Jack and I have spent most of the last few weeks job hunting
together at the various hospitals and emergency services in the Austin
area. If we can manage it, we want to be
a team again. Job hunting has got to be the most humiliating and soul crushing thing
you can do. Place after place, you put in applications, trying to sell
yourself, and nobody’s buying. Jack could have gotten a job half a dozen
places, but folks didn’t really want to hire me. I’ve got a history of
absenteeism that’s all over my previous work record. I’m still working part
time with the Protectors, so anyone with half a brain knows that’s not going to
change. Plus, I’m just not that good at selling myself. I’m better at sarcasm
than charm.
On top of that, some folks just don’t care to work with
supes. With the glove on my hand and constant need for dark glasses, I couldn’t
pretend I was a normal human anymore. I never have blended all that well, but
at least everyone used to think I was human; socially awkward, scatter-brained and
irritating, maybe, but human.
At the end of another day of job hunting failure, with not just
one, but two, that’s right, two spectacularly blown job interviews, I dropped
Jack off at home and went to train at Protectors headquarters.
After getting my butt well and truly kicked by Bobcat,
Liberty had very tactfully suggested that I get some hand-to-hand training. She
showed me a few basics herself, but said she was not the best teacher for it.
Apparently, when you can toss tanks, you don’t get many opponents who want to
slug it out with you toe-to-toe.
So, Liberty told me she was bringing in a real martial arts
master. This was someone she said whose skills really impressed her. I was half
expecting to meet Mr. Miyagi from the Karate Kid. I wore my spiffy new super-suit.
I could have just showed up to Protectors headquarters in sweats, but the suit
made me feel more like a superhero and less like a broke, out-of-work
paramedic.
Jupiter Joe arrived about the same time I did and held the
door for me like gentlemen used to when I was younger. “Your new outfit suits
you, Miss Dee.” His eyes raked over the curves the uniform accented. He gave me
an appreciative smile and wink.
Nothing boosts a girl’s ego after a tough day like a
friendly, non-creepy ogling. I added a little extra swing to my walk in
gratitude. “What brings you to Protectors territory? Isn’t that a bit like
crossing the iron curtain?”
Joe chuckled as he took off his black leather hat just
inside the door. “I’ve always been a bit of a double agent in that particular
cold war, maam. I was a Protector before the Alliance recruited me.”
“What made you decide to cross over to the dark side?” I
teased him. “Did N-Rage toss you off a building?”
“Nothing like that. No hard feelings against my old
teammates.” Joe got a wistful half smile. “It was the usual enticement. Money.”
Somehow, the southern gentleman in the steampunk sunglasses
didn’t strike me as being the type to do his heroing for greed and glory. “I
hear the Protectors pay a good salary and generous health and retirement benefits.”
“The government provides a good living, Miss Dee, for one
person or a small family. But I’ve got four kids and my youngest is autistic.”
Joe shrugged broad shoulders under the long black duster. “My wife has to stay home with my son, so she
can’t work. Special tutors and such, they don’t come cheap. There’s no way I
was going to send my son off to some special school and only see him on
holidays. So I had to make it work.”
“I suppose doing the occasional car parts or luggage commercial
is a pretty cheap price to pay to get to keep your son.”
“There is no price too high.” His voice was low and soft.
The gentle smile on his face wasn’t there for me.
“He’s a lucky kid.”
He shrugged and winked. “I’m a lucky daddy.”
Liberty came out of one of the offices as we passed. “Joe!”
I hadn’t heard her squeal like that before. She flung herself into Jupiter
Joe’s arms and squeezed hard enough that ordinary ribs would have snapped like
dry twigs.
Joe grinned, lifted the strongest woman in the world off her
feet, and swung her around in a circle, his sudden shift in density making his
footfalls vibrate the concrete floor like the T-rex in Jurrasic park. “It’s good to see you, Katie.”
Katie? Jupiter Joe calls Liberty Katie?
“I’m glad you took me up on my offer. I wanted the chance to
see you under better circumstances.” The light faded from Liberty’s face.
Joe set her back on her feet. “Bad business that highway
bomber. You and your boys have got yourself a very nasty opponent, I’d say,
Katie girl.”
Liberty (who makes me call her Catherine) nodded. “It looks like
a new player from what my techs can deduce. None of our known adversaries were
responsible, despite the Free Earth symbols painted everywhere.”
“While I’m in town, I’m at your service.” Joe made a move
with his hand like tipping the hat he was no longer wearing, since it’s bad hat
etiquette to wear one indoors. Most folks don’t even seem to remember that
rule, much less follow it. “Just give me a holler if you need me.”
“Thanks, Joe. We never have enough qualified people, it
seems, but with White Knight off on a soul searching sabbatical, we’re even
more short-handed than usual.” She smiled at me. “Dee’s unique abilities have
been a huge help.”
I looked at my toes, embarrassed. I bit my tongue before I
actually said something goofy like, Aw shucks.
“And that’s why I’m here,” Joe said. “When Ashley came back
and told the Alliance higher ups that you had a new hero with both healing and
combat abilities. They sent me here to steal her away from you.”
Liberty slugged him in the arm, a friendly gesture that
would have broken my humerus bone. “Don’t you dare. We need a healer as much as
the Triple A does. Especially now.”
“Oh?”
“Remedy’s gone independent. He partnered up with Iron Angel
and tendered his resignation.”
“Ouch,” Joe said. “That leaves a big hole in your lineup.”
“Yeah. So, you can’t have Dee.”
I was beginning to feel like a bone between two dogs.
Joe held up a hand in mock surrender. “We’ll just have to
leave it up to Dee to decide which team she wants to pitch for, won’t we?”
It’s weird having folks talk about you like you’re not
there. “I’ve never been much of a team player, honestly. I just want a regular
job to pay my bills. Helping people for a living, especially getting rich from
it, just doesn’t feel right.”
Liberty and Joe both laughed at me.
“What?”
“You’re an EMT, I hear,” Joe pointed out. “You don’t call
that helping people for a living?”
Er… I guess he had me there. I looked at my wrist, even
though I didn’t have a watch. “I think I’m supposed to be somewhere about now.
I’ll just go ahead and learn a little kung phooey from the Jedi master
Liberty’s been raving about, and catch up with you guys later.”
Joe said, “I’m headed the same way you are. The Triple-A doesn’t
really understand how essential good training is. With my power constantly
shifting my mass, hand-to-hand fighting is a tricky art to master. Katie said
it would be all right for me to use the Protectors’ training facilities while
I’m in town, and recommended I spend some time with her new trainer.”
We stepped into the massive Protectors’ gym with thick
padded floors and all manner of arcane exercise equipment. I’ve never seen a set
of barbells that went up to 5000 pounds. I guess if you needed something
heavier, you could bench press pickup trucks.
The only other person in there when we arrived was a
familiar short stocky Hispanic woman with an electric blue streak in her short dark
hair. Tamara was my favorite firefighter. Just don’t tell Novak. “Hey Tam, did
Liberty invite you to come learn from her new fighting guru, too?”
She chuckled. “Not exactly, no.”
“I wonder what he’ll look like. My mind keeps conjuring up
images of Mr. Miyagi or Quai Chang Kane, or Yoda. I doubt he’ll be 900 years
old and three feet tall, though.”
Tamara laughed again. “Nope. He’s me, actually.”
“You?”
“My mom’s Israeli. I’ve been studying Krav Maga since I was
old enough to walk. I’m pretty good at it.”
Pretty good wasn’t anywhere close to what Liberty said and
Liberty wasn’t easily impressed. There was a lot I didn’t know about Tamara.
She talked to Jack more than she did me, if I thought about it.
She shook hands with Joe. “I’m Tamara Perez.”
Yes, I have the manners of a slug. I was too blown away by
her being there to remember to introduce Tamara to Jupiter Joe. Ma would have
been mortified.
“They call me Jupiter Joe, Miss Perez. Pleasure to meet you,
maam.”
“Tamara is fine, Joe. I understand you have some issues with
balance?”
“Well, if you mean that I fall on my keister a lot while
trying to fight and shift my density at the same time, then, yes, maam. I have
some issues.”
“Show me. Come at me as if I were a supervillain and you
were trying to restrain me.”
I got really nervous. I’d seen Joe move a freeway. One
normal 5’5” woman wasn’t even going to slow him down. “Um, Tamara, you do know that Joe’s a supe,
right?”
Tamara grinned. “The goggles and the duster were a clue.”
“But …”
Tamara ignored me and gestured Joe forward, crooking her
hands at him like Neo in the Matrix.
Joe charged, feet sinking to the concrete under the floor
pads with every step, so I knew he had the density cranked up.
Tamara stepped in and under Joe’s arm which currently had
the mass of a telephone pole, brought her own slender ordinary human arm upward,
a slight pressure on Joe’s shoulder that shouldn’t have had any effect. Sure enough, Joe’s keister met the floor with
a thud that rattled the mirrors hanging on one wall.
Tamara nodded. “I see your problem. I think we can work on
some ways to help you adapt to your constantly shifting center of balance.”
“That would be greatly appreciated, maam. When that sort of
thing happens in a real battle, I could end up with a lot worse than a bruised
… ego.” He grinned and rubbed the sore spot.
“All right, let’s see where you are, Dee. I’m a bad guy. Take me down.”
“Uh…” I couldn’t hit Tamara. I liked Tamara. One thing I
really liked about Tamara was having all of her body parts still attached to
her body. My punches could go through two layers of sheet steel on a car. What
the same punch could do to a normal human body would be … messy.
“It’s all right, Dee. Just take a non-lethal swing or two.
Think of me as one of the bank robbers you subdued.”
“Okay. Um. I’m really sorry about this.” Then I threw a
punch at my friend, a gentle, carefully calculated punch, which swished through
air, and somehow resulted in me lying on my face with my right arm bent at a
painful angle, completely unable to move.
Tamara, the tiny normal human, let me, the badass dragon
superhero, up off the floor after a few seconds. I wasn’t sure my ego could
survive many more blows like that in one day. “Throw something with a little
more authority this time,” Tamara said. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be all
right.”
I tried to hit her with a solid, go through steel kind of
punch, but open-handed to dissipate the power of it, just in case it actually landed.
At this point, I didn’t really expect it to.
Tamara’s small wrist impacted the inner surface of my wrist
obliquely, dissipating all the power of my strike, and getting her in under my
guard. She punched me in the gut while she was in tight and close. I whoofed
out air and stared in amazement. Armored abs or not, I felt that tiny woman’s
punch more than I’d felt a shotgun blast or big, musclebound Scythe kicking me
in the belly with his combat boot. “Wow. Remind me not to piss you off.”
Tamara grinned but it looked pained. “Your problem is you
have lots of strength, but no clue how to focus it. I shouldn’t be able to
block you. Your punches don’t have half the power they will have once you
improve your technique.”
I rubbed my sore belly, confused. “Do you have
super-strength?”
Tamara shook her head. “Nope. I’m just really good at making
the most of what I have. ” She cradled her hand. Her knuckles were bleeding and
her hand was swelling noticeably. She probably fractured something with
swelling that rapid. “My reflexes sometimes get me in trouble, though. I forgot
how well you were armored.”
I cringed. “I’m sorry, Tam.”
“My own fault. I
should have put on gloves before I took a swing at you. I’ll have to go get
this looked at, though. The rest of the lesson will have to wait. I’ve gained a
good understanding of what you both need help with the most, at least.”
She’d be in a cast for weeks, and it was my fault, no matter
what she said about it. “Come talk to me in the bathroom for a sec, Tam.”
I knew Protectors headquarters was covered with security
cameras. I hoped that at least the bathroom stalls weren’t being watched. That
would be kind of nasty.
I pulled Tam into one of the bathroom stalls with me and
shut the door.
She had a bemused look on her face. “You going to kiss it
and make it better, Dee?” she teased.
“Something like that, yeah.” I leaned down to her injured
wrist, popped out fangs, and bit.
She hissed a breath in through her teeth in surprised pain,
then sighed it out. “Oh. That’s … nice.”
“Better?”
She licked her lips, eyes half closed. “Much.” She looked
down at her hand. The bloody knuckles were healed smooth. The swelling went down
quickly. Tamara wiggled her fingers experimentally.
“You probably broke something,” I told her. “Even with the
venom, it will be a week or so before the bones fully heal.”
“Right, so no hitting armored dragons without gloves for a
while?”
I chuckled. “Yeah, I don’t recommend it.”
She stood there looking at me funny. I felt really awkward,
squished into a bathroom stall with someone else. This was usually not a place
for company. “We’d better get back. Jupiter Joe might think we fell in.”
“Or that we’re making out,” she said with a wink as she
opened the stall door and made her escape.
I stood there for a second, confused. Why would he think
that?
We went ahead with the lesson. Tamara favored her left hand
a little, but it didn’t stop her from using my own momentum against me a few
times, resulting in my face and the wall getting very closely acquainted. Then she showed me how to do the same thing
to an opponent stronger than me, using Jupiter Joe as the demo dummy. His turn
to kiss concrete.
By the end of the class, I was regretting healing her hand
so she could continue the lesson. I’ve felt less beat up after fights with
supervillains.
Joe groaned right next to me. “I may be getting too old for
this sort of thing.”
After all three of us made use of the showers, I asked Tam
if she’d like to go grab a bite. My stomach was rumbling loud enough to vibrate
the building like Jupiter Joe’s footsteps.
She looked uncomfortable. “I’d love to, Dee, but I have
plans.”
“You got a hot date?” I asked. Tamara was such a cool person.
It would be great to see her find someone nice.
She looked uncomfortable. I think she actually blushed a
little. Yup, hot date. “I promised to take Jack to that vegetarian Indian
buffet place, Madras. He’s been listening to me rave about it long enough, I
wanted to ... you know.” Wait a second, she had a date with Jack? I wanted
Tamara to find someone, but not MY someone. “You’re welcome to come with, of
course.” It sounded like what it was, a lame attempt to not make me feel left
out.
Dragons are pure carnivores. Sure, I could go … as a third
wheel on a date I hadn’t been invited to, to a restaurant with an entire buffet
full of wide varieties of colorful, wonderful smelling food that I couldn’t eat
without getting sick, and couldn’t afford to pay for. Or not. “That’s okay. Um.” He’s mine, I wanted
to say, but it made me feel like a caveman just thinking it. “Give Jack a hug
for me,” was the politest way I could think of to remind her Jack was mine.
“Will do.” She waved cheerfully as she left.
Jupiter Joe offered me his arm. “May I offer to buy you
dinner, maam. Living in Chicago has made me miss decent barbecue something
fierce. Do you like the Iron Works?”
I almost drooled on his jacket. Iron Works Barbecue had
arguably the best beef ribs in town. In this town, that could be a very heated
argument, but it was hands down my favorite.
I hadn’t been able to afford to eat there in ages.
“I’m buying, of course,” Joe said as I hesitated. “I can
charge it back to the Alliance as a business expense, wining and dining a
prospective team member.”
“I definitely approve of your recruiting tactics. Good
barbecue is a bribe that’s hard to ignore.”
Joe’s flattery and Iron Works’ amazing barbecue were just
the balm my battered self-image needed.
Dee Dragon
