The Other Eight (12 page)

“Fight!”

She clicked the music on and turned smoothly
to meet McCoy, who, after so many unpleasant and humiliating
losses, was desperate for another win. Unfortunately for him and
fortunately for Primadonna, her powers kicked in, and the mad
charge turned into a rhythmic march into her arms as the music
built into a spicy tango. The dummy and the dancer moved in
sensuous harmony, pressed close together. Judging from the look on
McCoy’s face as Primadonna’s powers compelled him to dance his part
of the routine without a partner, it was the first time he had
wished he was dealing with “combat” directly. That was until the
standard tango turned into a face-slap tango. If a dance is
intended to tell a story, this particular one dealt with the fury
of a woman scorned. Every few pivots and turns Primadonna delivered
a slap or a shove, tightly choreographed of course, culminating in
a sequence of leg-entwined pushes that quickly forced the dummy to
the ground three times.

With the dance and battle complete, a round
of applause erupted from the less regimented of the audience.
Private Summers in particular enthusiastically clapped and
whistled. Sergeant Roberts simply marked down her performance and
turned to the rest of the group.

“Five minute break for McCoy. After that,
Omnivox will be assessed,” the sergeant announced.

Primadonna strutted back, casting a
self-satisfied grin in The Number’s direction before retrieving a
towel and bottle of water from her bag. He shot her a withering
look in return.

“Leave it to her to work the crowd with
something steamy,” The Number growled to Phosphor. “That is such a
pandering way to get the crowd behind you.”

“Well, look at it this way. I don’t have much
of an eye for it, but at least you looked like you were fighting,”
Phosphor offered.

“Yeah, and if you’d have seen my finish, you
would have seen some really impressive moves.”

“She didn’t have to get as inappropriate as
all that. All she had to do was get him on his back a few times,”
Phosphor remarked.

“Heh. Trust me, she’s had
plenty
of
experience getting men on their backs…”

On the battleground, Omnivox suited up and
readied himself. Despite his epic name and vocal powers, his battle
with McCoy was entirely straightforward, a textbook exchange of
grapples and locks. The only surprising part of the fight was how
capable Omnivox turned out to be. The sparring match ended in a
McCoy victory, three falls to two, but Omnivox held his own nearly
as well as FM. Roberts noted the performance, offering up a stiff
nod in the would-be hero’s direction as he walked past. From the
sergeant, it may as well have been a slap on the back and a hearty
congratulations.

“Phosphor, you’re up,” Roberts said.

“If that’s what you want, Sergeant, but if I
start swinging these around,” Phosphor remarked, sliding a bulb
from his bag, “there’s going to be an awful lot of broken glass
around. It might be better to save me for last, unless you want to
do some cleanup in between.”

“That’s good foresight, Phosphor. Retcon,
step forward.”

Retcon’s battle raged for a considerable
amount of time, thanks in no small part to the fact that, shortly
before the fight, Retcon retroactively decided that he’d spent
three years intensively training in Muay Thai. He managed to just
barely eke out a victory. Next came Third Person, who made a good
showing but managed to score only one fall. Undo’s battle was
mind-bending. He was clearly a martial arts enthusiast, though his
skill and style were a good deal sloppier than some of the other
fighters. The bizarre part came in when, every now and then, he
would find himself out of position and moments from being on the
receiving end of a knockdown blow… and then he wasn’t. It wasn’t as
though time reeled backward, or that he quickly moved from one
position to another. It was as though the universe had changed its
mind about what he’d done previously. If the fight was any
indicator, he could only do it once or twice a minute, but
subtracting just one or two mistakes in a battle is often enough to
score the win, and sure enough, it wasn’t long before McCoy hit the
sand for the final time.

Finally, just as McCoy was nearing the end of
his impressive endurance, it was time for Phosphor to step into the
ring. He put his size and bulk to good use, practically hurling the
dummy around and putting distance between them. His fighting style
was a little raw, relying heavily on good old hooks and jabs to do
his damage, but it kept them fall for fall until each was one fall
from victory. It was then that he deployed his secret weapons. With
a thrust kick to gain some breathing room, Phosphor pulled out
three fluorescent tubes. The first he hurled like a javelin, which
shattered on impact and punched two neat holes with its prongs. The
second and third were each swung baseball bat-style, bursting into
a cloud of white powder and glass shards. The assault continued in
that way, bulb after bulb launching at the foe.

“Stop. That’s enough. A flesh and blood
soldier would have been defeated by now. That concludes the day’s
assessments. The day after tomorrow we will begin our endurance
assessments, so I recommend you get plenty of rest. Also, some of
you may be asked to speak to Dr. Aiken or one of our medics to
assess some of the finer points of your special abilities. Food
will be made available in the mess hall, but you are required to
fast beginning at 8 p.m. in order to be ready for some standard
medical testing tomorrow.”

The battered and sore group of hopeful heroes
split back into pairs and trudged to their respective cabins to
lick their wounds and prepare for the trials ahead.

There are two
types of bars. One type is the sort you’d go to if you wanted to
watch a ball game or boxing match. Maybe you’d spend a few hours
there to unwind, or maybe you’d go there hoping to hook up with a
girl. The other type of bar is the kind that would allow grown men
and women in flamboyant costumes to buy and consume large
quantities of cheap liquor in the middle of the summer. In the days
following the first round of interviews, bars of the second type
experienced a surge of popularity in the Arlington area.

One such bar had been called The Bally
Barroom until enough letters had burned out to dub it The BaBoom,
and currently hosted four rejected heroes. The most notable was a
young woman dressed in black leather with yellow highlights. She
had the body to pull off such an ensemble, though an alarming
number of red welts on her hands and face had been enough to
discourage all but the most inebriated of patrons from buying her
drinks. The fact that she’d still received four free drinks said
all that needed to be said about the rest of the clientele. Her
hair was straight, dark, and extremely long—so much so that, even
gathered into a tight, conical beehive, there was enough of it to
dangle down as a ponytail. Beside her sat a man with a mask that
made him look as though he should be handing out generic fried
chicken samples. He’d paired it up with a yellow three piece suit.
At a nearby table sat the unfortunate Bottleneck, still dressed in
his brown sweat suit. He was splitting a bowl of nachos with a cute
girl dressed in an all white outfit, a cape, and a domino-type mask
similar to what a more fashionable Lone Ranger or Boy Wonder might
have worn.

The fellow in the chicken mask turned to the
leather-clad woman. “You were in line for that joke of a hero
audition, weren’t you?”

She nodded, the sour expression lingering on
her face as she turned to him. “Pollinatrix. Were you there?”

He nodded as well, mildly dislodging his
mask. “Chicken Scratch. Why’d they dump you?”

“Because my power is ‘dangerous and
detrimental’ to myself and others, and there were ‘emotional
stability concerns,’” she said before taking the final sip of some
manner of hard liquor and absentmindedly slapping a bee that had
been crawling on her neck.

“He said, ‘checkered past and evasive
answers,’ but I think it’s clear he just lacked the vision to see
what I had to offer,” he said, tipping back his mask enough to take
a swallow from his beer.

“Exactly!” Pollinatrix agreed, slamming down
her empty shot glass. “I can summon swarms of venomous creatures!
Imagine the havoc I could cause if you were to insert me into an
enemy installation.”

“I know! And my supernaturally illegible
handwriting and keen strategic mind have no end of
applications.”

“Illegible handwriting?” she commented.

“You think that’s bad?” interjected
Bottleneck. “I got through the interviews, then got the boot at the
last minute. They said it was because my power was ‘entirely
detrimental’—”

“Again with detrimental. They
love
that word,” muttered Pollinatrix.

“But I think they just were angry that I was
always late, which is stupid, because that’s my power. I’m
Bottleneck, and I have the incredible ability to cause anything to
slow down! They didn’t even have the decency to reject me to my
face.”

“They told me my power was ‘unlikely to find
use in a military operation,’” said the white-clad woman.

“You look familiar. What’s your name again?”
asked Chicken Scratch.

“Dentata.”

Chicken Scratch cleared his throat and subtly
pressed his knees together. “Oh, right. That’s… that’s just the
same lack of vision. And what’s the big deal with them using a
shrink as the hatchet man? They should have had, I don’t know, the
secretary of defense. Someone who makes important decisions.”

“Yeah!” Bottleneck agreed.

“People like that need to learn the
consequences of their actions,” Pollinatrix said.

“Damn right! I’ve been scheming, but it’s
going to take me a while to get the resources together to do it
right,” said Chicken Scratch.

Pollinatrix looked him over. “If you’re open
to a little constructive criticism, you might want to rethink the
mask.”

“I know,” he groaned. “You would never
believe how hard it is to find a chicken-themed face mask that will
inspire the proper level of fear and respect.”

“You gotta go custom. Here, I’ll give you the
card for my costume guy. He’s expensive, but he does good work.”
She dug into her purse, which was a cute little bumblebee that
clashed a bit with the edginess of the rest of her wardrobe.

“Thanks! You’d never believe how few decent
costume guys there are in my part of the country. I feel like I
need an accessory. Something classy. You think he’ll have a cane?
Maybe with a sword in it?”

“No doubt. So what’s this scheme you’re
working on?”

Chicken Scratch glanced around the bar, just
in case there were any DoD spies hiding in the corners. Satisfied,
he leaned close and whispered, “I’m going to kidnap Dr. Aiken. Then
I’ll leave a devilishly difficult to decipher ransom note…” He
began, wriggling is fingers in glee.

“Interesting… You know, I was thinking of
something similar. I was going to go for Private Summers, though.
So annoyingly chipper. A few hundred bee stings should wipe the
smile off her face,” Pollinatrix said darkly.

“And you say
they
lack vision,” came
an unusual voice from the door of the bar.

The bartender, a grizzled old man who had
been manning a flyswatter nonstop since Pollinatrix’s arrival,
looked at the door and rolled his eyes. “Another one.”

The latest visitor to the bar was impressive
to say the least. His face was hidden behind what had likely begun
life as a paintball helmet, and a wraparound set of mirrored
goggles attached to the helmet’s vented face mask. Motocross-style
pads covered the rest of his body, and integrated into the more
substantial pieces of plastic armor were holsters for an assortment
of handheld gadgets. The more recognizable among them were digital
walkie-talkies, mil-spec GPS devices, and at least three
smartphones of various degrees of advancement. Elsewhere were
pistol-shaped weapons that defied identification. Strategically
placed and almost certainly superfluous LEDs highlighted the rest
of the outfit. His voice had a digital modifier on it, dropping the
pitch a few registers.

“Whoa!” remarked Bottleneck. “Did you go to
the same costume guy as her? I gotta get one of those cards.”

“I get my equipment from a higher source than
a prop-master from Silicon Valley.”

“How do you know where my costume guy is
from?” asked Pollinatrix.

“I make it a point to be well-informed,” the
newcomer replied.

“What’s that you were saying about lack of
vision?” Chicken Scratch asked, his fists balled. It was clear he
wasn’t pleased about having his nefarious plan belittled.

“A kidnapping? Too many loose ends. Too much
of a trail. You’ll be caught.”

“That’s where the incredibly illegible note
comes in, you see—”

“I suppose you have a better idea?”
Pollinatrix said.

“I do. One that would put your names in the
news in a way that being a hero or kidnapping a small cog in a big
machine never would.”

“Why come here? Why tell us? Why not just do
it yourself?” asked Dentata.

“I’m not a foot soldier. I’m more of an
adviser. In fact, that’s what you can call me. The Adviser.”

“Kind of a passive name for a serious
villain,” Scratch judged.

“You’ve chosen a poultry theme. Your opinion
on the matter is therefore invalid.”

“Hey! Cockfights, voodoo rituals! Chickens
have a long history in the underworld.”

“Whatever,” Pollinatrix said. “Flashing
lights, fancy voices, and high-tech toys don’t make for a criminal
mastermind. What makes you think you can pull off something
big?”

The Adviser flipped open a hinged section of
an arm pad and pulled out a packet of papers. He tossed it on the
table. Chicken Scratch snatched the packet and unfolded it.