisted in its defence on occasion.
http://www.chillwater.org.uk/HH/messenger%20ghouls.htm">The Last Testimony of George Jeremiah Waldegrave - a Messenger story - The postman encounters the Abyssal Greye and the Ghouls under Gothametropolis.
The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom
Who's Who in the Parodyverse
Where's Where in the Parodyverse
***
Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2010 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2010 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. |
|
