“Excuse me?” she said, raising one eyebrow.
Dear God, is she ever a looker! I thought. I’ve never been into colored women, and she looks a third of my age, but if I thought she’d drop that brass brassiere I’d probably drop out of this whole plan, right here right now.
“You heard me, young lady. I’m just out for a fight in my suit- hobby of mine - and you suddenly grab me and tell me I have to state my business to you? Who made you a cop? A judge? Where does your authority come from?”
“I . . .”
The crowd was forming. I wasn’t a con man like Jake, but he told me I had about thirty seconds from the time they started to when I lost my momentum. Just like the snake oil salesmen in the history books, I had to get the crowd on my side and keep them there.
More to the point: I hadda keep her there. Long as I could. And maybe pull in a few friends to help her out.
“I mean, you help out and all,” I took over again, addressing her while looking at the crowd, nodding my head and trying to get their assent, “and we’re grateful for that, aren’t we?”
Small murmurs of assent. They were working with me.
“But where do you guys in your little club get off grabbing folks who aren’t doing anything wrong and act like you’re in charge? Where is that written?”
She looked just a little uncertain under that helmet of hers. Which was just what I wanted. She looked to one side and then the other-looking for support. No one was mad, but no one was gonna carry her shoulder-high off the football field, either. She was on her own, and she knew it.
“I help you . . .” she started. Poor thing. I felt sorry for her for a second. She was a knockout, for sure. And her heart was in the right place- who didn’t like seeing some child rapist getting his gnards removed, really, except some little screaming ACLU goofballs?
For a second or two she didn’t seem like the hero lady the comic books made her out to be, the gal who had it all-together like the movies and the cartoons made her out to be, either. She was just a gal, maybe in her mid 20s to early 30s who was in over her head and suddenly knew it. This was the reason we’d picked this time and place to hit the armored car and take the cash; we’d spent a good three days getting back issues of every newspaper for the last month, looking for all the crimes that had been foiled and trying to see the patterns. Eventually, it was Monty [pompous windbag that he could be, he did have a brain on those shoulders that was good at collecting stuff and seeing the big picture] who figured out that a) Gladiatrix was the least dangerous to a bunch of older folks like us pulling a job like this, and b) she almost never gave a statement to the press, which didn’t mean she was a woman of mystery so much as she didn’t have to the skills to do so, and c) the docks district, with its high-end shops only a couple of streets over from the gritty reality of the docks themselves, was her beat and patrol area during mid-morning on Wednesdays.
Which is why we were here, now. And the crowd was getting bigger. And she’d been here for a good two and a half minutes so far- nearly record time for a cape to be among the unwashed masses like us when there weren’t any cameras around. I wished Jake was here, instead of trying to get some palooka downtown to get on board with money and hardware for our little plan. I was the gadget guy, not the faceman.
But I started to get the idea from the crowd that I wasn’t doing too badly.
“C’mon, Gladiatrix!” someone shouted from the back of the crowd, their accents making them sound like some hick visiting the big city. “Tell ‘im! Tell ‘im what fer!”
“What for what?” someone answered. “He didn’t do nothin’!”
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“Yeah! What’d he do?”
She looked around, at the faces in the crowd, back at me.
“Yeah, Lady!” I yelled. “What’d I do? I made this suit! I was taking it out for a spin, and you grab me and pull me down here! What’s the big idea, huh? I thought you went after big-time threats, not old men who still like to dream!”
The last comment sounded out over the crowd. I’d practiced it in my head at least a dozen times, but it never went over as well as this. The crowd got silent. Quiet. And Gladiatrix…
Dear Lord, she looked around again and I seriously thought she was gonna cry.
I almost felt bad for her. Almost. Then I remembered a young, fresh-faced little eighteen year old, beaten up by the system, lost his family because of someone’s privilege, and had the one thing that gave his life meaning torn up and shredded by some shit in a leather jacket with a great, big smile on his face.
Suddenly, I didn’t feel bad at all anymore.
“Yeah, you’re gonna cry? Are you gonna beat me up for saying something you don’t wanna hear? That may’ve been what they did in ancient Rome, lady, but here things are different! Here, in America, we fought a war to stop that kind’ve shit from happening!”
Just for a second she looked upset, then angry, then lost again. She had a whole set of fallbacks she’d been trained for and none of them fit this situation. She hadn’t been trained in what to do when a weird old man in a flying suit turned out to be just a harmless person with a chip on their shoulder.
“I . . . I apologize for my actions,” she said. “Please forgive me.”
It was nice. I was almost ready to let her off the hook, but I knew that they probably weren’t done yet. If I could draw a big enough crowd, maybe I’d even pull Primus into things and we’d be all set. . .
“Well, damn right you’re sorry, honey! You’ve gotten a hell of a lot of gifts here from the almighty, and how d’you spend ‘em? Flying around? In a Halloween costume? If you were my daughter, I’d have a few words for you, that’s for sure! You call yourself a hero? You can’t tell the difference between a real bad guy and an old man trying to go out for a spin! You think we’re gonna wait forever for you people to get your act together? Do yuh?”
I started hearing more murmurs from the crowd. People were talking. No one wanted to piss off one of the big three, but I knew it’s what they’d been thinking. It’s what I’d been thinking for a long time, and I’m a pretty normal guy. Normal as far as making flying suits and flapping my arms around the city, anyways. I’d stopped even looking at her, and was addressing the crowd. And it was getting bigger, just as I’d hoped. Jake really should’ve been doing this, being the faceman and all, but he couldn’t get a cape’s attention the way a flyer like me woulda. We’d thought about having him jump in to whatever crowd I’d managed to gather, but we couldn’t guarantee when a care woulda slammed me, or if one would grab me at all.
“Do you know, really know, how I’ve suffered, mortal?” her voice was cracking. I had to tread lightly now; my goal was to delay her, not to get her to beat me up and discredit her. I also didn’t want to end up on the 6 o’clock news and have my face splashed all over the city.
“Why don’t you tell me?” I said, shifting. I wasn’t the angry old man anymore; now I was the kind grandfather to the granddaughter I never had. Jake would be proud, I like to think.
The crowd got quiet; the people weren’t sure whether to turn into an angry mob or give a collective groan of sympathy.
She looked again at me, then at them. Suddenly something started buzzing on her wrist. “I am needed,” she said. Her accent was more pronounced now, less a princess or queen and more some standard African woman, displaced from where she’d belonged more than once against her will, used by men more powerful than she could ever be, and now she wasn’t even given the peace of death, but raised up by a woman more powerful than she’d ever be, and forced to work in her service.
I didn’t like anyone waking me up on a Saturday when I wanted to sleep in; what must it like to be woken up from death? Where she might’ve been with her loved ones again? Brought back, not to her own time and place, but somewhere more alien than ancient Rome ever coulda been to her. A place where she’d be constantly reminded that people with white skin were still in charge, and that for all the superpowers she’d been given, she’d have to spend G-d knows how long figuring out how things worked all over again?
Hot damn.
I’d just found something every giant robot, super-powered nazi villain and every other nutjob Gladiatrix had fought had wanted to find, but never did:
Her weakness.
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TO BE CONTINUED...