Used to Be: The Kid Rapscallion Story (3 page)

And that brings me back to the moment where capes and cowls and the public decided to quit each other.

9/fucking/11.

Look, I’m not saying the public being mad at the cape and cowl community was completely misplaced, but the public fundamentally misunderstands how all of this works, so let me explain it: the cops take on street crime, the capes take on the capes, and the intelligence community takes on terrorists. It’s really that simple. There’s some crossover, of course, but on the inside, that’s how we break it down. If you’re a superhero and you start going after guys who knock over convenience stores, the cops are going to get pissed at you because they sure as shit aren’t equipped to handle Jazzmin or Qandy Qane & A-Bell. I don’t blame them for getting mad, either, because we get pissed when the NSA starts going after villains.

Everything has its own place.

Everyone does, too.

2000

1

TRANSCRIPT FROM
TARNISHED LEGACY: THE SECRET LIVES OF CAPES

Season 1, Episode 5 (S01E05): “Kid Rapscallion”

BACK FROM COMMERCIAL BREAK

NARRATOR (V.O.)

After saving Los Angeles from Mr. Monster, Kid Rapscallion decided to end his time as Rapscallion’s sidekick and pass a sidekick’s final rite of passage by going solo. After fielding offers from multiple cities looking to welcome a new hero, Kid signed a contract with Las Vegas to become the city’s signature protector. Records from the Mayor’s office show that Kid’s deal was for three years, with an annual gratuity of $750,000.

The city took immediately to its newest hero, ready, willing, and able to put the dark matter of the Five of Clubs behind them. In his first week in Las Vegas alone, Kid visited nearly 100 different classrooms, 30 boardrooms, 20 casinos, every police and fire precinct in the city, every hospital, and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where he met the young journalist student who would play a critical role in his life over the next six years, Nancy Cathall.

NANCY CATHALL

I met Kid Rapscallion before I ever met Jason Kitmore, if that makes sense. It was July of 2000 and I was in between my sophomore and junior years. I was on campus all summer, working an internship at KLV-TV, and I met Jas-I met Kid when he came in to talk to our class about the superhero’s perspective on the reporter/hero dynamic.

PROFESSOR MICHAEL SIL

Nancy was a … very good student. Not top of the class but closer to the top than the bottom. She was — and I feel slightly uncomfortable saying this but in journalism, this is a reality — she was incredibly photogenic. A face made for delivering the public news about mall closings and weather delays. We had already talked, at that point, about whether her best career options were going to be as a desk reader or weather reader. Now, I say this as a firm compliment, mind you, Nancy knew that her best asset was her beauty, but she also had a … an energetic personality that drew people to her. Kid Rapscallion was no different.

JASON KITMORE / KR

(old interview from 2007 comic book convention)

God, she was so hot I just kept coming back to her in the crowd. Well, crowd, there were maybe 25, 30 students in the room, so I don’t know if it was a crowd, but it was a full room, yeah, a full room. Anyway, Nancy sat in the third row, second seat on the right, but as far as I was concerned, it was the center of the room. I couldn’t get enough of her.

NANCY CATHALL

(smiling)

He was hot, I’m not going to lie. That red suit with the black and white stripes down one side? What can I say, it worked.

KIRA ENDRICH

Yes, he was an attractive young man, and he and Nancy connected instantly. You could see it within fifteen minutes that he was the kind of guy who would go home with any girl at the bar he wanted, and she was the kind of girl who would go home with any guy she wanted. It was inevitable, I suppose, that there was an attraction between them, but this was a class, you know? He was our guest and was supposed to be talking to us about how heroes viewed the media and here he and Nancy were making eyes at one another. It was not professional.

NANCY CATHALL

I knew some of my classmates — Kira, mostly — didn’t like it, but at the time, my thinking was that, as a reporter, it’s my job to get the story. Obviously, someone like Kira was much smarter than me, and my thinking — at the time, mind you — was that if she was going to use her brains, I should use my … um, my beauty. (coughs) That was then, I thought that. Of course, she looks much better now than she did then, so maybe we’ve both moved a bit towards the other’s position. Looking back to then, though, I can see why Kira was less than happy with my connection with Kid.

JASON KITMORE / KR

(old interview from 2007 comic book convention)

Was I using her? (deep breath, deep sigh) I would say we were using each other.

NANCY CATHALL

He said that? He really said that? (Expletive) him. If I was using him, I’d be sitting where Kira “High and Mighty” Endrich was sitting right now, spewing conservative (expletive) on American News Channel. No, I loved Jason. It’s why I stopped being a reporter. I … (sighs) … I couldn’t do it. (takes a moment, regains composure) Look, every single reporter who covers a cape knows there’s two Holy Grail stories: you catch the hero being a crook or you figure out their secret identity, and I knew Jason Kitmore was Kid Rapscallion before anyone in the Vegas media. Anyone. Especially before Miss ANC, but unlike her, I just could not go public with it. It would have ruined him. Not every story needs to be told, you know?

KIRA ENDRICH

The public deserves to know the real people beneath the masks. I won’t apologize for outing him.

(off-screen interviewer asks: “Not even after what happened to Fake Out?”

I will not apologize for outing the secret identities of Kid Rapscallion, Fake Out, or any of the other thirty-two heroes and villains I’ve revealed for who they are to the American public that believed in them and was let down by them. The public deserves to know who these people are. We just pretended for sixty years that it was none of our business, and the fact that Nancy Cathall knew Jason Kitmore was Kid Rapscallion and didn’t go public with that information tells you why she’s waiting tables at the Grand.

(off-screen interviewer says: “She’s a general manager at the Grand.”

Whatever. She got it the same way she got Kid’s identity: by spreading her legs.

2

“So, in closing, I’d like to thank Professor Sil for allowing me to speak to you. I want to leave you with this … I would ask you to remember that heroes are people, too. When I go home, I take off this bolo mask, put away these batons, and step out of this uniform, and I’m just a normal guy. Just like you. I might heat up leftovers in the microwave for dinner. I might be going on a date. I might be gay. Or an alien. Or visiting my sick father in the hospital. The point is that heroes need time off, too, just to be normal. Like you. That fight with Mr. Monster last month where I saved LA? Why do you think you didn’t see me in public for six weeks? Yeah, yeah, I know the story I read in the papers this morning that said I wasn’t in public because I was negotiating where to go after leaving Rapscallion. How many of you go back to your dorms or fraternities and sit around in sweat pants, eating Cheetos, and watching
Jurassic Park
on DVD? You need that ‘you time’ to help replenish the energy you spend as students and as reporters. Heck, when it comes right down to it, I might even be enrolled here as a student. If nothing, else, we’re pretty much the same. Okay, maybe you’ve never been to space, and maybe you’ve never been to 1963, but we’re both stepping away from our parents — or mentor — to live on our own for the first time, right? And I bet, just like me, you’re ready to be your own person, to make your own way in the world. Thank you for your time.”

3

He shakes every hand.

It has been a long week for Kid Rapscallion, visiting schools and police departments and hospitals and churches and community groups and business leaders and now, finally, it’s Friday afternoon and he just wants some time to cut loose, but he knows the deal. Frank has always stressed to him the importance of interacting with the public, of creating and crafting and nurturing a public persona that people could believe in.

So he shakes every hand from every college student in the room, from every professor who had come in to listen, from every university big shot who rolled in just for a photo op. He keeps his interactions brief and friendly and banal.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I am looking forward to serving the people of this community.”

“I’m sorry, but I make it a point not to discuss politics.”

“Las Vegas was always my first choice.”

“I’d be happy to.”

“What I do isn’t any more important than what cops or firemen or soldiers do. They’re the real heroes.”

“No, I’m not the guy who sits in the back row of your history class. Or am I?”

When he was sixteen, which was two years ago by the calendar but several lifetimes ago by his experience, Francis gave him lessons on smiling and shaking hands and eye contact and what kinds of embracing was acceptable in public. Jason hated it, thought it was pointless, but he did it because it was the only way to get Francis to take another step on the road to letting Jason be an actual hero and not just a kid who trained with a hero inside a very large mansion on the outskirts of San Francisco.

When it’s all over and Professor Sil has reminded Kid Rapscallion, “I had a good relationship with Gentleman Beaneater in Boston back in the ‘70s. If you’re looking for a reporter you can trust, that is. We worked the Gosford case together,” Vegas’ newest hero left the classroom and turns left to avoid the crowd on his right.

“Lost?” a beautiful young blonde asks, leaning her back against the hallway wall as she held her books before her, under her breasts. Nancy Cathall has spent hours deciding on her wardrobe for this event and had decided to go retro, trying to look like a 1950s schoolgirl, like that Olivia Whoever slut in
Grease
.

“Looking for the exit, yeah,” Kid Rapscallion says with a weary smile.

“Does it hurt?” Nancy asks, pushing off the wall.

“What?”

“Having to smile all day?”

Kid laughs. “It does.”

Nancy takes a step towards him and shows him her index finger, then presses it against his costume, right in the middle of his chest. “Is that … kevlar?”

“Is that what you really want to know?”

Nancy pulls her finger back, then steps back. “I guess people are always working you, yeah?”

“And you’re not?”

“Oh, I’m definitely working you,” she smiles, “but I’m going to be honest about it.”

Kid holds up his hands. “Look, Miss …”

“You remember,” she challenges him.

“Miss Nancy Cathall,” Kid says, another honest smile coming to his face, “I’ve never been one of these heroes who had a working relationship with a reporter, and I don’t think … oh, hell, you want honest?”

“For now.”

“You’re not big enough,” he admits. “You’re a student and if I’m going to win the trust of the public, I’m not going to do that giving exclusive stories to the college newspaper. No offense.”

Nancy scowls, but just for a moment before coming up with a different approach. “I get that,” she says, re-taking a step closer to him, “and I suppose there’s nothing in this for you. That’s what Sil says is important, that both sides are getting something out of the hero/reporter relationship.”

Kid Rapscallion nods. “Trust, too. I need to know you’re not going to sensationalize the private stuff.”

Nancy nods, mimicking his action to build a bond between them. “That’s what I’m going to do, then,” she promises. “I’m going to find out something that you don’t want the public to know about, I’m going to bring it to you instead of publishing it, and then we can talk.”

As she says this, Nancy pushes the books beneath her breasts up slightly, drawing his eyes to his sweater.

Kid laughs, and shakes his head. “I spent a week recovering on Bellator Island with the Amazons, Miss Cathall. Not that I don’t appreciate the effort.”

Pursing her lips, Nancy doesn’t give up. “Can I ask you a favor?”

“Why not?” he asks. “Everyone else in this city has.”

“There’s a pool among the BJ majors —”

“You can major in that?”

“Broadcast Journalism, smart ass,” she smiles, swiveling her shoulders back and forth just slightly because even if he’d spent a week with the Amazons, that doesn’t mean her breasts weren’t still awesome. “We’ve got a pool going. First person to get an exclusive interview with you wins the pot.”

“How much is it?”

“Who cares? I’m rich. I don’t need the money.”

Kid rubs his face around the red bolo mask. “I’m tired,” he says. “It’s been a long week. I’ve given a thousand interviews all over town. What can you possibly want to know that, a) hasn’t already been covered, and b) that you’d think I want to talk about? I’m not giving you my origin story, I’m not talking about why I left Rapscallion, and I’m not going to tell you about whether Belle Flower and I are still dating.”

Nancy smiles and let her right shoulder fall into the near wall, cocking her head just slightly to let her blonde hair fall away from her neck, exposing it to him. “I don’t want you to let me interview you,” she says. “I want you to give it to Lazlo.”

“Who’s Lazlo?”

“The gorgeous guy who asked you if you thought abortions should be illegal.”

Kid shrugs. “Okay, sure. I’ll give him the interview. But … why? He seemed like kind of an idiot.”

“He is an idiot.”

“Then … because he’s an idiot?”