Action Figures - Issue Two: Black Magic Women Read online

  Copyright © 2013 by Michael Bailey

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Printing, 2014

  ISBN-13: 978-1497370227

  ISBN-10: 1497370221

  Michael Bailey/Innsmouth Look Publishing www.innsmouthlook.com

  Cover illustrations Copyright © 2014 by Patricia Lupien

  Cover design by Patricia Lupien

  Book production by Amazon Create Space, www.createspace.com

  Edited by Victoria Fullard

  Excerpt from “Devil Woman” © 1976 EMI Records Ltd. / 2001 Parlophone Records Ltd.

  For the geek girls of the world

  You don’t need anyone’s permission or approval

  PART ONE: WRAPPED IN AN ENIGMA

  When we last left our heroes...

  That’s how stories like this start, right? I’m still new to this.

  We all are, truth be told — and by we I mean the Hero Squad, Kingsport, Massachusetts’ hot new teen super-team: Carrie “Lightstorm” Hauser (a.k.a. me), Stuart “Superbeast” Lumley, Sara “Psyche” Danvers, Missy “Kunoichi” Hamill, and (ahem) Matt “Captain Trenchcoat” Steiger.

  (Yes, I am aware Matt’s super-hero name sucks. Painfully aware. We’re working on him.)

  Anyway, when we last left our heroes, we’d prevented a major catastrophe (i.e., a nutjob in high-tech armor blowing up Boston with a small nuke), but failed to tie everything up in a neat little package (i.e., said nutjob escaping, along with the mysterious organization that hired him). More win than loss, sure, but we only scored the win because we got a lot of help from the Protectorate, the nation’s A-list super-team.

  So yeah, Inauspicious Debuts ‘R’ Us.

  Nevertheless, some good has come out of it. Concorde (super-hero, co-founder of the Protectorate, full-time jerk) has, begrudgingly, accepted that we’re serious about making a go as super-heroes. He’s not helping us, but he’s agreed to take a step back, observe from a distance, and step in only when necessary.

  There. You’re all caught up.

  Now, hold on tight. Things are going to get real hairy real fast.

  ONE

  “Wake up, Lightstorm. Your team needs you.”

  I sit bolt-upright in bed, jumping from Dead to the World to Holy Crap I’m Awake in 1.5 seconds. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “What? Nothing...except everyone’s at the restaurant except you,” Matt says. “Where are you?”

  “I was sleeping,” I snarl into my cell phone, “like all right-thinking people should be on New Year’s Day.”

  “It’s almost noon. Why are you still in bed?”

  Well, for starters, I’m a teenager; sleeping late on weekends, that’s our thing. And second, “I stayed up last night to watch the ball drop.”

  “Seriously? You do the whole New Year’s Rockin’ Eve thing?”

  “Yes.”

  “Pft. Lame televised party is lame. Get dressed and get over here, we’re hungry.”

  “I needs to feed!” Stuart says somewhere in the background.

  “The gods of Chinese buffet, they taunt Stuart with their bounty. I fear he won’t last much longer. Only you can save him.”

  “Okay, I get the hint. I’ll be there in five minutes.”

  Pre-lunch prep is nothing more than jumping into some jeans, a sweater, and my sneakers. “Going to meet the others for lunch back later bye!” I shout out to Mom, zipping through the living room before she can corner me to demand my full itinerary. New Year’s Resolution Number One: get Mom used to the fact that I’m within arm’s reach of adulthood and need to fly free.

  Speaking of which: remember what I said about being at the restaurant in five minutes? I meant that literally.

  The woods near my house are covered in a light coating of winter frost. Frozen leaves crunch beneath my feet in a pleasant New Englandy way. The sky peers through trees stripped naked by the change of seasons. It’s a wintery gray, bright and dark at the same time. The clouds look close enough to touch. All you have to do is reach for them.

  So I do.

  I’m a few hundred feet in the air when I remember to slip on the ultra-high-tech goggles Concorde gave me for Christmas. I’m not yet in the habit of putting them on before going airborne, but I should make that New Year’s Resolution Number Two: goggles first, flying second, because among their many cool features, they have a transponder that lets the local Air National Guard base know I’m, as they put it, “a friendly” and not something they need to shoot down.

  They’re also GPS-equipped, which means all I have to do is say, “Plot course, Silk Sails, Kingsport,” and the on-board computer does the rest. A simplified map appears on the lenses, along with a red line, like in an Indiana Jones movie, showing me which way to fly.

  The trick, once I arrive, is finding a place to discreetly land. Silk Sails, which we affectionately call Junk Food because of the decorative Chinese junk sitting in the Koi pond out front, is in the middle of town, which is sorely lacking in green space. I have to touch down in a thicket of trees behind a nearby housing complex, and having to fight my way through waist-deep brush to reach open ground makes me —

  “Late,” Matt says without looking up from the lavish buffet. He scoops some tangerine chicken onto his plate, then wags the steel serving spoon at me. “You said five minutes.”

  “Happy New Year to you too.”

  “We started without you,” Matt says, pointing out the obvious.

  “And by we, he means them,” Sara says. She and Missy were thoughtful enough to wait, but the boys? No such courtesy. In fact, Stuart is already on his second plate of food.

  “Hey, man, Junk Food doesn’t go all-you-can-eat except on special occasions,” he says, “so I gots to grab the bull by the horns while I can.”

  “Or the crab by the rangoons, as the case may be,” Matt says.

  “The rangoons are the tastiest part of the crab.”

  “Knock it off,” Missy says. “I like crab rangoons and you’re making them sound dirty and gross.”

  “Of course they are,” I say, “they’re boys.”

  “Who are also dirty and gross,” Sara adds.

  “Say that again and I’ll flick a booger at you,” Matt says. Ah, the witty repartee of the American teenage boy.

  Plates piled high with food, we sit in a corner booth and gorge like piranhas, pausing only to slurp tea and attempt something resembling conversation.

  “Wharweegondodishwikind?” Matt says through a mouthful of steamed pork bun.

  “Could you repeat that?” I say. “Perhaps after swallowing?”

  “I said, what are we going to do this weekend? We should think of something epic. We have tomorrow plus the weekend before we have to go back to the drudgery factory.”

  (Translation: back to school.)

  “We could watch the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy — extended editions, of course. Or get in a killer game of Arkham Horror,” Stuart suggests. “Ooh! I bet we could tackle all of Temple of Elemental Evil!”

  “Whatever we do, you’ll either have to start without me or wait a little bit. Yes, again, you poor thing,” I say to Matt when he gives me a disapproving look. “I’m supposed to see Mindforce tomorrow morning.”

  “What, does he need to interview you again about the Archimedes thing?” Matt says.

  Time to make a tough decision: come clean and embarrass myself, or execute evasive maneuv
ers and lie about why I’m seeing Mindforce.

  No, I’m blowing enough smoke at my mom. I can’t do it to my friends too. Honesty, best policy, yada yada.

  “It’s a therapy session,” I say into my lo mein, and the Great Chinese Food Massacre grinds to a halt. Stuart is frozen in time, a chicken finger hovering in front of his open mouth.

  “Therapy?” Matt says, like the word itself is unfamiliar.

  “Yeah.”

  “Why do you need therapy?”

  “Oh, gee, I don’t know,” Sara jumps in. “Might have something to do with Manticore maiming her.”

  “You got better.” Sara punches him in the shoulder on my behalf. She’s a good friend. “What? She did.”

  “I think your first New Year’s resolution should be to stop acting like such a thoughtless ass all the time.”

  “Sara, it’s okay, let it go,” I say.

  “I will not let it go. What Manticore did was...it was torture,” she says to Matt. “It was cruelty for the sake of it, inflicted on your friend, and for you to blow it off like it’s no big deal —”

  “So there we were,” Stuart says, “in the Congo.”

  “Were there monkeys in the Congo?” Missy says.

  “Yes. And they were all wearing hats.”

  “Huh?” Am I missing something here?

  “That’s our signal that a conversation is getting awkward, so we should change the subject,” Matt explains. He resumes eating as if nothing had happened.

  “Going to get more food,” Sara says, forcing her way out past Matt. I say I need more rice, even though I have plenty, and follow.

  “What was all that about?”

  “It was about Matt acting like an insensitive jerk. Again,” Sara says, angrily scooping barbecued pork onto a fresh plate. I put a hand on hers. She stops, but she won’t look at me. “I felt it.”

  “You felt what?”

  “...I felt what Manticore did to you,” she says. “I don’t know how or why. Maybe we have some kind of subconscious connection because we’ve, you know, been in each other’s heads so much, I don’t know.”

  She remembers the day as well as I do, she tells me. It was the day I was going to try and smooth things over with Concorde, maybe undo some of the extensive damage we’d done in his eyes by — well, simply by existing, by daring to call ourselves super-heroes. Sara was on her way into town to meet the others at the Coffee Experience. They were going to wait for me while I made my well-rehearsed pitch for a truce. She remembers feeling a rush of fear, unprovoked and pointless, and then, out of the blue, an invisible fist punching her in the side. She crumpled to the sidewalk as a wave of vertigo washed over her.

  “It felt like I was falling. A jogger stopped to ask me if I was okay,” Sara says. “I couldn’t answer him because all of a sudden I couldn’t breathe. I felt terrified and angry at the same time, and then...”

  Sara fumbles her plate onto the edge of the buffet counter. Her hands are shaking. So are mine.

  “It was like he did it to me, too,” she says. “I know what you went through. Matt has no right —”

  “Stop,” I say, taking her hands in mine. “This isn’t how I want to start the New Year. No more fighting amongst ourselves, no more dwelling on the bad stuff we can’t change, okay? I want to spend the day with my friends having fun and being happy.”

  “Okay,” Sara says. “Okay. A day of fun and happy.”

  “Followed by a year of fun and happy. Right?”

  “...Right.”

  TWO

  Sure could use some of that fun and happy now. I know this is for my own good, but I am not looking forward to this.

  “How were your holidays? Do anything special?” Mindforce says. We’re in Protectorate HQ’s common room instead of in the interview room, an attempt to create a relaxed atmosphere; the interview room, all bare walls and hard chairs, is built for interrogation, while the common room has a big TV, comfy furniture, a small kitchen area — all the comforts of home. Mindforce hands me a bottle of cream soda, ice-cold, my preferred brand and everything. He sits across from me, crosses his legs, steeples his fingers, and a couple seconds later undoes it all, as though he realizes he looks too much like a psychologist (which is, in fact, his day job). He’s trying so hard to make this feel like something other than what it is. Maybe too hard.

  “Are you asking because you want to know about my holidays,” I say, “or is this mindless small talk to put me at ease before we get into the heavy stuff?”

  Mindforce smiles gently. “A little of both.”

  Called it. But he’s trying, and I should try to, or else what’s the point of being here?

  “Christmas was good. My dad came by for a while. That was a nice surprise. I got this awesome pair of shades and some cool clothes from some friends of mine.”

  “You earned it. You proved yourself and then some.” He pauses. Unable to think of a smooth segue, he says, “How have you been sleeping?”

  Here we go. “Okay, I guess.”

  “Still having the nightmares?”

  “I...I think so.” The nightmares in question, mental horror movies in which I’m the victim and Manticore is the unstoppable psycho, haven’t been as vivid or distinct as they were the first couple of weeks, but, “I’ve been waking up a lot in the middle of the night, and I feel like...I feel like I just got off a roller coaster — breathing heavy, heart racing, shaking, sweating. I screamed once, woke up Mom and Granddad. I don’t remember anything, though.”

  “Night terrors. They’re not unheard of in people suffering from...” Mindforce hesitates, clears his throat. “Post-traumatic stress disorder. That isn’t an official diagnosis,” he adds quickly, “but there’s no question you suffered severe psychological trauma.”

  “Well, duh.” It slips out. Mindforce takes it in stride. “How do I get un-traumatized?”

  “The traditional approach is extensive therapy. Medication, in extreme cases, but I consider that a last resort. I dislike medicating people unnecessarily. Don’t worry, I don’t think we’re anywhere near that option.”

  Good. I don’t want to spend my high school years doped up. “When you say extensive therapy...”

  “I mean sessions like this, for one. I also mean finding ways to take back your power.”

  Take back my power? I wouldn’t have taken Mindforce for a Dr. Phil pop-psychology type.

  Mindforce leans in, folds his hands on the table. “Manticore. What he did to you. He made you feel helpless.” It’s not a question. I nod anyway. I take a huge gulp of soda, but it doesn’t wash away the desert that’s sprung up in my throat. “And you’re scared — terrified — on a profound level, of feeling helpless again. Part of your recovery needs to be finding ways to make you feel in control again.”

  “Train me,” I blurt out. “Teach me how to use my powers. Teach me how to fight.”

  “Carrie, I —”

  “Manticore took me down because I didn’t know how to fight back. I was running on pure instinct, and it wasn’t enough. You want to help me take back my power? Then teach me how to use my power.”

  I brace for some pushback, line up some counter-arguments. Mindforce isn’t Concorde, so he’s not going to refuse me without thinking about it first, but I am asking a lot. This isn’t a help me with my math request, this is a let me borrow your Lamborghini so I can learn how to drive for my big NASCAR race request.

  “I thought you might say that,” he says. “What are you doing tomorrow?”

  As it turns out, Mindforce was not offering to train me, not quite yet. We need to “address some preliminaries” first.

  “Preliminaries?” Sara asks. “What does he mean by preliminaries? By the way, Noxious Ghoul coming at you.”

  “He wants me — all of us to undergo some testing,” I say. “And I’m blocking with my Killer Bees.” Sara eyes my seven untapped forests, wrinkles her nose at me.

  “Like, school tests or medical tests or IQ tests or what?
” Missy says.

  “Mindforce wants to test our powers, find out exactly what we can do, how they work, what our limits are.”

  “Are there going to be needles? I don’t like needles.”

  “I don’t know, Muppet.”

  “Not what I had in mind for our Saturday, but I’ll take it,” Matt says. “I’m going for another soda, anyone want anything from the kitchen?”

  “Got more Doritos?” asks Stuart, who has already pounded down two bags in as many hours.

  “Yeah, Mom knew you were coming.”

  “Sweet.”

  Having sampled all four of my friends’ parents’ hospitality, I have to say Matt’s parents win for Best Hosts. The parental units at Casas de Danvers, Hamill, and Lumley embrace the philosophy of retreating to a far corner of the house and leaving their young guests alone. My mom likes to float through on occasion to see how everything is (which is annoying), but, because Mom is a cookaholic, there are almost always yummy leftovers in the fridge. This goes over extremely well with Stuart the Bottomless Pit. Matt’s folks tend to leave us be, but whenever they know we’re coming over for games or movies or whatever, they’ll stock up on munchies. Speaking of the parents...

  “Passing through, don’t mind me, kids,” Matt’s dad says. “Have to run to the office for a few hours.”

  “It’s New Year’s Day, Dad,” Matt says. He tosses a fresh bag of Doritos to Stuart.

  “And here I thought I had too much to drink last night celebrating Arbor Day,” Mr. Steiger says.

  “No, if it was Arbor Day, you’d still be drunk.”

  “I do love trees. I’m like the Lorax. Without the Wilford Brimley mustache.”

  “Or the Wilford Brimley diabeetus,” Matt says, Brimleyesque.

  “That’s ‘cause I eat my oatmeal,” Mr. Steiger says in his own spot-on Wilford Brimley impression. Matt is definitely his father’s son. “I’ll be home for dinner. Bye, kids.”

  “Working on a major holiday?” I say to Matt. “That blows.”