I wandered into the living room, sifting through the newspaper clippings. I had difficulty absorbing the information they reported: flying robots had attacked the Youthful Permutations headquarters up in Troy, just north of Detroit, in broad daylight. All of this had taken place within the past week, apparently, while I, holed up in my apartment, hadn’t heard a word about it.
“How’s the Pacer?” Avie asked me. She had come out of my bedroom and was looking around for her car keys.
“What?” I asked, absentmindedly. “Your car? I don’t know. It’s fine, as far as I know. Why?”
“Did you turn the engine over while I was gone, like I asked you to?” She asked this as she looked on and around all the furniture in the living room.
“Was I supposed to?” I said, distractedly. “Avie, I’ve never started up a car in my life.”
“I asked you to run the engine at least once a week, Sissy,” she snapped. “I didn’t want it just sitting there all summer. I showed you how to do it, remember?”
“Avie, I’m trying to read this,” I snapped back.
Avie grunted as she spotted her keys. They were exactly where she’d left them and where they’d sat all summer, untouched: on a bookshelf outside my bedroom. Then she stalked down the hall and out the back door to the alley behind the apartment, where her car was parked.
Dr. Sax, our new black cat, had made herself scarce.
This gave me time to try to absorb what I was reading, although it wasn’t making much sense to me. It wasn’t so much the shock at the headlines that Megavillains had attacked a Megahero team headquarters; I’m sure this kind of thing happened all the time in New York. Or that I knew the Megaheroes involved; they were all my friends. It was more the realization of how divorced I’d become from my own identity as a Megahero.
You’d think after my visit to an alternate reality—where I had been merely a Civilian without any Megapowers all and further left lame from the very same accident that in this reality had triggered my Ms. Megaton Man breakout—that I would have returned to this, my normal reality, dying to hop into my uniform and fly around and do all sorts of Megaheroic things.
Instead, I’d just hunkered down, alone in my apartment, and reverted to the sedentary, studious bookworm I’d been as a freshman in college.
I didn’t care to go out, I didn’t want to see anybody; I just wanted to forget about Ms. Megaton Man altogether. And it never occurred to me to wonder why.
I had an excuse: I had a ton of reading and studying to accomplish before the onset of grad school, as well as my duties as a teaching assistant to prepare for. But that was all it was—an excuse; there was some deeper reason, one I was afraid to acknowledge, even to myself.
In any case, I was shocked to realize the team of which I was supposedly an auxiliary member—the Troy+Thems—could be attacked just ten miles north of where I’d been ensconced all month, and I’d never heard a word of it—I didn’t want to hear a word of it. While my sister, while traveling all over the Midwest, knew all about it.
***
I could hear Avie starting it up her Pacer and running the engine for a few minutes out in the back alley. After a while, she turned it off and came back in, the screen door slamming shut behind her.
“It’ll live, I suppose,” said Avie, returning with a note in her hands. “But I left instructions for you on the refrigerator, see?”
She waved a piece of paper that had grown dusty and yellow under a magnet all summer as she tossed her keys back on the shelf. She crumpled up the note and threw it aside. Seeing I was absorbed in the clippings, she put her arms around me and looked over my shoulder.
“So, isn’t it amazing?” she asked. “The only thing I couldn’t figure out is why they never mention Ms. Megaton Man by name …”
“Avie, I wasn’t aware of any of this,” I confessed, holding up the clippings helplessly. “I told you, I’ve been reading and studying school stuff the whole time, for the start of fall semester next week. I haven’t even had the TV or radio on …”
At first Avie thought I was kidding; she wasn’t amused. Then she saw I was serious. “Good Lord, Sissy! You mean tell me that flying robots attacked our local Megahero team, and Ms. Megaton Man—Robot Shitkicker Extraordinaire—never even left the basement?!”
I shrugged. “I only came upstairs to the kitchen to eat and use the bathroom.”
“Didn’t they call you?” demanded Avie. “Soren? Tempy? Andrea?”
“The phone hasn’t rung once all summer,” I said.
The phone sat on a side cabinet in the living room, right within view. Avie went over and checked it.
“I know it works,” I said. “I used it to call Mama a couple week ago.”
Avie turned the phone over. “The ringer’s off,” she said, showing me and flipping it back on. “I turned it off after you left for New York and before I took off for Camp Michi-Fo-La-Ca. I left that in my instructions, too.”
I shrugged; I had never checked it nor turned it back on.
“Good Lord, Sissy, didn’t you wonder why the phone never rang?”
“I just assumed it’s been a particularly quiet summer,” I said. “No one ever calls me anyway; you’re the popular one.”
Avie checked the answering machine, too. Not surprisingly, the cassette tape was completely filled. She rewound it and fast-forwarded through the messages. Many were from Trent—some embarrassingly explicit—intended only for my ears. Others were from Mama and Daddy, wondering how I was doing and urging me to call but, assuming I was bulletproof, seemed none too worried. The last message was from the manager at the Union Stripe Tavern, asking if I could come in and work an emergency shift for a catered banquet on short notice. That one was from the end of July.
“Darn,” I said. “I could have used that tip money.”
“Tip money?” cried Avie. “Sissy, this tape was completely filled weeks ago; there isn’t any room on here to leave a message. If Soren or any of the Troy+Thems have been trying to get in touch with Ms. Megaton Man all this time, you’d never have known it; no wonder I couldn’t get through to you.”
“When did you try to call?” I asked.
“Before I left Chicago,” said Avie. “Collect. But the operator needed to speak to a person in order to reverse the charges. She said she couldn’t get an answer, but I didn’t know it was because the stupid answering machine was filled up. I just assumed you were up in Troy, assisting in their emergency.”
Avie dialed the phone hurriedly now.
“Thank God,” said Avie, relieved when someone at the Troy+Thems headquarters answered. “How are you guys?” Someone on the other end mumbled an answer. “Yes, we’re both back in Detroit now.” Avie turned to glare at me. “No, she’s alive; she was just trapped in a cave for six weeks. She’s getting caught up just now. What? …Okay. See you then.”
“Who was that?” I said.
“Alice Too,” reported Avie. That was our mama’s identical counterpart from another reality. “She says things are under control. Her and Mama are on the scene, helping the team clean up.”
“Is anybody hurt?” I asked.
“Slightly,” said Avie.
“Slightly?” I said.
“I don’t have the details,” said Avie. “Come on, let’s grab our costumes. I told her we’d be up there in half an hour.”
***
I quickly traded my sweats and hoodie for a pair of jeans and a windbreaker I hadn’t worn since the spring. The jeans were the baggiest I owned, but still felt tight—proof that I’d gained weight since graduation. We grabbed the garment bags containing our Ms. Megaton Man and Wondrous Warhound uniforms, respectively, and threw them in the back seat of the car.
The Pacer had a musty, dry, dusty odor from having sat all summer in an alley in Detroit without ventilation, in contrast to the drizzle that was still coming down. We cracked the windows, but not too much, so it took a while to air out.
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Avie, who hadn’t driven for weeks, was rusty and a bit nervous behind the wheel as well, aside from being upset with me. Worse, she was angry and frustrated at the unexpectedly heavy traffic we encountered on the Edsel Ford Freeway due to weekend construction, and swore at it continually in lieu of swearing at me. She drove more than a bit frantically through the construction zone, and I was afraid she was going to take some stupid chances and wind up getting us into a wreck or killing some worker on the side of the road.
We were almost through the construction zone when Dr. Sax, who must have been stowed away in the back seat—leapt up into the front seat. Both Avie and I let out a scream, and Avie very nearly swerved through some traffic cones into some paving vehicle.
I held Dr. Sax for dear life and somehow we got through it, but then Avie noticed we were almost out of gas—she had also left instructions in her note for me to ask Chas or someone to please fill it up while she was gone—which prompted more swearing in my general direction. Avie took the first offramp she could and pulled into a gas station. Miraculously, I had twenty dollars in the front pocket of my jeans I’d forgotten about, although I had to get out of the car to be able to reach into my pocket and get it out.
Dr. Sax hopped back into the back seat and we resumed our trip. With a full tank of gas, Avie became noticeably calmer and more herself. She stuck to the surface streets after that, which were slower but less frantic. Instead of being angry with me, she shot side glances at me that were more sympathetic.
“What?” I said.
“You must have been lonely and depressed all summer,” she said. I didn’t say anything. “Like after high school, when Mama and Daddy got all worried about you.”
I hadn’t thought of that for years, but Avie was right. The summer after I graduated from Boswick-Addison, I was terribly despondent. Band and choir had come to an end, along with chess club and debating society and all the other nerdy activities I had excelled in, and it felt like my world was crumbling. All my friends were off on trips for the summer and I was unlikely to ever see them again all at the same time or in the same place. And I alone from my high school was headed toward Arbor State for college. I was scared.
“It’s okay, Sissy,” said Avie, patting me on the hand. “You’re just in between two phases of your life. You’re about to start on the next big adventure.” She turned on the radio and began to sing along with songs, which cheered us both up. I joined in. By the time we got to Big Beaver Road, it was more like we were two sisters again out for a joyride than racing to the scene of a recent Megavillain attack.
It took us a total of twenty-five minutes to get there. I suppose if there had been any urgency, I could have thrown on my Ms. Megaton Man uniform and flown the ten miles in a couple of minutes, leaving Avie to catch up with me. But I wasn’t all that eager to get to Troy and face the criticism of my teammates for having been a no-show in their hour of need. It was easier taking the heat from my sister. And it turned out we needed that time together.
To be honest, I would have been a bit nervous about flying anyway, since I hadn’t flown much at all since I had been in New York two months before. I had so seldom used my Megapowers while living at the Megatropolis Quartet Headquarters that when it came time for my return trip, I chickened out and took Greyhare Busways—a twelve-hour ride—instead of flying back to Detroit. Besides, I’d picked up a lot of used books while in Manhattan, and had been too lazy to pack them up and ship them back. So I stuffed in my back pack along with my uniform and read a few of them in transit.
Furthermore, I wasn’t eager to try on my costume and find that it might not fit. That was probably the main reason I hadn’t touched it since I’d returned from New York and why I was reluctant to wear it now—mostly because I feared how I might look. I knew I’d easily gained at least five pounds since the middle of July alone.
***
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d approached the Troy+Thems headquarters from the street level, looking up at the building. For most of the year I had flown and landed on the roof next to the helipad, and entering the building from an access doorway. As we drove up to it, it was striking how ordinary the building looked from the ground—just like any other modern, mirrored-glass office building except for the row of windows boarded up with plywood, indicating where the Troy+Thems had been attacked. Even now, ICCHL workers—wearing white jump suits and suspended from the roof in one of those pulley-cradles window washers use—were busy replacing the plate glass.
Avie parked in the back lot. We entered on the ground floor, our garment bags slung over our shoulders, past a guard station. Dr. Sax lead the way as if she were already familiar with the place. We took the elevators up to the main headquarters floor. This was also unusual; before, we had taken the stairs.
When the elevator doors opened, we saw the headquarters was a mess. Across the large, open-plan floor, ICHHL technicians were busy vacuuming shards of glass from the carpets and replacing entire sections that had been scorched. Others workers brought in large panes of glass, helping crews outside suspended on cradles to swap out the plywood.
Through all this chaos, Mama—all businesslike with a clipboard, slacks, and a blazer—emerged to greet us, without hugs, not even for Avie, whom Mama hadn’t seen all summer. It was just like when we would visit Mama at the Civix Savings and Loan she managed; she didn’t believe in public displays of affection when she was on the job.
“When was the last time these things were dry cleaned?” she asked, referring to our bagged uniforms. “Give them to me,” she ordered. “Your grandmother left very detailed instructions for us on how to care for Quarantinium-Quelluminum fabric. She’s very picky about her Megahero uniform creations.”
Mama snapped her fingers, and one of the male ICHHL technicians who was part of the interior clean-up crew ran over and took our garment bags off her hands. His jumpsuit read,
Ionized Clothing and Heroic Habiliment Laundering
Mama explained, “Our newly-equipped, state-of-the-art laundry is downstairs on the dorm floor. We’ll have those back to you before you leave. If you’ll excuse me, I have some other business to attend to down there as well.”
We watched Mama and the ICHHL guy get on the elevator, the doors briskly closing after them.
We turned around only to see the startling sight of our Mama again, only this time it was Alice Too—Mama’s identical counterpart from another dimension. She looked jaunty in a svelte leotard.
“Oh, look at the beautiful black cat,” said Alice Too, as Dr. Sax leapt up into her arms.
After she put the cat down, Dr. Sax scampered off amid the ICHHL technicians vacuuming broken glass and replacing boarded-up windows.
“Hello, girls,” said Alice Too, all smiles and open arms. She gave us each hugs enough for two Mamas.
“Hello, Mod Puma,” Avie and I said in unison, dutifully.
“You’re looking trim, Avril,” she said, squeezing Avie’s deltoid. Alice Too poked me in the belly. “Clarissa, you’re getting soft; treadmill for you.” She thumbed over her shoulder toward the row of fitness equipment that had taken up residence along the few plate-glass windows that remained intact. “We have a new team workout center; that’s my department.”
Alice Too was right, of course. My sister did look great; even when Avie put on the pounds, it only increased her shapely curves—her boobs and butt got bigger while her waist stayed relatively cinched. Now that Avie was more slender, she looked even better. When I gained weight, on the other hand, my flat-chested, basically petite little body tended only to thicken in the middle, making me more rectangular, less hour-glassy. It wasn’t fair.
***
Alice had been serious about putting me on the treadmill then and there and running for half an hour. But Sabersnag, his jungle-feline paw in a sling, intercepted us.
“We were worried about you, Ms. Megaton Man,” said Soren. “Turned out we didn’t need you, but we wondered why you didn’t respond to your visor signal. We checked with New York, and they said you’d come back to Detroit more than a month ago…”
“Sorry, I was incommunicado,” I said. I remembered I had my visor in my windbreaker pocket and pulled it out. I noticed the battery was dead. “This thing needs to be recharged.”
Soren took it in his one good paw. “We’ve got a thing for that,” he said.
I looked at Soren’s sling. “What happened, Soren?” I asked. “Are you all right?”
“Just a scratch,” Soren replied. “You should have seen the other guys. They got the worst of it.”
“Who were they?” I asked.
“That’s just it; we’re not sure. We think they were some of the Teen Idols’ old enemies, back for revenge. At least, they certainly seemed surprised to find us Youthful Permutations here instead of the Miracles Myths of Troy. They had the element of surprise on us, that’s for sure; but when they realized they didn’t match up so well with us, they hightailed it pretty quick.”
“Did they come crashing through the windows?” asked Avie. “I thought they were made of nearly-impenetrable Flexiblast—they’re supposed to withstand an artillery shell.”
“They are,” said Soren. “The windows weren’t the problem; the sneak attack came through the roof while we had it open for exercises. Fortunately, our assailants were no match for our secret weapon.”
“You mean Dana’s robotic exoskeleton?” I ventured. I had never seen her armor in action, but I assumed it to be highly lethal.
“No, I mean our secret-secret weapon.”
***
We walked to the far end of the floor where the partially translucent Y+Table sat. Used when the whole team conferred, it was amazingly intact. Kiddo sat in one of the burnt-orange tulip chairs, keeping a watchful eye on her toddler, Benjamin Franklin Phloog, as he strode around in sagging diapers on two bare feet.
Biff, as Kiddo called him, was chasing after Dr. Sax, who playfully darted ahead of him through the debris.
Avie gasped. “Should your second cousin be allowed to waddle around with all these shards of broken glass?” she whispered to me.
“He’s the son of the Golden Age Megaton Man,” I reminded her. “And Kiddo’s a fairly impressive Telekineticist herself.”
To one side, a couple of men in lab coats examined some of the robotic wreckage that had been recovered. At first, I thought one of them was Dr. Joe—that’s Joseph Levitch, the scientist who created both the Silver and Bronze Age Megaton Men. But then I realized the second man was Grady Grinnell, nephew of Julius Levitch, Dr. Joe’s identical counterpart from another dimension. It was uncanny how much he had adopted Dr. Joe’s mannerisms, even though buried somewhere inside his psyche lurked the evildoer, Doctor Software.
“Definitely from the future,” remarked Julius, as he examined the scorched cybernetic remains. “We’ll have to take this back to the lab,” he said, meaning the underground laboratories of Megatonic University, far below the Arbor State campus. Grady nodded in agreement, then looked my way, giving me a nasty scowl.
Before we could get to them, however, Domina cut us off. In her usual black-leather G-string ensemble, her muscles rippled under a glistening sheen. “So, our auxiliary members finally decide to show their faces,” she scoffed. “Turns out we didn’t need you, Ms. Megaton Man.”
“Easy, Dana,” said Alice Too. “These girls have their educations to tend to.”
Dana sniffed. “Ha! Who needs ‘em anyway? We had the bad guys licked, thanks to our secret-secret weapon.”
“Looks like you and your robotic armor handled things sufficiently,” I said.
“Wasn’t me,” said Dana, nonchalantly. “Didn’t have time to put on my exoskeleton during the Blitzkreig. Turns out I didn’t need it.”
I looked at Soren. “I guess Domina’s a lot tougher barehanded than I give her credit for,” I said. “I’m impressed.”
“It wasn’t Dana,” said Soren. “I told you, it was our secret-secret weapon.”
I was confused. “Then who?” I asked. “Kiddo? Tempy? The Negative Woman?” I couldn’t think which Youthful Permutation could repel an invasion of alien robots from the future all by themselves.
Dr. Sax leapt up onto the Y+Table, out of reach of the baby, who started crying. Kiddo picked him up and cradled him in her arms.
“Meet the Y+Thems’ secret weapon,” she said.