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Untold Tales of the Lair Legion (well almost): Dancing in the Dark, or Good Things Come in Little Boxes, Bad Things Drive Up in Removal Vans Thursday, 30-Mar-2000 12:28:45
#43: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion (well almost): Dancing in the Dark, or Good Things Come in Little Boxes, Bad Things Drive Up in Removal Vans Nats arrived late and wet for his job at the Interdimensional transportation Corporation. The torrential downpour that was washing the streets of Paradopolis made flying almost impossible, and the storms had caused a brown-out that had stalled the subway systems. Miss Framlicker wasn’t having any excuses and docked him an hour’s wages anyway. Nats’ day got worse as he looked at the manifest Miss Framlicker handed him. “Aw no!” he complained, “I hate doing pick ups from Xander the Improbable. Last time I nearly got eaten by damn killer penguins! And the time before that he made me play miniature golf with him.” “Before you worry about where you pick up the package,” Miss Framlicker moued with one of her sexy, superior little smiles, “take a look at where you have to deliver it.” Meggan Foxxx noticed the girl with the long black hair right away, and worked out a moment later that she didn’t belong there. The lithe young woman sat next in line for the auditions at the Déja-Vu Review Bar where Meggan headlined, and she was suffering for a serious case of nerves – or perhaps more than that. Meggan slipped into the wings of the stage to take a closer look. “Sarah Shepherdson,” the choreographer called, and the dark-haired girl stood up and came out on stage. She stood uncertainly while the tape was rewound, and Meggan wondered if she was going to flee the bar altogether. Then the music started, and the girl changed. Suddenly she was air and fire and movement, a blur of swirling hair and graceful limbs. She danced with the confidence of a woman who know – knew – that she was very, very good. And Meggan saw the radiant smile that lit up Sarah Shepherdson’s face as she danced. Meggan was impressed. The ageing porn star was a good stripper herself, and no mean dancer. This girl was a consummate dancer but had completely forgotten to remove any clothing. She still tumbled in her half-leotard and baggy blouse, yet somehow she managed to make that erotic and graceful and entrancing. The manager had other ideas. There was a click as he stopped the tape machine. “Honey, you do know this here’s a strip bar, don’t you?” he asked sarcastically. The spell broke, and the frightened pale girl returned as the magical dancer faded. “Y-yes,” she replied. “Well then, darlin’ don’t you think you should, perhaps, take your clothes off, you stupid bitch?” “I was… getting to that.” “Now.” Sarah swallowed hard and nodded. Her fingers fumbled with her blouse buttons. Meggan decided it was time to get involved. “Time out, Lemuel,” she called to the choreographer. “Miss Shepherdson an’ me need to have a little girl-to-girl. Somehow I don’t think she’s really interested in auditioning here.” “No! I am,” Sarah cried worriedly. “I need this job!” The manager expressed his view of girls who couldn’t even take their pants off without blubbing, until Meggan intervened with a graphic description of his marital regalia and its known shortcomings, then expanded on her topic to take in his sexual proclivities, an estimate of his competence in those matters, and some speculation about the reasons for his personality defects. Sarah looked at her with a kind of religious awe. She couldn’t believe anybody could be that rude and that imaginative at the same time. She couldn’t believe that somebody was standing up for her. Meggan guided the girl into a dressing room and sat her down. “So why are you here today?” she asked directly. “I want a job as an exotic dancer,” Sarah stammered. “That’s not what you said before, hon,” Meggan pointed out. “You said you needed the job. That’s different, isn’t it?” “Well alright then, I need the job. I’m a good dancer, really I am,” she assured the older woman. “More to this job than dancing,” Meg answered. “And frankly it takes a certain kind of person to be able to survive the toll it takes. Don’t take this the wrong way, honey, but I don’t think you’re that kind of gal.” Sarah tried not to cry, but failed. “I can do it. I’ve got to,” she declared through gritted teeth. “So why do you need the money?” Meggan asked, and the surprised look on Sarah’s face told her that her guess had hit the mark. “An addiction? A debt? Sick mother? What?” “I can look after mother without doing this,” Sarah answered defiantly. “I work days waitressing at the to the Bean and Donut Coffee Bar off Paradopolis Plaza, and that pays for mom’s health care back in Ireland and helps put my little sister through college. It’s not a great job nut I pay my way and I get two evening a week free to help out down at the Dockfront Soup Kitchen.” “You’re kiddin’ right?” Meg checked. “Oh no, and Mr Papadapopolous is very good about letting me go on time when it’s my mission evenings.” Meggan checked for a halo, but she only saw a young woman in her early twenties trying to hold back her tears. “You do need more cash though?” “Sarah nodded and looked down at her hands. “It’s Frank, my boyfriend, who needs the money.” Meggan was a little taken aback that the girl in front of her was in fact slaving away twelve hours a day to support her family back home, was giving up her free evenings to help the homeless, and was still willing to do more to support a lover. Then again, had Meg done any different when she was bringing up her son? “And what would Frank say if he knew you were here?” she asked the would-be stripper. “He knows,” Sarah told her. “Frank suggested it.” “Did he now,” Meggan said darkly. “Perhaps you’d better tell me about all of this from the beginning...” The Day Before Yesterday: Sarah Shepherdson got home from a late shift at the to the Bean and Donut Coffee Bar to find an empty pizza box on her apartment floor and her missing boyfriend back on the couch in front of the TV. “Hiya, Shep!” he called to her as she struggled through the door to set down her groceries. “What are you doing here, Frank?” she asked him. “How the hell did you get in?” “Aw, babe, you know I can’t stay away from you for long. And as for getting in, I just used a credit card. I was hurt that you changed the locks.” “You left me,” Sarah reminded him. “You went off with another woman.” “Hey, it’s not kind to bring up old stuff like that,” Frank scolded her. “I got feelings, you know.” “Frank, you can’t just walk back into my life like this again,” warned Sarah. “Sure I can babe,” Frank Mazzuchelli smiled. “Here I am. Oh, I left a pile of laundry for you in the kitchen.” Sarah’s reply was interrupted by a hammering at the door. She glanced at her watch. “Who could it be at quarter to midnight?” she wondered. “Don’t answer it,” whispered Frank, leaping from the sofa and spraying potato chips across the room in his panic. “Tell ‘em I’m not here!” Before Sarah could react the door was kicked in by a man roughly the size of Wichita. “Dere he is!” he bellowed, pointing to Frank. “What’s going on!” shrieked Sarah as her home was invaded. A rough-looking man in a leather jacket pushed her down into an armchair, and suddenly there was a knife at her cheek. “One peep from you and you’ll be plastic surgery poster girl, un’nerstand?” he asked her. “You can’t get away with this,” protested Sarah, more angry than frightened. “Somebody will have heard, be calling the police.” “Maybe that works where you come from,” sneered the knife-wielder, “but this is Gothametropolis York, and here nobody hears nothing. Now shaddup while we talk wit’ your boyfriend here.” “Forgotten something, Lasher?” The third member of the intruders gestured to where Frank Mazzuchelli was heading for the fire escape. The man holding a knife on Sarah glanced away, moving like lightning as he uncoiled a lash towards her escaping boyfriend. There was a scream as a coachwhip wrapped itself round Frank’s neck and dragged him back. “Thank you,” the well-dressed third intruder breathed. “Mr Mazuchelli… our employer, a rotund gentleman with a number of extralegal interests, is becoming most displeased with you. To be precise, you have most patently failed to keep up with certain interest payments on a lump sum borrowed from our employer for a putative business transaction. Our employer wishes it to be known that he is not a jolly fat man, and that if said remuneration is not forthcoming we should engage in destructive medical practices upon your person.” There was more, but Sarah Shepherdson was in too much of a panic to take much in. Frank swore that he would complete his business in three days and have the Lynchpin’s money. He emptied Sarah’s tea-caddy and gave them the nest-egg stored away there for a rainy day as a sign of good faith. He took three blows to the stomach from the largest of the enforcers. And then he was left with three days to find $350,000. “I can do it,” he told Sarah after the men had gone and she had propped her door back in its place. “All I need is the seed money to make a down-payment on the merchandise I got the loan to buy.” “Why not use the money you borrowed?” Sarah wondered. “Fell at the 3.15 down at the racetrack,” Frank shrugged. “But no problemo. I’ve got an idea how you can get the cash for us, baby…” And despite all her protests Sarah knew that she was going to do whatever he wanted her to. Yesterday: Sarah couldn’t help but overhear the girls talking at the next booth as she was wiping the tables at to the Bean and Donut. “Men? Men are all slime,” the slightly punk-looking girl asserted. “They use us just to see how far they can make us go, and then they throw us aside like yesterday’s linguini.” “Not all men are like that, Laurie” the second diner argued. She had a slightly exotic accent and appeared to be wearing pyjama trousers. “Some are quite noble – in a sort of embarrassed, not-sure-what-to-do-next kind of way.” “Who, the guy you’re living with, Val?” challenged the first girl. “The one who makes you call him ‘master’?” “He doesn’t make me call him that,” Valeria argued. “He just is my master, now and forever, and I’m his slave – except I’m not supposed to really say that. I just look after his house for him. But despite the absolute power he’s got over me, he’s always been kind and honourable, and that’s my point.” “Besides,” the third girl pointed out, “Y- er Pilar is noticing that cute Laurie is to be seeing somebody rather regularly just now.” Laurie Layton, sometimes known as the superhero sidekick Lisette, glanced suspiciously at Valeria’s friend. She was sure she’d met the strange exchange student somewhere before, but she couldn’t quite place her. “Who, Bryan?” she shrugged. “Sure he seems like a nice straight guy, but it’s only a matter of time before he shows his true colours. Then it’s back to being treated like dirt. At least this one won’t use super-powers to beat me up.” “Y- er, Pilar is sure that there are lots of nice men out there,” the dark-haired woman in the black silk shirt and pants assured her lunch companion. “Pilar is thinking you just have to see it from the man’s perspective sometimes, is all.” Sarah couldn’t help it. “Excuse me,” she asked the surprised diners. “I’ve got a question. Suppose… suppose your boyfriend was in trouble, and you needed to do something… hard to help him… would you do it?” “Of course,” answered Valeria immediately. “Except he’s not my boyfriend,” she added obscurely. “Yet,” Yo also added even more cryptically. “Pilar is to be thinking that people who are loving each other will do anything to be helping the other if they are in trouble. Is what is love about.” “Be real!” Laurie Leyton protested. “A girl’s got to look after number one, ‘cause no-one else will. Besides, if a guy loves you why would he ask you to do something tough?” “Because sharing adversity is a sign of a truly equal partnership, a mark of mutual dependence and trust?” Valeria suggested. “Girl, where are you from?” Lisette cried disbelievingly. “The United States of America and nowhere else,” Valeria answered quickly and with a guilty look. “Really.” “So you’d do whatever you had to to help out your guy?” Sarah asked her. “Of course,” Val replied. “No way,” Laurie denied. “Pilar is thinking it depends upon the whatever,” Yo answered, “And upon the guy.” Mr Papadopopolous called Sarah to see to table nine and the girl had to leave then, but she had already made up her mind that she couldn’t let Frank down. After all, he’d told her that he loved her. Now: “A logical question,” Meggan Foxxx said to the dancer before her. “What does ‘Frank’ need this money he’s sendin’ you out to earn for him for?” “He’s arranged to buy some merchandise,” Sarah Shepherdson explained earnestly. “Drugs?” Meg challenged. “Oh no,” Sarah told her. “I… I asked that. He said he was very hurt that I would have such a nasty mind, and he swore it wasn’t drugs on his love for me. It’s some kind of machine parts I think, from overseas. He expects to sell them at a huge profit because you can’t get them in this country. That’s all.” Meggan sat back and put on her best radio phone-in talk-show host voice. “Well honey, my advice to you is to go home, throw that bum out, and find a nice guy who can appreciate you. But I don’t suppose you will.” “I have to audition,” shuddered Sarah, rising and steeling herself for her ordeal. “You don’t have to audition at all,” Meggan decided suddenly. “Look, kid I’ll lend you the cash you need. I’ll even arrange a little bit of protection for you and your boyfriend from those thugs that hassled you. I’ve got… contacts.” Sarah’s eyes grew wider. “I couldn’t take your money! I have no way of paying it back.” “Then take it as a gift. C’mon kid, you’re a better dancer than I’ll ever be, but you’re not the right kind of dancer for this place, an’ we both know it. I saw you as you danced. You love it, it’s your life, it’s where you come alive. You don’t want to dirty that up now, do you?” Sarah almost gave in but then shook her head. “I can’t take you money. I’m sorry. It’s not fair for me to use your cash that you got doing stuff I wasn’t willing to.” “Difference is, hon,” snorted Meggan, “that I enjoy it. You come alive when you’re dancing, I come alive when I’m f..” “All the same,” Sarah blushed. “I made my decision when I walked in to that audition. I don’t back down, no matter what. I’m certainly not that kind of girl.” And for the second time in the story, the plot twisted with a knock at the door. “C’mon in,” Meggan called. “Are you, like, naked in there?” a young male voice called. “Nope.” “Oh.” Nats sounded slightly disappointed. The delivery agent of the Interdimensional Transportation Corporation entered with a small contained the size of a cigar box. “I’ve got a package for a Miss Shepherdson.” “For me?” Sarah puzzled. “Only Frank knows I’m here, and he wouldn’t send me a present like this.” “I’ll bet he wouldn’t,” muttered Meggan. “Are you going to open it?” Sarah deftly unknotted the string and peeled off the brown paper. Nats and Meggan watched curiously as she lifted the lid and looked inside. “Ohhhhhh!” Sarah gasped, then staggered. Nats caught her or she would have toppled to the floor. The box tumbled to the ground, obviously empty. “Are you alright, honey?” Meggan asked the dizzy girl. “Yes,” Sarah assured her, but she didn’t try standing up just yet. “I just came over a bit faint. Not like me, I’m usually fit as a fiddle. I had a weird sort of picture in my head.” “What sort of picture?” Nats asked her. “Of this sort of human-shaped, mile high vacuum cleaner,” she shrugged. “Silly, isn’t it?” “Sounds like Galactivac, the planet-hoovering Living Death that Sucks,” Meggan considered. “He’s a sort of cosmic-level critter who tried to destroy the planet a while back. I tried out to be his herald once, but a little brunette married to the superhero Jarvis got the part.” Nats was impressed. “You met Galactivac?!” “Well, not socially,” Meggan told him. “Although I bet he’d give one helluva blowjob.” “It must be before I moved to the city,” Sarah said, trying to keep track of the conversation despite the pounding headache that had just started in her brain. “You don’t look too well, sweetie,” Meggan observed. “Why not prevail upon this fella here to take you home? No, don’t protest. You only get one audition here an’ if you’re not at your best you’ll only blow it, right? Go an’ sleep it off and you can always try again tomorrow.” “Tomorrow’s too late…” Sarah protested feebly, right before she passed out. “So you got the parts?” Frank Mazuchelli checked with his contact. “Sure, if you got the money,” the Tech-Runner answered. “But the exchange has gotta be tonight. These things are hot, and I don’t wanna be holdin’ them when the Devil Doctor realises they’re missin’ from his collection.” “I’ll have the cash, don’t you worry about that,” Frank assured his source. “I even got a buyer for them right after. When can we meet?” “Midnight?” proposed the Tech-Runner. “Your place?” “Come over to my girlfriend’s,” suggested Frank. “She won’t suspect a thing.” Kyle Runner woke from a shallow, troubled sleep (the only kind he ever got these days) and realised that the phone was ringing. He’d disconnected it earlier, in fact the cord was ripped out of the wall, but it was still ringing. He knew what that meant. “Saint here,” he admitted, snatching up the receiver with a sense of resignation. “This is Maverick. We have something for you.” Another assignment. That’s what they’d trained him for all those years since that strange encounter with the red-eyed, bleeding man. That’s why the disconnected phone rang every so often, ordering him into danger, placing him in harm’s way, until one day the assignment would prove too difficult. “There’s some serious tech-smuggling going on somewhere in Gothametropolis York,” Maverick explained to his operative. “Wolfgang Fokker’s expecting to pick up something exotic that’s coming into town, and word is we really don’t want him to have it. Make it so.” “Fokker as in leader of the terrorist group HERPES?” Saint checked. “Fokker as in if he gets this stuff he’s after we might be looking at a new world power,” Maverick growled down the phone. “I’m on it,” Saint promised. He took the time for a cold shower and to find a relatively fresh costume. Then he relaxed himself, allowed his body to become mist, and faded into the night. “New orders for the Lynchpin,” Fancy Stan reported to his two partners. Bull looked up from trying to figure out where the end of his donut was, and Lasher put his best of Meggan Foxxx video on pause. “Seems Mazuchelli has somehow gotten a line on some very interesting articles, some kind of alien machinery. He’s taking delivery tonight, which is why he wanted the cash he borrowed. The big man suggests we pay him a visit and confiscate the goods in lieu of Frank’s kneecaps.” “I wus lookin’ forward to taking out Frank’s kneecaps,” Bull objected. “Well, he can keep them, but they don’t have to be in one piece,” grinned Fancy Stan. “I was looking forward to his hot little girlfriend,” leered Lasher. “Lead the way.” Sarah woke to find Frank going through her purse. “Where’s the money?” he demanded with mounting panic. “Where the f&%$ing money?” Sarah recognised that she was back in her own apartment, safe and sound. That had been one helluva delivery guy. “I’m sorry, Frank,” she told her boyfriend. “I came over all funny at the audition. They sent me home. I’ll try again tomorrow.” “Tomorrow?” Frank shouted at her. “You stupid bitch! The Tech-Runner will be here any minute and he’s going to want cold hard cash for the stuff he’s bringing. This is my big break, and I won’t have it screwed up by some dumbass punk slut!” Then Frank Mazuchelli made his mistake. He tried to hit Sarah. And Sarah moved without even thinking. She caught the man’s arm, twisted, and flipped him deftly into the wall. Before either of them realised it she had him in a full nelson. Sarah recovered from her surprise first, probably because she was the one without the broken nose. “I think you’d better leave, Frank. Get out and don’t ever come back.” “You broke my node!” the pinned man complained. “No,” the new Sarah told him. “I only broke your nose. If you want to keep it that way, you’d better go.” “Now this,” Fancy Stan declared from the still broken doorway, “This is interesting. A domestic dispute worthy of the afternoon chat shows. ‘My girlfriend beat me up on the night I was expecting an exotic arms delivery’. I can see it on Springer now.” “Oh no!” whimpered Frank. “Nononononononononono!” “Oh yes,” smirked Lasher. But he was looking at Sarah. “I don’t think I invited you people in either,” she frowned at the thugs who had twice invaded her home. “Go away.” Fancy Stan grabbed Bull’s lapels as the big man turned obediently to leave. “Lasher,” he prompted the whip wielding man in the leathers, “Teach this young lady the rudiments of hospitality when speaking to gentlemen of our calibre.” “My pleasure,” Lasher sneered. Fancy Stan turned on the radio to drown out the screaming. Freddie Mercury contributed his own special magic to the scene: She’s a killer queen, gunpowder and gelatine… And Sarah danced. Her first movement was a high flip away from Frank, avoiding with a graceful ease the whip that Lasher flicked towards her. Landing low she whipped the duvet off her bed and tangled his crop with it. While Lasher tried to free it she tumbled towards him and laid him flat with a spinning high-kick that promised a dentist somewhere a very lucrative three months’ work. …dynamite with a laser beam… Realising that something was wrong, Bull lumbered forward to grasp the girl. The dancer slipped below his fingers, raising one knee in a precision movement between his thighs before using her other leg to whip his feet from under him. She stamped down hard on the big man’s windpipe as he fell. …guaranteed to blow your mind… Fancy Stan moved forward with the fluid movements of a trained martial artist. Dancer laughed, pirouetted aside, and watched as he caught his feet in Lasher’s discarded whip. She caught the third thug with a full extension kick right under his chin as he tumbled. In less than fifteen seconds the three enforcers were down and out. “How did you…?” stammered Frank, still sheltering behind the bed and trying to staunch his nosebleed. “It just felt… right,” Sarah Shepherdson realised. In fact, it felt more right than she’d ever known. It felt like she was fully alive for the first time. The sound of automatic plasma weapons warming up in the doorway spoiled her mood. “Try not to make any sudden moves, Fraulein,” Count Wolfgang Fokker, Commander of the Hero Elimination Revenge Project Elimination Squad (HERPES) warned her. “It would be a shame to mar such exquisite beauty by searing your pretty little head off.” Yesterday Sarah would have apologised, backed down, let herself be a victim. But now she didn’t feel like that Sarah anymore. Now she was… she was the Probability Dancer (the name popped into her head all unbidden), and luck was quite literally on her side. She gave Fokker and his four green-overalled, green-helmeted bodyguards a cool glance. “Nice buckets,” she told them. “You’re early!” Frank gabbled in the background. “You weren’t supposed to come until tomorrow for the stuff. You’re early!” “I decided to cut out the middleman,” Fokker smiled. “A wise precaution, seeing that these tools of the Lynchpin would have relieved you of your wares if you had not been saved by your… girlfriend?” “Ex-girlfriend,” Dancer clarified. Fokker nodded approvingly. “One thing puzzled me though, Mr Mazuchelli. Where exactly is the merchandise? I don’t see it here.” “I don’t know,” admitted Frank, cringing. “I don’t know.” The haulage van glided to a halt outside Sarah’s seedy apartment building. “Hurry up,” the Tech-Runner urged his people. “I don’t want to hang onto these things any longer than is necessary. They make me nervous. The whole deal makes me nervous. I wish we’d never smuggled them from the Devil Doctor’s storerooms.” “No problem boss,” one of the henchmen assured him. “We’re at the address now.” “Good,” the Tech-Runner replied. “I could swear these damn things are whispering behind my back. Pass me the suitcase with the control units.” The other henchman handed him a leather case. “Take care, boss. It sure is foggy out there tonight.” The Tech-Runner looked up sharply. “The weather reports never mentioned fog,” he frowned. “Look! It’s seeping into the van. It could be a gas attack!” The vapours formed up into a man. “It’s worse than that. Good evening. I am Saint,” the man said. “A superhero!” snarled the Tech-Runner. “Waste him!” Armour piercing Teflon bullets sprayed towards the invader. “You’re being naughty,” Saint warned, “and I will be forced to chastise you.” He vaulted over the three large brass lion statues (or whatever they were meant to be) that filled most of the van and downed first one then the other of the henchmen. “No,” screamed the Tech-Runner, fumbling inside his suitcase. “No, you won’t get me!” There was an audible click and the first of the statues started moving. This was followed by two other clicks and two more moving giants. They moved as if made of liquid metal, shimmering as they flexed their muscles. The first turned on Saint and roared. A spume of molten metal it vomited caught the hero in the chest, hammered him through the side of the van and into the side of the apartment block beyond. “That’s it!” the Tech-Runner ordered. “Kill him! Kill him!” The second lion reached out a lazy paw and disembowelled the Tech-Runner before moving after his brethren to close in on Saint. “You were trying to smuggle some sort of robot killing machines created by a secret race of Abhumans with technology from another world and unearthed in some sort of archaeological dig in Iran?” Sarah asked Frank disbelievingly. “No my dear,” Fokker corrected her. “The three Chaos Lions have long been archaeological curiosities displayed in the Baghdad museum. What your ex-boyfriend was acquiring was the three control units which can activate, and when fitted properly into the slots on the lions’ skulls, command them. My researches show that each of these beasts has the power to take on an army.” He looked down at the quivering middleman. “The only question remains, where are my control units, and where are my Lions?” Just then the last section of the story with Saint caught up with this bit with Dancer and the front of the building exploded. “Just a guess,” Dancer suggested, looking down at the chaos below, “but are those them?” “They are activated?” Fokker scowled, regaining his feet and peering through the shattered bedroom wall. “Some fool has awoken them without fitting the control devices?” But Dancer was gone. Mrs McCaffery was screaming in apartment 3b and needed to be hauled to safety. Widow Czewzki was trapped under debris. Young Peter Kovak was struggling to get his new-born son to safety past the fire where the gas main had ruptured. And Sarah Shepherdson didn’t leave people in trouble. Down in the combat zone Saint was trying a holding action against three devices designed by the Abhumans as a last line of defence if ever the Celestian Space Robots came back and tried something funny. Given assistance from, say, Donar, Fin Fang Foom, NTU-150, Hatman, Goldeneyed, Starseed, Exile, Jarvis, Banjoooo and Yo, he might have been able to stay alive for ten minutes while they all died before him. All of them were conspicuous by their absence. Perhaps this was the assignment, the one where he found the limitations of his abilities? Saint hurled one of the lions into another, but the third tagged him with its claws, sending roughly the electrical output of Paradopolis through him. Suddenly his legs didn’t seem to want to work. He tried to transform to mist but somehow the slash had scrambled his powers too. A lithe angel in a half leotard and chunky sweater dropped down amongst the pride. “Bad kitties,” she scolded them, vaulted onto a lion’s back and landing clear beside the shredded van. A molten blast splashed white-hot steel over the van’s interior, but miraculously none of it hit Dancer. In fact, right where she rolled to avoid the stream she found the remains of the Tech-Runner, still clutching his open suitcase. Sarah wanted to vomit, but Dancer had other things to do. Three carved silicon slabs were packed in foam inside the case. She quickly grabbed them and leaped to the side just as one of the lions lunged at her. “Catch!” she yelled at Saint. “Slot that in the critter’s back.” Saint didn’t have time to argue. Catching the beast in front of him by its spun-wire mane he wrestled it so he could slide home the control disc. Dancer rolled under her attacker and deftly dropped a second tablet home. The third lion blindsided her, swatting her with one massive paw and bouncing her off the side of the van. Saint leaped in to commit spectacular suicide by trying to stop it biting her head off. “Don’t just stand there!” Dancer told the lion she’d placed the control device in. “Help him.” Fortunately the lion acted upon her intent, because her order was rather unclear. It pounced upon its brother and rolled it on the floor. Saint sprung free, caught the final control tablet that Sarah tossed, and hammered it home into the third lion’s skull. The three creatures stood quiescent. “That was damned lucky,” Saint panted, dropping to the floor. “Yes,” the Probability Dancer agreed. “Luck is my business. Now if you’ll excuse me, there’s some people need my help.” Hearing the distinctive sound of a Legion Lairjet approaching, Saint allowed himself to vanish into mist, and was gone. The day after: “Meggan, what are you doing here?” Sarah Shepherdson wondered. The stripper pornstar agony aunt looked around her. “I thought this was a coffee shop,” she offered. “I thought I’d get a coffee. And see how you’re doin’ hon.” “You heard about the trouble last night then?” Sarah assumed. “I have a boyfriend who takes a professional interest in Count Fokker’s doings, and a son who’s pretty well informed about superheroes,” admitted Meg. “I hear your apartment block got blasted.” “Mr Papadopopolous is letting me use the attic here at the Bean and Donut,” Dancer explained. “It’s easier to commute this way anyhow.” “Hi-tech androids,” Mr Papadopopolous contributed as he bustled past, “They’re murder on the insurance rates.” “Well, the government’s got them in safe-keeping now,” Sarah assured him. “It’s just a shame that wicked Count Fokker slipped away.” “And your boyfriend?” Meggan asked. “Ex-boyfriend. He ran for the hills.” Sarah looked unhappy for a moment. “But I did break his nose before he went,” she added, cheering up. “I heard there was a new superhero turned up last night and saved a whole bunch of folks, maybe the whole city,” Meggan remarked. “The mysterious guy who nailed the Tech-Runner? Yeah, he did good.” “Nah. The way I hear it, there was a gal in tights dancing about all over the place, who put everything to rights,” smiled Meggan. “They’re callin’ her the Probability Dancer.” “Are they?” smiled Sarah. “An’ I did some checking,” Meggan went on. “Spoke to the fella who sent you that package. He says you owe him a delivery fee sometime, by the way. Seems that when Galactivac empowered his new potential herald here the recipient wasn’t that keen on the job. So a little while ago she found a way of putting her probability manipulating gifts away into a box, ready for someone who really wanted them. Needed them, even.” “I see. And you think this Dancer has got them..” “I think this Dancer’s a fine young woman,” Meggan answered. “I think she’s had a rough time an’ she’s pulled through it. I think she’s just startin’ to realise what kind of strength she’s got, and what she could do with her life. I don’t think we’ve heard the last of her, do you?” “No,” breathed Sarah, before breaking out into a wide, confident grin. “I don’t think we have.” Author’s note: This story is of course dedicated to Shep herself. I trust I’m not being too blatant here, Sarah, but I hope you get the point. And I’m looking forward to Dancer #1. And here's a version with the usual impossible-to-read blue typeface for those who prefer it; it's still from the Hooded Hood |
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