tiredSummary: What is there for a formerly retired superheroine who's managed to find herself in the state she was aiming for—good—and somehow thrust back into the public eye (bad) at the very same time? More importantly, now that she's in Oregon, what is she supposed to do?
***
The list of things Velma had conveniently forgotten during her years of self-imposed isolation from the superhero community was long, and the more time she spent staring at the paperwork required to get a permanent license in the state of Oregon, the longer that list seemed to become. Catch-phrase registration. Code name revival. Even costume design protection. Luckily, she'd left The Super Patriots, Inc. before her eighteenth birthday, which made it illegal for them to refuse to let her use the name and persona she had supposedly "helped" to develop. Many former child heroes weren't as lucky. They went freelance sometime in their twenties, when the pressure from Marketing got to be too much to tolerate, and had to give up their entire personas. That was why you got transformations like Liberty Belle's, who suddenly went from red-white-and-blue girl next door to wearing black and gray and calling herself "Dead Ringer." (Actually, even Velma had to admit that that change was for the better. Dead Ringer's merchandise sales were ten times what they'd been when she was Liberty Belle. Her Hot Topic T-shirt sales alone were enough to drive Marketing out of its collective mind.)
After four and a half hours of filling out forms, signing waivers, and having her picture taken for the half-dozen photo IDs her new position required, Velma was beginning to believe that most supervillains chose their career based not on any real desire to break things, but simply to avoid the heroing paperwork. If she had to have one more blood test, she was going to punch something. Her lack of super-strength meant that it probably wouldn't do any real damage to anything besides her knuckles. And that would be worth it for the catharsis.
"—free to go, Ms. Martinez."
"Huh?" Velma shook herself out of a pleasant fantasy involving piles of paperwork, a flame-thrower, and a whole lot of glorious destruction. She blinked at the man on the other side of the desk. "What do you need me to sign now?"
"Nothing." He offered her a thin-lipped smile before passing a piece of laminated plastic across the desk. Even upside-down, the official photograph of her in her official mask was officially awful, providing more support to Velma's private belief that some supervillain's machinations had been behind the DMV being hired to take the photos for superhero licenses. "Welcome to the state of Oregon. We're grateful for your service."
Velma took the license with suddenly-numb fingers, flipping it around to stare at it right-side-up. The picture was horrible; her signature was an illegible sprawl; her heroic name looked even sillier than usual when presented in a true-type font on something official, instead of being printed in Comic Sans MS on the back of an action-figure box.
She'd never had an adult hero license before. She had to blink surprisingly hard to keep herself from crying.
When she looked back up, the man who'd been assigned to shepherd her through the re-registration process was actually smiling. "Thank you for being willing to protect us, Ms. Martinez," he said. "After this, no member of the state government will refer to you by anything other than your code name while you are in costume. Your paychecks will be delivered via coded transmission to one of three rotating bank accounts—and, of course, your state taxes will be waved for the duration of your time in the civic super-service. The state of Oregon owes you a debt of gratitude that we can only make these small gestures toward repaying."
"Um," said Velma—said Velveteen, because wasn't that what sitting in this surreally ordinary little office was all about? Making the choice she'd always said she was never going to let them make her make? Only in the end, it felt almost like she was making it entirely on her own—and blinked owlishly at the man who'd been assisting her through the registration process.
"Did you have any questions for me before the end of our meeting?"
Yes, she thought, frantically. What the fuck am I supposed to do now? But she didn't trust her voice, didn't trust the words to come out the way she wanted them, and so Velveteen merely shook her head, clutching her adult hero license to her chest like it was some sort of sacred talisman.
"In that case, you're free to go." He reached across the desk and shook her hand before rising and leaving the room. He didn't dawdle—few people dawdled in rooms with stunned-looking superheroes, even if those heroes had no recorded history of spontaneous explosions—but he also didn't move with the hurried goosestep common in normal humans when dealing with the super-powered. He wasn't afraid of her. He was just giving her some space. And oh, God, she didn't even know how to feel about that.
Velveteen sat silently in the quiet little government office, staring at her license, and trying to suppress the burning urge to cry.
In the end, Velveteen lost the first real battle of her adult career.
*
"Your report, please." Celia Morgan leaned back in her seat, leaving her hands folded on the desk in front of her. It was the only thing that would keep her from starting to fidget, one of the few bad personal habits that had managed to stay with her during her ascent to the state government. It looked bad when she folded origami cranes during meetings, and worse when she steepled her fingers against her chin like some sort of cartoon villain, so she'd learned to keep her fingers stiffly interlocked. It was the best of all possible evils.
"Her psychiatric profile is surprisingly stable," said her assistant, who looked substantially less comfortable here, dealing with his boss, than he'd seemed when locked in a series of small rooms with a potentially dangerous super-human. He knew where the real risks were. "She's been working among, ah, 'normal humans' since leaving her original team, and that's left her with a much more balanced view of humanity than many powered individuals in her age range. She has some parental issues, and some issues with authority, but they seem largely focused on, ah, 'authority that's being stupid.'"
"So if she's not ordered to go hand-to-hand with the Caldera, she's likely to follow instructions?" Celia asked. Her assistant nodded, and she smiled. "Good. That's very good."
"Ah, Governor Morgan..."
"Yes?"
"What is the plan with Ms. Velveteen? She seems pleasant enough, but I'm not sure she can supply an entire state's hero needs by herself, and as long as she's here, the Super Patriots—" Too late, he realized what a dangerous train of thought he was riding, and tried to stop. Too late: the words were already out. All he could do now was wait and hope the blast radius would be small.
To his surprise, Governor Morgan shook her head, and said, "She's not the only one they've disappointed. I'm not counting on her to supply all our heroing needs. She's not a figurehead, but she's also not here to be the new Majesty."
"Then...what is she here for?"
Jennifer, twelve years old and so excited, so excited to have passed the membership exams for the Junior Super Patriots; Jennifer, who became "Jory," who was going to save the world so many times that the supervillains would get disgusted and just go home. Jory, who died on some mission that was never fully revealed to the public, in some quiet little hell-hole where she should never have gone in the first place. Jory, who was never even mourned by anyone outside her family.
"She's here to provide a choice, Arthur," said Celia, voice dropped to a quiet, reflective register. "She's here to show them that there's another way, and that maybe the way they've been counting on wasn't the right one."
"You can't force people to see sense."
"No. But can make sure they understand it's possible."
After that, it seemed like there was nothing else that really needed to be said.
*
While it is true that The Super Patriots, Inc., continues to maintain its stranglehold over the superhero community of North America, and many locations elsewhere in the world, there has never been any concrete proof that the organization is truly dedicated—as some of their critics will insist—to becoming the sole controller of the world's superhuman population. "We simply want to allow our super-powered brothers and sisters to have the freedom to stretch their capabilities to their limits in a safe, nuturing environment, one which allows the public to enjoy their adventures without endangering the ordinary men and women just trying to go about their daily lives," is the official party line, delivered with varying degrees of plastic sincerity by a seemingly-endless succession of representatives from the Marketing Division of The Super Patriots, Inc.
Despite this noble mission statement—or maybe because of this noble mission statement, which made it sound like they were trying to be the Care Bears of Corporations, and really, who wants that?—none of the pieces of back-door legislation making it illegal for superheroes to operate outside of corporate control have ever successfully been able to pass. When objections have been raised, the response has been less sympathetic than might be desired, boiling down to "nobody likes a monopoly."
Just because The Super Patriots, Inc. were the only game in town, that didn't mean they would be allowed to maintain that status forever. (Attempts to cite Santa's Village and other such isolated super-communities as competition were summarily laughed out of court.) As for how The Super Patriots, Inc. would respond to an actual rivalry, well...
That was really anybody's guess.
*
By the time Velveteen made it out of her various meetings, photo sessions, and other sanity-stretching exercises, the first envelope had been inserted into her official City Hall mailbox. According to the contents, her belongings—such as they were—had already been removed from her temporary quarters at the hotel and taken to her new residence: a small house on the east side of town, which would be hers so long as she was contractually connected to the state of Oregon, and which she was absolutely free to purchase at a reasonable percentage of market cost, should she ever wish to transfer the title into her own name.
This time, she managed not to cry. She continued managing not to cry for as long as it took her to gather the rest of her paperwork, request a driver from the motor pool, and be escorted to her new house. Her new house, where no one would harass her in the hallways, or threaten to evict her for being half an hour late getting her rent check to the office. Where she wouldn't have to share walls with people who blasted heavy metal after midnight, or call the police on her neighbors for fighting in the parking lot. Hers.
She cried for the second time while standing in the tiny attached laundry room, stroking the dryer with one hand and feeling like her heart was going to break. By the high standards of the heroes employed by The Super Patriots, Inc., she might as well have been moving into a cardboard box, but compared to where she'd been living, this was better than anything in the world, even the Princess's fairy tale castles or the ice palaces of the Winter Country. This was home. Her home, where she got to stay just as long as she wanted.
Well, as long as she wanted, and as long as she was doing her duties as a "recognized and licensed member of the Oregon superhero community." (A community which consisted, according to the official state register, of her, her, and, oh, right, her. No other heroes had been active on the state-specific level for at least ten years. That was fine. The last thing she wanted to do was get into a dick-waving contest with some super-dork who thought their territory was being challenged.) Her duties included, according to the handbook, regular patrol.
"Well, I've been meaning to get more exercise," she said, reflectively, and went off to find the bedroom. She was going to need to get changed, and she was going to need some cash.
*
The costume made for Velveteen by the Princess's mice was going to have to do until she got her first paycheck and could start requesting the specialty gear, like the flame-retardant leotards and the anti-frostbite tights. Fortunately, she had a few months before weather was going to become a real issue, and those mice could sew. Velveteen studied herself in the mirror, unaware that she'd switched back into the hyper-critical mode that her handlers from Marketing had always worked so hard to drill into her. She was about to face the public. She needed to know what the public was about to see.
The V-neck on her leotard was a bit more ambitious than she necessarily liked, although she had to admit that the fact that it formed a literal "V" was a nice touch; the main body of the leotard was chocolate brown, and all the burgundy accenting made it seem both very warm and very heroic. How the mice had done that, she really had no idea. Her burgundy gloves and boots were faux-velvet burgundy, matching the domino mask that covered her face and pretended to conceal her identity. She could have done without the rabbit ears, but she had to sadly admit that they were necessary, both to maintain a recognizable silhouette—utterly essential when one wanted to strike fear into the hearts of evil-doers—and to make her "secret identity" a little more secret. Why do so many heroines wear push-up bodices and stupid headdresses? Because it means that no one's looking at their faces.
The mice hadn't been able to make her a new utility belt. That was okay. She'd never been able to bring herself to get rid of the old one, a gift from Santa Claus on her thirteenth birthday. It still fit. Of course it still fit—Santa's gifts were made to last, which was a good thing, because the fat man didn't give receipts—and it hugged her hips like she'd been a grown woman, and not a gawky teen, when it was made for her. She ran automatically through the check of the pockets. More than half of them were empty, having lost their stash of concealed toys during the intervening years. Velveteen's hands faltered as they checked a clasp, and for a moment, she stopped, simply staring at her reflection.
Who is that woman? she wondered. Who is that woman in the bunny ears and the skin-tight spandex, with the mask that everybody knows doesn't hide her face worth a damn, getting ready to go out there and do it all over again? Who is that woman who didn't learn her lesson the first time she almost died, or any of the times that came after? She felt very exposed, almost naked in her costume, and very, very Velma. The girl who got out.
Something tugged at the fabric behind her knee. Vel looked down, and saw the battered plush bunny from the Isley Crayfish Festival looking up at her. For a moment, she thought she even saw concern in its dirty plush face and glossy glass eyes.
"I guess if you're going to go crazy, you may as well do it with a place to sleep and major medical insurance," she said, and bent to scoop the bunny into her arms. It went instantly limp, the animation leaving it as she stuffed it into the appropriate pocket of her utility belt. It wouldn't carry anything but toys. It would let her carry enough of those to have a fighting chance. "Well, I guess first, we go shopping."
*
If the staff of the Downtown Portland Goodwill thought it was strange when the state's newest superhero walked into the store, offered them a polite nod, and made her way straight back to the children's section, they didn't say anything about it. They just stared after her, frozen in the act of ringing up customers or folding donated sweaters. Then, as if a bell had been rung that only people with a sense of self-preservation could hear, they began quietly evacuating the store. The safest place to be around a superhero in uniform was nowhere near the superhero.
Velveteen didn't notice. She was preoccupied with carrying on a one-sided conversation with the stuffed animal rack, waving her hands in punctuation as she explained the score to the discarded bears and unloved plush dinosaurs of the world. "You've been thrown aside once, and that's terrible," she said. "I won't throw you away, but you won't get a good retirement package if you come with me. I'm the last stop. I'll take care of you for as long as I can, but I won't lie to you; toys that come with me don't live forever." The plush was starting to stir as portions of the pile—a bear here, a one-eyed turtle there—sat up and paid attention. "You'll do good things. You'll take care of children like the ones who loved you. I'll love you. And you'll die heroes."
More stirring, spreading to the action figure bins and the racks of Barbies with bad haircuts and missing shoes. Velveteen kept talking; the toys kept moving, the animation working its way through them like dye spreading through white cotton. She'd never been able to explain why she felt it was necessary to call them this way, although Marketing had managed to get some lovely news footage the first few times she'd done it; she just knew that it felt right to give the toys a choice before she took them out and threw them to their deaths.
In the end, more than thirty toys climbed down from their racks and out of their bins, "choosing"—if toys can choose—to give up the chance at a second owner in favor of following Velveteen into battle. She led them to the break room where the staff had gone to hide, sticking her head in past the curtain, and asked, "Can you send a bill to the city?" One of the cashiers gave a little shriek, following it with a louder shriek as she saw the army of plush standing around Velveteen's ankles.
"That would be...fine," said the manager tightly. The city would never see that bill. Better to just put this incident aside as quickly as possible, before some fool supervillain decided to level the place as some sort of perverse arms dealership.
"Great, thanks," said Velveteen, and withdrew. Mercifully, the toys followed her. Even so, no one dared to breathe until they heard the bell over the door jingle to signify her exit.
*
Velveteen crouched on a rooftop in Observant Observer Observation Position Number Sixty-Two: The Gargoyle, one hand resting loosely against her knee, the other braced down between her ankles to provide her with a third point of balance. She wasn't sure the stealth lessons really applied in her case, given the whole rabbit-ears thing, but it was always a good idea to stay in practice. Not that she was in practice, or had practiced in the last way-too-many years. It hadn't been all that important to remember how to impersonate a brick wall when she was concerned mostly with how to make a perfect latte every time.
Her thighs hurt. Her knees hurt. Her ankles hurt. Hell, her ass hurt, and if she managed to sprain her ass her first time out at solo patrol, she was going to be so incredibly pissed off that it wasn't even funny. Her utility belt, heavy with toys, felt almost like an accusation. If you were a real hero, you'd have used me by now, said the weight of it. If you were a real hero, you'd have found the crime.
So totally untrue. Finding crime had nothing to do with whether or not someone was a "real" hero, and everything to do with whether or not someone had acquired a talent for wandering into trouble with their eyes wide-open and their heads filled with a total lack of the concept of self-preservation. "Advanced Going Into the Big Spooky House at the Top of the Hill" was one of the most popular training classes for young heroes, and not just because it included a whole bunch of horror movies in the classwork. You had to study to be that pig-headedly stupid.
The trouble was, those were the sort of lessons that can get a body killed when you're living in the "real" world, away from supervillains and epic battles. Walking straight into trouble is only a good idea when the trouble has a death ray. And since Vel had been living in the "real" world for years, she was getting very confused by her own instincts, which couldn't seem to settle on which direction she wasn't supposed to be walking in. "This would be a hell of a lot easier if there was actually a creepy house on top of a geographically implausible hill," she muttered, and settled a little deeper into her position. Did it still count as going on patrol if she didn't fight any crime because she hadn't been able to find any?
Fortunately, she was saved from further contemplation of that particular philosophical question by the sound she'd been waiting all night to hear: a woman's scream. Delight flooded over her, followed immediately by shame over her excitement. "Right," she said, straightening up and turning to face the commotion. She was cold, she was cranky, she was conflicted, and she knew the best way to deal with all three of these situations.
She was going to hit somebody until they stopped hitting back.
*
The sound of screaming led Velveteen to a narrow alley—one which, blessedly, was lined by stage dressing fire escapes, thus solving the question of "how the hell am I supposed to get down to floor level without breaking an ankle or something?" The rooftops were the best place to watch for crime, but if you didn't happen to have one of the flight-based power packages, you could wind up shit out of luck when it came to actually reaching the crime you'd been watching for.
Down in the alley, two hulking figures had almost backed a svelte young woman into a corner. She was holding her purse out in front of her at arm's-length, pleading through her tears for them to take it, take anything they wanted, only please, let her go. The figures weren't listening. They also weren't varying their speed, continuing to advance on her with the same slow, methodical strides. Scaring the prey was apparently a part of the night's entertainment for them, and they weren't allowing that prey to interfere with their plans by doing anything as silly as being reasonable.
Velveteen dropped from the rooftop onto the first of the fire escapes, the soft soles of her boots muffling the sound as she began to rapidly descend. She was going to pay for this the next day, she could feel it already, but that didn't matter; she was finally in the zone, and all the training she'd had drilled so firmly into her head was taking over, telling her where to put her feet, how to grip the bars to keep the metal from creaking and giving away her position. She was going to be a hero.
The eyes of the woman in the alley locked on hers, widening slightly as she took in the characteristic combination of "spandex, weird head-gear, inexplicably well-groomed hair" and came up with the only possible answer: "superhero." Velveteen's own eyes widened, and she began shaking her head in hurried negation, trying to will the woman to keep her mouth shut.
"HELP PLEASE OH GOD PLEASE HELP ME!" shrieked the woman, demonstrating the sort of lung capacity opera singers around the world could only envy.
It was impossible to miss the fact that she was yelling at one specific spot, rather than screaming for help from the world in general. The heads of her assailants whipped around, eyes glowing a dull red as they focused on Velveteen's location. Hanging six full feet above the alley floor, Velveteen suddenly remembered, in vigorous, living color, exactly why she'd thought going back into the hero business was a bad, rotten, terrible, no-good, awful idea. Starting with the cost of funeral expenses, and moving down the list from there.
Witty one-liner, she thought frantically. This is the part where I need to pop off with a witty one-liner. Forcing her expression into something she hoped was more stern than scared, she commanded, "Evil-doers, stop doing your...stop...no, that's not right." The goons watched in bewilderment as her irritation took over from her common sense and she dropped to the alley floor, landing easily as training hip-checked hesitation out of the way and gave annoyance the floor. "HEY, FUCKOS!" she shouted.
The goons stared. The woman screamed. And the tiny army of olive green plastic soldiers attacked.
All in all, it really wasn't much of a fight. But it took quite some time for the screaming to stop, and longer for Velveteen to explain to the deeply puzzled police why they needed an EMT with tweezers and a magnifying glass if they wanted to get all the tiny plastic bullets out.
It was a good night's work.
*
After she finished with the police, Velveteen found herself faced with the somewhat interesting (and definitely irritating) question of how, exactly, she was intending to get back to her house. She was too tired to really feel like taking the overland route all the way back, and her costume—despite having a fully-stocked utility belt, a spool of concealed rope under the belt, and lock picks built into the rabbit ears—didn't exactly come with a place to stick a wallet. She was, in short, dead-broke, and couldn't really imagine a taxi driver giving a costumed hero a ride out of charity.
"This was so not covered in basic training," she muttered, and started stomping her irritated way towards the mouth of the alley. The fallen plastic army men rose as she passed them, scampering after her as she made her way out to the street and started in the direction she vaguely recognized as "the way home." Behind them, the erstwhile victim of the two goons stood frozen and forgotten as she stared after the heroine, entirely unsure of what one was expected to say in a situation like this.
"Um," she said, finally. "Thank you?"
But Velveteen was gone.
*
"I swear, Jackie, it was like idiots on parade out there," Velveteen said, vigorously towel-drying her hair as she glared at her phone. Luckily, the speaker function was good, or she'd never have been able to hear Jackie's response.
"Of course it was," said Jackie reasonably. "You were there."
On second thought, it might have been better if she hadn't been able to hear. "You're not helping," said Vel peevishly.
"I am so. I'm providing moral support and unflagging confidence in your capacity to do this job. This job that you've been fully trained for, and were basically born to do. Anyway, look at it from where I'm sitting. You took down two baddies, you saved the damsel in distress, and you didn't even break a nail. I'm having trouble counting this as anything other than a win."
"Don't you quote Buffy at me," said Vel, dropping her towel. "I mean, seriously. I took them out with plastic army dudes. Do you really think I can protect a city like this?"
"I think that if you really didn't want to do it, you would have come home with me." Jackie's tone was suddenly serious. "Or you would have asked the Princess for a ride to Canada, or you would have found a way to get to Dr. Chameleon and bought yourself a new face. You could've done it, you know. You've definitely got enough of the sort of coin he deals in."
Dr. Chameleon was neither villain nor hero. Dr. Chameleon was simply very, very good at what he did, and was always looking for someone who wanted what he was selling. As for the sort of payment he took...
Velveteen shuddered. "Fine," she said. "I can do this. I can bring truth, justice, and the fuzzy Muppet way to Portland. Or at least I can keep women from getting harassed quite so openly on the street."
"There's my girl," said Jackie, encouragingly. "Now get some sleep. You sound exhausted."
"Yes, Mother," said Velveteen. She was almost laughing as she hung up the phone.
Thousands of miles and a few layers of reality away, Jackie Frost sat looking at the pale blue phone in her hand. "You have no idea what's at stake here, Vel," she said quietly, before dropping the phone back into the cradle. She hadn't said it to Velveteen...exactly. But she'd come close enough that she might be able to sleep without resorting to chemical aid, and that was something, anyway. There was always something.
"No idea," repeated the nascent spirit of the winter, and turned to head back to the kitchen. They'd have a fire going, and the elves would be playing poker. She could probably get them to switch to strip poker if she asked nicely enough, and she really, really needed the distraction.
*
In a little house in Portland, Oregon, a woman named Velma Martinez—more commonly known as "Velveteen," a name she didn't choose, but was coming, grudgingly, to believe in as her own—stretched out in her bed, nestling her head down into the pillow, and closed her eyes. All around the room, plush toys were handling the basic chores of a human evening: putting laundry into hampers, cleaning discarded towels off the floor, closing curtains, and generally making the house back into a home. Velveteen didn't notice. This was the natural order of things, for her, and while it was an order she'd been denying for years, she'd always really known what her home was supposed to look like.
A battered plush bunny rabbit crawled up onto the bed next to her, its ears tattered and bent from more battlefields than any toy was ever meant to see. It crept, cautiously, onto the pillow, and froze as her hand emerged from beneath the covers to grasp it, firmly, around one foot. The toys tensed, waiting to see what would happen next.
Eyes still closed, sinking ever deeper into slumber, Velveteen pulled the plush rabbit down to nestle against her chest.
The night, and the world, went on.
April 6 2011, 00:53:06 UTC 6 years ago
April 6 2011, 19:03:32 UTC 6 years ago