“Friday evening, Times Square … fuck. What in the world was I thinking?” asked Harvey as he put the RV in park. “Guess I’d better finish getting geared up.” At that he started properly engaging the various gaskets, joints, locks and other components that made his armor as impregnable as it was.

“I definitely see a gorilla man. He can’t see us though.” said Carroll who, luckily, already wore everything he normally would when in action. While padded to make him look more substantial and made of kevlar his costume was neither as complicated nor as protective as Harvey’s. Mandusa had his wild hair which, honestly, was better than just about any protective gear that existed.

“Carroll, I hate to suggest it, but I need you to go make contact with BoGo. Get things started while I try to get this stupid thing turned off. Just … a few hundred feet. If these assholes would move!” Harvey honked the horn, illustratively.

“Are you serious right now?” asked Carroll, gesturing towards the giant gorilla person. “He’s your friend! What do I even say!?”

“Am I serious? He’s just a guy, Carroll.”

“A guy you know and I don’t. He’s gonna want to know why I’m not driving. I’m the one who sleeps in that RV most nights.”

“He doesn’t know that…”

Carroll cocked his head. “You just don’t want to talk to him!”

“Eh … that’s not quite true.”

“So, what? You don’t want to be alone with him?”

Harvey’s Bouncer helmet twitched towards his partner then back to front. He shifted into drive for the half-car-length the traffic advanced then back to park.

“Okay, okay, so what? You need a buffer? We’ll both wait!”

“No, see … you two can check out the immediate situation at the bottom of the stairs while I get this big bastard parked. I mean, it’s a kid, Care.”

“Don’t do that. This guy wanted to be where I am right now. I get it, you don’t want to feel awkward so you want me to go. But he wanted something from you, see, and that’s not nearly as awkward as being the guy whose spot he wanted! Don’t pretend like your social awkwardness is concern over this robot.”

Turning his helmet directly towards Carroll Harvey popped the nightvision goggles into an open position and spoke with his own voice, unfiltered by his gear. “She’s a little girl, Care. And she needs you.”

Amid a loud, repeated scoffing sound Carroll threw his seatbelt off, the buckle striking the window with an alarming sound. “Son of a bitch! Disingenuous piece of shit!” and Carroll exited the cab, grumbling but no longer cursing. Chuckling, Harvey snapped his eyewear back into locked position; sealing the helmet again.

“Unbelievable.” muttered Carroll as he made his approach. The sidewalk was truly packed as he went. The normal foot traffic was merged with people just starting their nightlife for the weekend, tourists and, worst of all, kids, both local and out-of-towners. “Yup, I’m a hero, good eye kid! Okay, excuse me. Make room!” Finally, under his breath, he muttered “shit” before raising up on his hair to finish his short jaunt. Effectively fifteen feet tall, his spider-like hair legs emitting a soft luminescence in the hot lights of Times Square, he elicited many a gasp from passerby.

“Well, this is my prime earning time, but I said I’d be here. ‘Mandusa’, I presume?” asked Bogo, raised brow and humorless half-smile indicating his bemusement. “Mandusa…”

“That’s me!” shouted Carroll, trying to be heard above the crowd. “You okay? What’s with the face?”

“I’m an ape man. Y’know, they call my type Fursonas.”

“Yeah, no, you just look … put out.” replied Mandusa.

“Oh, yeah… This is the face I make when I realize a guy I helped out a whole bunch is trying to avoid me.” Bogo shook his head.

“I … yeah, I’m sorry about that. Bouncer’s over there in our Mobile Command Center. He’s going to try to get it parked around the corner then he’ll be back.”

“Well shit that’s gonna be another hour and sure as hell it ain’t gonna be around no corner.”

Reaching up to activate his communicator Carroll accidentally turned it off. “Oh, it was on.” Turning it back on he waited for the telltale click to indicate readiness. “Bouncer, did you catch what your man said just now?”

“Uh … affirmative. Nothing to be done for it. See you guys as soon as I can.”

“Tell that dumbass he’s not just gonna find a spot, okay? Matter of fact I know a guy, he is around the corner, but he sure as hell isn’t gonna let that monster in unless I’m with him.

“Really? Why is that?”

“I went to school with the guy up in Buffalo. We’re … well, he’s my roommate, okay? I get free parking because I lean my Vespa up against his booth, right?”

“You ride a scooter?” asked Carroll, fighting back laughter.

“Hey! It’s a vespa… They’re premium quality, okay? Plus I can, y’know, haul it up to our apartment pretty easy. We kinda share it, really. You gotta realize how hard it is to keep a vehicle in this city.”

“Oh, no, I get it. Just … you on a scooter.”

“Dude, you raggin’ on me right now?”

“No, no of course–”

“Because a Vespa scooter has a maximum weight of about seven-hundred-fifty pounds. My buddy and me are only about six-fifty together.”

Carroll choked on laughter.

“And that’s with me being about five-hundo–what’s so damned funny!?”

“No! Nothing. Just … mental image.”

Over the communicator Carroll could hear Harvey. “Carroll! Don’t get him worked up, man.”

“Oh yeah, What’s next, anh? Gonna ask about if I wear a helmet?”

“What? No. No follow-up questions, really. Carroll got solid control of himself but the damage was done.”

“Whatever. Look, I’m gonna go get in your RV, mobile whatever whatever, get it parked and then we, Bouncer and me, will be back.” With that Bogo broke away. “Feel free to explore the underworld until we get back, Mister ‘Mandusa’. Whatever kind of name that is…” Carroll could barely make out that last part.

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What he could hear easily was a panicked Harvey Weir shouting into the communicator. “No! Carroll, follow him! I don’t need his help. I’ll just bribe the kid. I know what parking garage he means! Carroll, follow him. Dammit, don’t just watch him! He’s almost–hey!” Just enough time passed for audio to be switched to internal. “Oh, you’re gonna get it for this, blondie!” After that the communicator went silent.

Carroll couldn’t help but smile at that, a guilty pleasure to be sure, as he turned towards the closed subway entrance. Looking closely he could see the yellow chain, already a suggestion at best, had had its lock removed and replaced with a simple loop of steel that, at a distance, gave the illusion of being locked. From what Bogo was saying before it was a safe bet that he was the one who re-applied the chain. Surreptitiously slipping through and re-chaining from the inside was simple enough. Everywhere he looked though, all he could see was graffiti.

Exerting a little extra willpower Carroll amped up the light coming from his hair. The effect oddly obscured his body in the dark, giving the strong impression of a floating monster of glowing tentacles. He could also turn the light off entirely while, when relaxed, it glowed without casting light. One day, he hoped, someone could explain his powers to him. For now, however, they made him feel safe in an environment most people would feel anything but.

“Weird.” he said out loud, his voice reverberating through the silent tunnel. Moving in a few steps he realized there was a dropoff; stairs, the guardrail having been removed or, perhaps, accidentally broken off. Either way it was gone. At the top of the stairs he took in his surroundings. On the walls were gang names, far too many corporate logos painted using stencils, names, nicknames, vulgarities, phone numbers no doubt made public to torment someone and various other nonsense.

Hair brushing over a tiny pebble of fractured concrete sent the debris down the stairs and Carroll recognized he was still using his powers to walk. Looking around himself he realized how silly that was, lowered himself down, then started picking his way down the stairs, head on a swivel to try and spot out a strange-looking little girl.

“Hello?” he asked the encroaching darkness, far too softly. He felt silly saying anything, social awkwardness kicking in again. In the growing silence, the street noise fading in the distance, you could hear a pin drop down here. Still, he was searching so he had to make some noise. “Little girl? Or … android? Please come out. We, uh … met some of your friends. At the Wildcorp warehouse. Did you come from there?”

Nothing came in response, of course. The stairs went down four flights before terminating in a wide-open area where a person could normally buy tokens, an Easy Pass, or even a hot dog while they waited but, now, there was nothing but filth. There was definitely sign of human habitation though Carroll couldn’t tell how recent. It tasted weird.

Carroll blinked twice, falling very still. Tasted? Yes, tasted, but not in his mouth. Looking around he realized he was detecting much more than his five senses would normally notice and it was all because of his hair. Broken concrete, his hair told him, would be poison if consumed. Old organic material, impurities … bad food or … excrement. Grabbing his stomach Carroll tried to control the overwhelming sensory input.

Was this new? Yes and no. It was definitely stress related and he remembered feeling a greater awareness when stressed before but, in this situation it was different. This was definitely a subconscious thing and the hair was doing the work. Old hot dog bun. Technically dried and not poisonous. Edible. He looked; a tendril of hair had reached out over ten feet to a shelf beneath the top of an abandoned hot dog cart.

Blood. “What?” Carroll sensed it. Copper, iron, life snuffed out. So … not fresh? All old bloodstains would be dead, after all, even if their donor were still alive. “Where? Where is blood?” Following the offending tendril Carroll found a stain on the wall, splatter, really, with a central stain. It looked like the wound were pressed directly against the wall yet the drip didn’t reach the floor. It was if a large amount of wet blood were released then contained.

Carroll’s heart pounded. Probing around he found a small quantity on the floor, one not explainable by splatter. It was a line tracing a path towards the track and down the tunnel.

“He took him up the tracks. Deep in the dark.” came a voice, musically.

“Aaahhh!” shrieked Carroll, hair lashing out in every direction. It wrapped something up tightly and brought a few thousand paralytic tendrils to bear on the head of this invader before Carroll saw who it was. “Oh … I’m sorry. So sorry.” Setting down the little bald girl in the discarded Sunday dress he felt guilt wash over him. He’d almost attacked, had attacked really, though he had restrained doing damage.

“I understand.” she said. This isn’t a safe place, right? Plus it’s dark. I don’t need light to see but I can tell your hair glow is making things look much more menacing down here. Objectively speaking, of course.

“Right. Heh.” Carroll did his best to laugh off his sudden terror and aggression. “I’m, ah, Mandusa.”

“Like Medusa but a man.” she volunteered.

“Yes! Exactly. You … you might be the first to get that.”

“It’s pretty simple. Man plus Medusa, a portmanteau word of both, though Medusa is a proper name. A girl’s name meaning ‘protect’ or ‘rule’, still somewhat popular in Greece among parents.”

“Greece? Right. Yeah … because it’s Greek myth. Not just a female monster but … her name.”

“The name of a Gorgon, yes. A portmanteau in the same vein could be, for example, Guy plus Gorgon; Guygon.”

“Heh. But … but that sounds stupid.”

In reply the little android just blinked once. Count of five. Twice. It was so quiet in the station that the tiny wet sounds were audible.

“Right. So … you’re the Doll Girl?”

“Doll Girl?”

“Yeah. That’s what Bogo called you.”

“The ape man?”

“Right. He’s a great big guy. Looks like an ape.”

“He is a Lowland Gorilla Fursona of unusual size, potential lifting power, isolating the arms, five tons, ten tons deadlift. I thought he might be a hero capable of dealing with our situation down here.”

“Wow. He’s that strong, huh? But no, he’s a street performer. He knew my partner though, we’re heroes; that’s why I came down.” Pausing, Carroll looked around. “How long have I been down here?

“I watched for some time, trying to judge your nature, before determining that your repeated fugue states were you attempting to detect details in your surroundings. From the time your feet touched the floor down here it’s been approximately thirty-seven minutes.”

“Thirty-almost forty minutes? Damn. And what was that about fugue states?”

Silicone eyebrows raised as the Doll Girl realized that Mandusa didn’t know. “I assumed you were aware. You fell still many times, a few minutes each time, your head tentacles touching things around you as your human body hung there, limp.”

Eyes big Carroll’s breath caught in his throat. The silence hung a moment.

“Oh no. Is this another fugue state?” she asked.

“No! I mean … no, it … it isn’t. Yeah, my powers, uh, I have to turn off my human senses, y’know, to … taste everything around me. Really effective way to get information.”

“Fascinating. So each of these fibers making up your tentacles is like a nerve ending?”

“Yyyeah, let’s go with that. So, wait, you don’t go by Doll Girl?”

“No sir. My name is Jennifer.”

“Really? Who … who named you?”

“There was a kind man who took me in; Raphael. He would go above to entertain the people, calling himself ‘Rapping Raph”, and would make mechanical noises with his mouth, slap his body in rhythm and speak musical poetry, all just using his voice and hands. He would bring home food and entertainment this way, even though I didn’t need to eat. He would say ‘no girl of mine is going hungry.’ but I would just nibble.”

“My systems include a methane digester system ready to subsist off of organic materials. But I could take power from the wires in our shelter while he needed the food. I would have to insist … he was so … skinny.” She looked down, unable to continue.

Carroll looked at her; so lifelike. She would be perhaps ten years old with a pretty face, designed to elicit protectiveness from anyone with any parental instincts, but, neck, arms and legs exposed you could see that she was compartmentalized. Modular. The seams between sections were never meant to be exposed to the light. They ruined the illusion. “You’re … sad? But … you’re an android.”

Eyes squeezing shut, Jennifer dipped her head down and forward before raising back up with a smile. “On reflection I believe that I prefer the name ‘Doll Girl’. I will use this alias.”

“Oh, okay. Is it … is it because the man who gave you your name…” Carroll fell silent. It was a stupid question. Her father was dead, she wanted an alternate identity, to be a person who had not lived through such trauma. “I’m glad you like the name.”

But Doll Girl wasn’t focusing on him any more. He leaned in, confused, as she all but looked through him. “Hey, Man-dusa! What you doin’!?”

With a scream Carroll fell to the concrete, barely caught and padded by his hair. Looking up and back towards the stairs Bogo and the Bouncer had arrived. “You … son of a…” He rubbed his face hard as both newcomers approached. It was time to move forward.