VELVETEEN vs. The United States Government
Portland weather had never been overly committed to silly concepts like “predictability” or “sunshine” or “predictable sunshine.” Instead, it was as mercurial as the winds off the Pacific could make it, with rainfall at all times of year, snow only occasionally, and sunny days as infrequent as four-leaf clover on a suburban lawn.
The perfect conditions for college students, experimental rose cultivars, and superheroes, all of whom tended to thrive in a cloudy, slightly damp climate.
In less than two years, Portland had gone from a city without a superhero to a city with five, and multiple others visiting often enough to have lost the sheen of novelty that clung to special guests and unexpected crossovers.
For most of the city, the boom in the super population didn’t change anything of note: the heroes mostly confined themselves to the downtown area or to larger events outside the city limits, and they were still a new enough phenomenon that local businesses had yet to start inviting them to grand openings and sales events.
(Honestly, Velveteen couldn’t wait for the day when local businesses started reaching out for superhero sponsorships.
Victory Anna would make an amazing spokeswoman for a used car dealership or mattress company, for the six hours or so it took before she weaponized their products and caused some sort of terrifying incident.
And after that, the local businesses would leave the rest of them alone, out of an elevated sense of self-preservation.
Really, it was going to be a win-win scenario, when they finally got there.)
With no permanent supervillains in the area, the heroes of Portland were free to focus on the things that mattered to them, like adjusting to the new makeup of their small suburban home.
While it technically belonged to the city of Portland, Velveteen was the legal lease-holder for as long as she was serving as the city’s official superheroine.
Victory Anna had long since constructed a secret laboratory under the building, so she wasn’t going anywhere unless she had no choice in the matter, and besides, she had been Vel’s first roommate, back when both of them had been stuck in a slow-motion freefall toward disaster.
So neither of them were leaving. And that was fine, really: the house was more than big enough for the both of them, and had remained big enough when Victory Anna’s girlfriend—also Velveteen’s childhood best friend—had decided to move in.
Velveteen hadn’t even been required to give up the master bedroom, since Polychrome was used to living in a Super Patriots, Inc.
efficiency apartment and Victory Anna had grown up in an era where bedchambers were much smaller.
They had been cohabitating peacefully, bar the occasional lab accident or issue with Vel’s toys being left out on the dining room table. And none of them liked to entertain.
Adding Tag to the mixture had been easier than Vel would have expected. He wasn’t a stranger, hadn’t been one even before he’d died in the process of trying to protect Polychrome, an act that had eternally endeared him to Victory Anna.
He wasn’t dead anymore, thanks to true love’s kiss and a bit of support from the Princess, whose presence could make things like a kiss to wake the dead probable enough that they would actually happen, and while he was somewhat more gregarious than his assorted housemates, he got most of his social energy out by mentoring a group of local graffiti artists who, in his words, “show a lot of potential but need to learn to respect private property if they don’t want to have issues with the authorities.
” The four of them had been doing fine ever since he and Vel stopped dancing around each other and admitted what the others already knew: she’d loved him enough to wake him up by getting to first base with his corpse, and that sort of love didn’t work unless it was reciprocated.
That kind of love also required a certain amount of therapy, but thanks to Velveteen’s part in taking down The Super Patriots, Inc.
, they had access to the company network of therapists trained to work with and on superhumans.
Vel was mostly stubborn about remaining independent, but even she had to admit it was nice to talk to someone who didn’t need a primer in superhero mental issues before they could start working on her problems.
So four of Portland’s five superhumans shared a house, and spent their weekends—when not on patrol or otherwise serving and saving the city—haunting flea markets and consignment stores as they updated and upgraded their furniture.
They had entered the nesting phase, harmoniously and seemingly without discussion.
Really, they should all have known it was too good to be true.
* * *
A surprising number of people who work with superhumans, whether professionally or on a volunteer basis, focus so hard on the “super” part that they lose track of the fact that even the most powerful superhumans ever known—even the ones who were, for all intents and purposes, literally gods—were still human at the end of everything.
While a few superhumans were sufficiently modified from their biological beginnings to be considered cyborgs or even robots, they were still constrained by the limits of the human psyche, still subject to the obsessions and preconceptions that accompanied their origins.
Having the power to throw cars or tear buildings apart with your bare hands didn’t make a person infallible or immune to things like narcissism, loneliness, or depression.
Indeed, the files of people who chose to focus on superhuman mental health would seem to indicate that these conditions became more common, not less, with increases in individual power.
How could anyone take the rule of law seriously when they were quite literally more powerful than any threat that it might bring to bear against them?
Some scientists have theorized that the true reason for the Seasonal Lands’ close connection to our world is to provide a release valve of sorts, a way for the truly world-destroying superhumans to bleed themselves off into a reality where they can exercise their powers to their limits, not keeping themselves small for the sake of the weaker humans around them.
Others say this is an anthropomorphic view of reality, crediting the universe with more intention and concern for humanity’s well-being than seems likely to exist.
Since the discovery of Supermodel’s true limits, or lack thereof, and the emergence of Velma “Velveteen” Martinez and Tad “Tag” Sinclair as her probable inheritors, some people have put forth the idea that the animus heroes truly keep our reality tied into the complicated network of manifest seasons and parallel timelines.
They represent the living lifeforce of the world, after all.
Wouldn’t it make sense for them to be the cork in the bottle, as it were?
Regardless of whether the animus heroes play a part in our world’s tenuous relationship with the worlds around us, it must be admitted that a reality where humans and superhumans live side-by-side is delicately balanced on the edge of disaster.
So long as superpowers continue to exist, the disasters they cause will do the same.
True peace cannot be accomplished when nuclear disarmament fails to take into account the farmer who can split an atom with a thought, or the dancer who can intentionally destabilize the molecular structure of everything she touches.
And worst of all, these living weapons carry a full array of human emotions, both powerful and petty. They are as prone to the loss of temper and reason as any other human.
Scientists who study superhuman psychology have a tendency to develop substance abuse problems before bringing their research to publication. In light of the threat at hand, it’s difficult to truly blame them.
* * *
The board of The Super Patriots, Inc. was largely made up of younger superhumans, former members of the junior teams who had stumbled into the big time.
The shareholders had kicked their feet and shouted over allowing such untested factors to take control of the world’s largest multinational organization managing and organizing the superhuman population, but they had been named to their positions by Velveteen after she helped to take down Supermodel: by their own bylaws, nothing could be done beyond sitting back and waiting for them to make a mistake large enough to allow for a vote of no confidence.
It seemed likely that they were going to be waiting for long, especially with Uncertainty serving as a sort of emeritus advisor to the current board.
He was unwilling to accept a formal position, saying only that he didn’t, which meant he couldn’t, and that his past experience as a member of the board made him a poisoned pill in the current political climate.
Making matters worse, again as a consequence of Velveteen’s defeat of Supermodel, three of those same younger heroes currently shared the mantle of CEO.
Action Dude was fine: he was straightforward and easily marketable.
Dotty Gale, on the other hand, ran straight into multiple copyright and intellectual property issues, with lawsuits periodically brought against the corporation by the Baum estate.
They never won—it was difficult to prosecute a living person for being a manifestation of a fictional character—but they tied up the lawyers, and they made properly monetizing Dotty’s appearances more difficult than it needed to be.
And then there was the American Dream, who was simultaneously a public relations coup and nightmare.