VELVETEEN vs. Doctor Darwin #4
“I don’t know. Lots of places. I went to one parallel world where you shot me with a giant ray gun.” Velveteen’s expression turned thoughtful. “I still haven’t punched any version of you for that.”
Doctor Darwin had been in the supervillainy business long enough to look faintly unsettled and move a little further down the table, away from any potential punching.
(Yes, Velveteen was quite well secured, and yes, he had tested the straps himself, but reality sometimes seemed to have a sense of humor in moments like this one, and he’d seen superheroes break their bonds in impossible ways when it meant they could follow the action by breaking a villain’s jaw.)
“Punishing people for something they did in another reality isn’t very heroic,” he said, in the sternest tone he could manage. “I’m sure there are realities where you’re a villain.”
“Dozens of them,” Velveteen agreed, still with that thoughtful look on her face. “It sort of seems like I’m a villain more often than I’m a hero. I’ve been thinking of rebranding.”
Doctor Darwin paused. “All right,” he said, finally. “Is this a bad time for my brilliant plan? Because you seem far more interested in unnerving me than you are in either bombastic shouting or quailing in fear.”
“Are you really criticizing the quality of my damsel in distress behavior?” asked Velveteen. “You kidnapped me from my bedroom. You’d better not have broken anything.”
“I’ll pay for the window,” muttered Doctor Darwin. Velveteen glared. He winced. “In cash, so it won’t affect your homeowner’s insurance.”
“Thank you,” she said primly. “Now untie me and we need never speak of this again.”
“Ah,” said Doctor Darwin. “No. I’m afraid not.”
“Excuse me?”
“I can’t release you until I get what I came for. You carry prisoned in your flesh the very energies of creation. With them, I can rewind the calendar, remake humanity as it was always meant to be! Peaceful, powerful, pinioned—”
“Wait, wait, wait,” interrupted Velveteen. “Are you still on that whole ‘birds’ angle? As in you think that when the world corrects itself, it’s going to turn us all into weird dino-people with fluffy feathers? I thought you got over that when you stopped calling yourself ‘Doctor Dodo.’”
“As you said, sometimes a little rebranding is necessary,” said Doctor Darwin. “I wanted to be taken seriously.”
“Charles Darwin was a real person, though. I’m pretty sure he was a doctor, too.
So it’s sort of like you decided your supervillain identity was like, evil Mr. Rogers.
” Velveteen wrinkled her nose. “If I ever met anyone calling themselves evil Mr. Rogers, I would pound their ass so far into the pavement that they’d be able to do geology by sneezing. ”
“Anatomically horrifying as that sentence is, I assure you the villain community would do its best to assist you,” said Doctor Darwin.
“We have standards. Families. Children who deserve to enjoy Mr. Rogers without hearing on the news that he just robbed a bank in downtown Poughkeepsie. But I feel as if we’re getting off the topic. ”
“The topic of you tying me to this table and then using some sort of creepy machine to extract a ‘rare and precious commodity’ from my body, whether I like it or not.”
“Yes.”
“How long have you had the house under surveillance? I mean, it’s pretty clear you’ve been planning this for a while. I can’t find anything with a face in this lab, and I’m reaching as far as I can.”
“Or as far as you can without being put under extreme stress,” said Doctor Darwin.
He smirked at Velveteen’s startled expression.
“I did my homework. No one is sure of your exact daily range, but I know you’ve summoned toys from miles around when under sufficient duress.
I have no interest in causing you that much trauma, in large part because I wouldn’t survive the aftermath.
I’ve been watching your residence since your return from the Seasonal Lands. ”
Velveteen sighed heavily. “Dammit. I don’t want to move.”
“You won’t have to,” said Doctor Darwin. “I have revealed your address to no one. After this, you have my word as a villain and a gentleman that I will not trouble you at home again.”
Velveteen blinked. “What?”
“Have you never wondered what could inspire a man to look upon the world around him—a perfectly serviceable world, in many ways, if a bit overrun with mammals—and say ‘I will set my scientific genius, not to the improvement of my surroundings, but to their destruction’? I could make the world infinitely better. But I will tell you a secret.” He leaned close, and said, “This is not my world.”
Velveteen blinked again, more slowly. “Come again?”
“Your Miss Cogsworth is an anomaly in the universe, exiled by the intervention of the same Seasonal Lands which have fought so hard to claim you. I am, admittedly, less unique than she: I’m aware of at least six iterations of myself, stranded across your mammal-led parallels, unable to return to our homes after they were wiped away by the Evolutionary Plague.
” His expression turned wistful. “Somehow you humans have caught creation’s imagination.
Our homes are remade in your image, and we’re stranded, protected by our science, unable to save the ones we love.
All I want to do is set things right. If I can’t go home, I’ll bring home to me. ”
“Wait, you mean…” Velveteen stared. “You’re a bird?”
“I’m a person,” said Doctor Darwin. “Before the Evolutionary Plague, I was a feathered person, and I would have called someone who looked like you a monkey. Now I supposed you’d call me a Saurian, if I still had the body I was born to, and scream at the sight of me.
I truly do hope you can make the transition into my better world.
If you’ll forgive me saying so, your own world has treated you so poorly that a world of my design might treat you better. ”
Velveteen strained against the straps which bound her. “I’m not going to help you destroy my entire world!”
“My dear, you already have.” Doctor Darwin pulled a watch from his pocket, checked the time, and nodded. “Right on schedule. Welcome home, by the way. You do keep things more interesting.”
He turned to walk away. “Wait!” shouted Velveteen. He stopped and looked back. “Weren’t you going to extract something from me?”
“Ah.” He smiled toothily. “I already have. Goodnight, Miss Velveteen.”
This time, when she yelled, he didn’t look back.
* * *
When Victory Anna and Polychrome crashed through the skylight half an hour later, Velveteen was still struggling against the straps that bound her to the table. Victory Anna sliced through them, and Polychrome helped her to her feet, scanning her face with concern.
“Vel, honey, are you okay?” she said.
Velveteen shook her head slowly. “No,” she said. “I think…I think we may have a problem.”
Outside, rain began to fall over the city of Portland.