VELVETEEN vs. Uncomfortable Resolutions #2
“Yeah,” said Polychrome. Privately, she wasn’t so sure.
Victory Anna was an incredibly talented technopath, in the gadgeteer subclassification: she could do almost anything with simple machines, and in her hands, the definition of a simple machine was an endlessly complicated thing. She could make springs virtually dance.
All this was true, but at the same time, The Super Patriots, Inc.
had multiple technopaths on the payroll, and some of them were substantially more versatile than Victory Anna.
Imagineer was a gadgeteer on a more technologically advanced scale: she worked in laser grids and atom smashers, not levers and springs.
And Handheld, while much younger, was a master of the digital world.
His powers had been evolving, and the last time Polychrome had had a reason to look at his dossier, he’d been able to seize control of anything with wireless capability.
Including some of Victory Anna’s larger guns. Polychrome shuddered at the thought of her girlfriend’s weapons turning against her during a firefight. So they’d just have to avoid that.
Something flashed past the window, gleaming bright and vaguely yellow. Polychrome uncrossed her legs, stretching out so that she was floating in the air and standing upright at the same time. “You okay in here for a few minutes?” she asked.
“Yes, yes, go punch one of your former teammates and leave me to my disassembly,” said Victory Anna serenely. “I have all faith you can hand whatever powered upstart is buzzing out window their own behind.”
“Guess we’ll find out,” said Polychrome, and zipped over to the window, undoing the latch and slipping out into the cool night air.
It felt strange for it to be this dark so early. Living on the West Coast had left her unaccustomed to the time zones on the other side of the country. She turned slowly in the air, scanning the sky for signs of another flier.
All she saw at first were stars. They twinkled brightly, just the same when this yard had been her training ground, when the soft green grass below her had been her bed and birthright.
She’d been the princess of The Super Patriots, meant to be crowned and cossetted.
And kept. The keeping had been a big part of the bargain.
It had taken her a lot longer than it should have to realize she didn’t actually enjoy being a fancy zoo animal.
That she wanted the whole sky, not just the sanitized and approved strip of it that they offered her.
But once she’d managed to understand, she’d followed it up by getting away, by making amends with the people she should never have allowed herself to be used against, by becoming the person she wanted to be, not the person Marketing had designed.
Stopping in midair, she cycled her light slowly through the visible spectrum, becoming duller and duller until she disappeared completely, surrounded and supported by a haze of deep black light.
She was effectively invisible like this, a trick she had only mastered after she’d left the team, when she was hunting for Velveteen and praying for a forgiveness she didn’t believe she deserved.
Some days she still wasn’t certain she deserved it. But she had it now, and she wasn’t letting it go.
She hung there, waiting, and after a few minutes a jet of red and white flame roared past, stopping to hang in midair, a trick every flier eventually learned.
How to corner, how to stop, how to hover while presenting your best angles to the waiting cameras.
Flying was among the more common abilities, associated with multiple power complexes, including some that honestly didn’t make sense.
Not every hero needed to be able to fly.
But enough of them could that The Super Patriots, Inc.
offered whole classes on not slamming into things.
Classes this woman had clearly passed with, ahem, flying colors.
She was wearing a jumpsuit in various shades of red, ranging from brilliant scarlet to dark crimson.
Gold trim marked her wrists, ankles, and waist, probably intended to call attention to a trim figure that Polychrome knew was as mandatory as the bright cherry red of her hair.
The Super Patriots didn’t tolerate any extra flesh on their fliers, or brown hair on their pyrokinetics.
There had been so many good reasons to get herself out from under corporate control, it was almost easier to list the reasons to stay than the reasons she’d had to go. It would definitely take less time.
The new arrival turned slowly in the air, flames enveloping her feet and keeping her aloft.
Finally, she put her hands on her hips and said, in an irritated New England accent, “I know you’re out here.
I saw you take the bait. Stop lurking around like some sort of born-again supervillain and come out and face me like the hero you used to be! ”
Polychrome narrowed her eyes, resisting the urge to snort. Wrapping herself more tightly in her cocoon of black light, she stayed precisely where she was.
“I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but you can’t just waltz back in here and take your position back,” continued the pyrokinetic.
“I’m the primary flier for The Super Patriots these days.
Me. We don’t need you and your little light tricks, and we wouldn’t take you, anyway, not without a new name and a better costume.
‘Polychrome’? What the hell, did you decide that if your bestie’s code name was from a kid’s book, yours needed to be too? Or did she make you change it?”
“I don’t think ‘Sparkle Bright’ was much better,” says Polychrome, finally allowing her black light shell to dissolve.
“I sounded like a brand of toothpaste. I mean, come on. And you don’t really get to talk, Firefly.
The original Firecracker’s body wasn’t even cold in the ground before you were making off with her trademarks. ”
“It was a legal transfer!” protested Firecracker, spinning around to face Polychrome.
“I have a compatible power set, and her death was a matter of public record. Me taking up her mantle was a tribute to a fallen hero, and had nothing to do with me being sick and tired of the tabloids making cracks about my butt glowing in the dark.”
Polychrome wrinkled her nose. “That doesn’t even make sense. You have fire powers, not light powers. Now if they wanted to get obsessed with my butt, that would be another matter. Because my butt does glow in the dark, when I want it to.”
“TMI much, Yelena?” asked Firecracker, before she sobered. “I mean it, though. You can’t come back.”
“I never said I wanted to. And even if I did, I have two big reasons not to—three, if I count your frankly sophomoric attempts at threatening me.”
“And what might those be?”
“I know you’re smarter than that, Missy. Think about it. Who’s my best friend in the whole damn world? My ride or die?”
“Velveteen.”
“Right. Always has been, even when we hated each other. And who’s my one true love, the woman who was publicly seen kissing me back to life when I went down in the fight against Supermodel?”
“I know this one. The weird little steampunk girl. Where did she come from, anyway? For real, not that weird story you fed to the gossip rags.”
“A parallel dimension that has since been destroyed, and she has a name,” said Polychrome. “Victory Anna is the woman I’m going to marry, as soon as I get up the nerve to ask if she’s okay with that. And you know what she would never, ever, under any circumstances agree to do?”
“What?”
“She’s not going to join The Super Patriots.
She met them first in another dimension, one where they treated her treated like a supervillain, and she knows the team from the other side.
Vel wouldn’t come back if you paid her, and Torrey would burn the place to the ground inside of a week if I tried to push the issue.
For their sake, I can never come back. And I’m not mad about it. ”
Firecracker blinked, dipping lower in the air as her concentration wavered. “It sounds like you actually believe that.”
“The corporate mind control division has been shut down. People can leave if they want to. You could leave if you wanted to.”
“I don’t want to leave,” snapped Firecracker, immediately defensive. “This is my home. Some of us know how to be loyal.”
“I am loyal,” said Polychrome. “Just not to the things you want me to be loyal to. What is this really about, Missy? Who are you mad at?”
Firecracker rose back to her original position in the air. “Velveteen left before you did,” she said. “She doesn’t get to come back and pick up where she left off. That’s not fair.”
“She’s not trying to,” said Polychrome. “We’re only here so the government doesn’t disappear us into one of their super-prisons.”
Firecracker looked at her dubiously.
“Promise,” added Polychrome. “We’re happy in Portland. She’s happy in Portland. You should see her with Tag, Missy. They’re so sweet it’s sickening. And I know a little something about being overly sweet.”
“If you say so,” said Firecracker. “I still don’t like you being here.”
“Trust me,” said Polychrome. “Neither do we.”
* * *
If Polychrome had been thinking of something other than how much she didn’t want to get into a fight with a pyromancer, she might have looked more deeply at Firecracker’s complaints, might have realized what was going to happen next.
But she was preoccupied with worrying about what Victory Anna would do if she looked out the window and saw someone taking shots at her girlfriend, and so the moment passed, and she didn’t sound the alarm.
In Velveteen’s room, she rolled over again, trying desperately to find a position comfortable enough to let her fall asleep. She was staring at the barely-visible ceiling when someone knocked on her door. She sat bolt upright, blanket falling away, and slid out of the bed.