Superhero Universe: Tesseracts Nineteen (32 page)

“Sure,” I said, chastened. “Sorry, Candy. I didn’t mean to…”

“Nah,” Candy retorted. “No need, Brat. We all wanna get this done. Hero’s curse, huh?”

“Yeah,” I answered, knowingly. “Hero’s curse.”

“Well, I, for one, want to see what makes that thing so
special
,” said Cerberus. She raced into the gaping maw with her usual quicksilver speed, and the rest of us followed at the same pace.

With our powers, we did a quick sweep of the hole, in the hope that we could declare the place null and void, seal it up, and leave. That was what appeared to be the case. There was just solid rock, with no traps or hidden passages. We prepared to fly out of the hole and out of there, when…

“Holy…!” PB exclaimed, as she saw it first. “The hole’s being CLOSED UP!”

“Then what are we
waiting
for?” asked Muscle Girl, rhetorically.

We rushed to the exit as fast as we could, but we were a hair too late. And, whatever the hell was blocking the hole, not even our combined powers could help us break through it. Instead, we crashed into it and collapsed onto the ground together.

We were trapped. That much we knew. But who — or what — was responsible?

CANDY GIRL

My first thought when I recovered and discovered our joint predicament was:
Run away
!

Now, I know that is not your average superhero behavior, but anyone with Asperger’s syndrome, superhero or not, is gonna panic like hell if they’re in a strange and difficult situation with absolutely no way out (or so it seemed to me at the time). Especially if they haven’t taken their anti-anxiety medication. Which I hadn’t.

So, when I woke up from being knocked out and saw we were trapped, I got to my feet, screamed, and ran down the nearest passageway.

Fortunately, Cerberus, with her enhanced dog senses, heard my screaming and rapidly moving feet. She ran in front of me. “And just
where
do
you
think you’re going?” she demanded.

In my anxiety-induced state, I babbled out some incoherent stuff about how scared I was and how I needed to get out of there, and how I needed to get my meds and stuff like that, until she cut me off with a pre-emptive growl. “GET BACK THERE!” she ordered. “We all need to be on
guard
to get out of here— so WOMAN UP!”

“Yes, Ma’am,” I said, wilting under her fury, and we returned to the entrance, where the others had regained their senses. Thankfully, ‘cause mine were nowhere to be seen.

That was when the giant screen came out of the wall in front of us, out of nowhere…

POWER BUNNY

Candy’s only half-right about that screen. It was a screen, all right, but it wasn’t a
giant
one— only about the size of the monoliths they use for TV screens nowadays. She’s got a tendency to exaggerate things, but I guess everybody in this business does.

Once the screen revealed itself, a transmission came on without any of us touching it, so it was obviously something coming from outside of the cave. Those responsible soon made themselves known…

Our most vicious and bloodthirsty enemies, who had apparently teamed up to trap and destroy us.

Natch!

What made it even worse was that they were throwing a party to celebrate our imminent demise in the cave— or so I gathered from the images on the screen. A
party
! The
nerve
! Sure, we’d collectively and individually caused them a lot of heartbreak and pain, but we’re
supposed
to! No need to turn our potential erasure from the Earth into some sort of
celebration
!

Anyhow…

The first of the crowd to address us were Scylla and Charybdis, the sister-and-brother delinquent-cum-magician duo who attend high school with Candy and have been a major pain in our rears in the past.

“Howdy,
buttfaces
!” said Scylla, diplomatically. “Like that
tomb
we set up for you?”

“You…!” Candy snapped at her. She might have smashed into the screen after her, but we held her back.

“Why don’t you save some of that energy for escaping, Candy?” Charybdis sneered at Candy, disdainfully. “That is, if you can get that Aspie mind of yours to
think
straight!”

Candy swore viciously. She made for the screen, and we stopped her again, while they laughed at us from afar. “Let me
go
!” Candy snapped. “I’m gonna kill them…”

”Calm down!” Muscle Girl ordered Candy, who relaxed, and then she turned to the screen. “Okay!” Muscle Girl demanded. “What the hell’s going on here?”

“Perhaps
I
can explain!”

To the visible annoyance of Scylla and Charybdis, Petra O’Leum, the villainous supergirl who’s Muscle Girl’s biggest foe, stepped in front of the camera.

“I should have known that
you
had a hand in this,
Petra
!” Muscle Girl said, softly but angrily.

“Not just a
hand
, MG!” Petra retorted. “This whole thing was
my
idea! I located the site for the hole, and then I recruited S and C over here to blast it into shape with their magic. Had to pay them for it, of course, but a small price to get rid of you all
forever
!”

“
What
!” In outrage, Scylla stood up from the divan she and Charybdis were reclining on. “This wouldn’t have happened
at all
if it weren’t for
us
!”

With an extreme level of forceful strength, Petra angrily pushed her back onto the divan. As for Charybdis, he stayed where he was, unperturbed as usual.

“CRAM IT!” Petra shouted at Scylla, her face turning nearly as red as her chestnut hair. “I am trying to outline my
plan
to these
idiots
here [meaning us], and I’d appreciate it if…”

“Someone say
idiots
?”

At this point, as if on cue, the other members of the party converged around the camera: Machine Gun Steinberg, the nebbish businessman who’s often at odds with the Brat; Dumbell, the second most powerful puppy in the world (and perpetually scheming to take out our gal Cerberus so she can be No. 1— always unsuccessfully), along with her human “master,” Bad Dan McGoon; and, most annoying to
me
, the dimwitted boy Rabindranath Jhabvala and his pet snake, Crack, who together create a lot of trouble for me in spite of their lack of brains.

Petra obviously didn’t want them there. Her eyes flashed in anger, and she cracked her ever-present whip in the air, driving them away. “BACK,
PEONS
!” she growled. “I can’t believe I’m even in the same
profession
as you!”

“Who are you calling A PEON?” shouted a livid Scylla. Furious, she shot a blast of magical energy at Petra, who ducked it. However, it must have damaged the equipment, as the transmission ended as abruptly as it had begun.

We were silent for a few moments, as we tried to burn off some of the shock and rage that had been building up inside of us since our capture. It didn’t work, because we turned it on each other.

Candy finally broke the silence, throwing a blast of emerald light from her power ring at the now-blank screen.

“DAMN IT!” she shouted. “I
knew
it! They want to
kill
us! If we hadn’t gone down into this damn
hole,
this never would have happened! You guys are always so
impulsive
…”

“We
have
to be impulsive, you big SNOT!” snapped the Brat. “How would we survive otherwise if we were faced by them— or any
other
type of evil, for that matter?”

“I’m just
saying
…” Candy began.

“Well, there’s your problem, right there!” The Brat pounced on those words like a cat. “You always
talk
about these things, but you never
do
anything…”

“So I’m a just a
fifth wheel
to you!” Candy shouted back at her. “Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you for being
just
a human being and not an all-mighty DEITY, but that was how I was
born
, okay?”

“Knock it off!” Muscle Girl interjected. “This is getting us nowhere!”

“Who are
you
to decide that?” snapped the Brat. “Were you democratically elected to decide what gets us anywhere and what doesn’t?”

“I don’t have to be democratically elected to decide when somebody’s being a JERK!” Muscle Girl snapped, pointing at the Brat.

“How DARE you!” the Brat snarled back. “I am trying to consider our common welfare here…”

“Even though you don’t actually
consult
others when you do it!” I said, feeling a bit sore.

“You stay
out
of this, carrot breath!” the Brat snapped. “I can
take
you!”

“TAKE
THIS!”
I snarled.

I rushed at the Brat and punched her into the wall, to the astonishment of the others. She bounced back right away and swung at me. I swung back— I’m not proud of it, but I was fed up with the Brat and wanted to cut her down to size. Muscle Girl tried to stop the Brat, and Candy did the same to me. This went on for a couple of minutes, until Cerberus, bless her heart, got us back to our senses.

CERBERUS

“
SILENCE!”

I shouted with such force that everyone except me dove to the floor, while I stood hind-legged to address them.

“Jesus, Cerb!” Candy said, as she rubbed her ears in pain. “What did we do to…?”

“You
forgot
!” I retorted. “All of you!”

“Forgot
what
?” snapped the Brat.

“That
we
, whether
you
like it or
not
,” I snapped back, pointing directly at her with my paw, “are a TEAM! And, if we
ever
want to get
out
of here, we better start
acting
like a team—
instead
of like a bunch of
sissy prima donnas
who each think we’re
better
than the others!”

By that time, they had all gotten to their feet, and the Brat seemed chastened by my words. They all did, in fact, but she more than the others.

“I’m sorry, guys,” the Brat said. “I got a bit hot under the collar, there. Shouldn’t have taken it out on you, but I was pretty damn mad about being duped.”

“Don’t take it out on yourself, Brat,” said Candy. “I’m the one who went nuts, being off my meds and everything. You never would have gotten pissy if I hadn’t lost my temper.”

“Same with me,” said PB, sheepishly. “I got such a short fuse that any little thing can set me off.”

“Never mind the apologizing!” I interjected. “That’s in the past. What matters now is the future.”

“You’re right, Cerb!” Muscle Girl said. “We need to bounce ideas off each other and figure out how to get out of here. And we can’t be too long about it, either— even
our
bodies are gonna give out soon if we don’t get some decent oxygen soon. Huddle up, everybody!”

MUSCLE GIRL

Once we got our heads screwed on again and concentrated on what we needed to do, it was easy. You get five female superheroes inside a hole in the ground, each of them stronger than a whole army of men, and the solution is obvious:
punch
our way out…

CANDY GIRL

Hey, I’m not
that
strong, all right? At best, I can only lift my
own
weight, let alone the kind of numbers you guys can bench-press…

MUSCLE GIRL

We’re
getting
to that, Candy.

CANDY GIRL

Sorry.

MUSCLE GIRL

As I was saying, each of us was going to fly on her own and punch out her own personal tunnel…

THE BRAT

We needed some alone time, especially me. The exception was Candy, owing to the fact that she’s more earthbound than the rest of us, so she went back to the entrance and tried to cut her way through.

CANDY GIRL

No problem. I focused the laser from my power ring on one spot of the rock wall, and it gave, easy. Duh! Why didn’t I think of that
before
?

MUSCLE GIRL

Who’s
telling
this story, here? I thought it was
my
turn.

CERBERUS

We each had a turn already, MG. Now we’re telling the last part of it together.

MUSCLE GIRL

Okay. Just wanted to be clear…

CERBERUS

Good. So then we emerged from the ground at around the same time, a little battered and bruised, but safe and healthy, like we wanted to be.

POWER BUNNY

Easy for
you
to say. You can move faster than us ‘cause you’re
smaller
, and you were already out and done when the rest of us—

CERBERUS

No bitching, please, PB. That was what got us in trouble before
.
Remember
?

POWER BUNNY

Oh, yeah. Forgot that.

CANDY GIRL

Anyway, when we got out, there was one thing we all had on our mind.
Revenge.

MUSCLE GIRL

Fortunately, we came out from the hole near the spot where Petra had parked her spaceship for the villains’ shindig, almost within walking distance of it. But we didn’t walk. We flew.

CANDY GIRL

Again, you’re overgeneralizing. I ran. I needed to save my superpowers for the fight ahead. My ring was running low on power.

MUSCLE GIRL

The
point
is, we were able to approach them unobserved. But, as soon as we entered with our fists clenched and our teeth bared, they took notice.

CANDY GIRL

It wasn’t a fair fight, by any means. Scylla and Charybdis spotted me and tried to summon up some spells to stop me, but I blasted them into another dimension with the rays from my ring. Won’t hear from them for a long time, I hope.

MUSCLE GIRL

Petra blazed some curses at me and tried to wrestle me down, but a left hook and a right cross and one more in the belly from me, and she was out for good.