Sliced Bread 2: The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread

2011-02-21T15:46:00.000-05:00

If anyone's still keeping an eye on this site, I'd like to thank you for doing so. News: I've started a new website at matthewe.com where I have some information about the new story I'm writing. (It is a superhero story, but not set in the same world as Sliced Bread 2.)

I plan on posting there regularly and I hope you find it of interest.

(Plus I put a page on the new site that acts as a table of contents for Sliced Bread 2, which will streamline the process of rereading the thing, in case anybody wants to do that.)

2005-08-30T21:51:00.000-04:00

When I started writing this thing, I did it for several reasons:

1. I wanted to write something long, and finish it.
2. I wanted to get into the habit of writing regularly.
3. I thought it would be fun to write something in blog form.
4. For reasons that most of you would probably find pretty strange, I believed that I was running out of time in which I could tell this particular story effectively, and wanted to get on with it.

I never had the idea that I was just going to keep writing it indefinitely. I was going to tell the story until it was over, and then stop. Which is what I've done.

As far as what happens next in the story... I have some ideas about the future of the superheroes of Empire City, but they aren't interesting enough to post here. No idea what Dennis and Ingrid get up to, and if they were real people, they'd prefer it that way, so that's fine. I won't say I'm never going to write about any of these people again, but I would have to have an idea for them that I really wanted to write about, and I am not seeking out such ideas specifically.

If anyone is still jonesing for superhero-related blogs, I linked to a few on the sidebar. And there are other good ones out there - the Faceless Henchwoman, the Flash, others.

For that matter, one of the things I'm going to be doing more of, now that Sliced Bread 2 is done, is updating my other website, here. All my future superhero-related thoughts will certainly show up there.

In addition, I owe some writing to these people and these people and these people. So that'll be fun.

The real reason why I'm posting here is to thank everyone reading this. All of you who did me the great honour of reading something I wrote, who left comments, who told their friends to check it out, who linked to me... I really appreciate it. I had fun, and I hope everyone else did too.

(And if this is the first time you've ever seen this website, feel free to use the date-links in the sidebar to navigate through the story and see what I'm talking about.)

Thanks again,

Matthew

2005-08-29T19:54:00.000-04:00

...With great power comes great responsibility...

...They seek him here, they seek him there...

...Where's the streetwise Hercules to fight the rising odds?...

...It's not a normal world...

...When criminals in this world appear
And break the laws that they should fear
And frighten all who see or hear
The call goes up both far and near
For Underdog!...

...Someone has to save the world...

...Clark Kent--now there was a real gent...

...In the chill of the night, at the scene of the crime
Like a streak of light, he arrives just in time...

...Yes, evil comes in many forms, whether it be a man-eating cow or Joseph Stalin, but you can't let the package hide the pudding! Evil is just plain bad! You don't cotton to it. You gotta smack it in the nose with the rolled-up newspaper of goodness! Bad dog! Bad dog!...

...In brightest day, in blackest night
No evil shall escape my sight
Let those who worship evil's might
Beware my power: Green Lantern's light...

...He'd come in high, like Jetboy, like Black Eagle, like a fucking ace...

...When there's evil on the attack
You can rest knowing they got your back
'Cause when the world needs heroes on patrol--
Teen Titans! Go!...

...It's okay--Buffy's a superhero!...

...Mr. Trouble never hangs around
When he hears this mighty sound
"Here I come to save the day!"
That means that Mighty Mouse is on the way!...

...Your identity is your most valuable possession. Protect it. And if anything goes wrong, use your powers. [...] Remember the bad guys, on those shows you used to watch on Saturday mornings? Well, these guys are not like those guys. They won't exercise restraint because you're children. They will kill you, if they get the chance. Do not give them that chance...

...Everybody loves a hero. People line up for them. Cheer them. Scream their names, and years later they'll tell how they stood in the rain for hours just to get a glimpse of the one who told them to hold on a second longer. I believe there's a hero in all of us, that keeps us honest, gives us strength, makes us noble, and finally allows us to die with pride...

...The Legion's not twenty guys with corny names and costumes! It is everyone across the galaxy who has made any kind of sacrifice to take back the future!...

...Who knows what vengeance Superweasel will take against defilers of our planet? Beware, polluters! Someday Superweasel may strike again!...

..."What do you expect to do about me?"
"What I ever do with criminals and destructive forces like you. I'll follow you. [...] Wherever you choose to vent your spleen I'll be there to stop you. It's as simple as that."
"To the rim of the Universe?"
"[...] I'll follow you to the ends of Creation [...] and I don't suppose there could be a nobler mission for a superman."...

...The point is, she took care of it. Bingo, and the problem that had been tormenting me for the better part of a year just melted away as if it had never existed. You want to talk about superheroes, you need go no further than that, in my opinion...

..."This is not the question," he said. "If he's like a cat or a spider or a fucking wolverine, if he's huge, if he's tiny, if he can shoot flames or ice or death rays or Vat 69, if he turns into fire or water or stone or India rubber. He could be a Martian, he could be a ghost, he could be a god or a demon or a wizard or a monster. Okay? It doesn't matter [...] How? is not the question. What? is not the question," Sammy said.
"The question is why."
"The question is why."...

***

***

Look! Up in the sky!

2005-08-29T00:08:00.000-04:00

Asskicker laughed, holding me out in front of him. "I better keep him away from me," he said. "Look at him, he looks like he's gonna piss himself."

"I want to know where he's got Caroline," Underhand said. "Then, whatever else interesting you can find."

Nametaker nodded and focused his eyes on me. "Something weird here," he said. I was wondering if I could feel anything in my mind as he read me. I couldn't. "Where the hell's his mind?" Nametaker said, and slapped me across the face. "What are you doing?"

"I'm not doing anything," I said.

"Who the hell is Marcy?" he said. And then his eyes widened. "What are you doing? Stop - get out of my mind! Get her out! Oh God! I remember - this all happened before! I remember this! Get her out!" He flung himself down and started pounding his head on the floor. "Get her out! Get her out! Get her out! Get her out! Get her out! Get her out! Get her out! Get her out! Get her out! Get her out! Get her out! Get her out! Get her out! Get her out! Get her out! Get her out! Get her out! Get her out! Get her out! Get her out! Get her out! Get her out! Get her out! Get her out! Get her out! Get her out! Get her out! Get her out! Get her out! Get her out!Get her out!" Slamming his head on the floor to the rhythm of his own screaming.

And I didn't have deja vu any more! Yay! Man, it felt good. The whole thing made a bit of sense; the supervillain screws up by running into the mental debris left over from when a superhero screwed up. I guess the Marcy fragments were a lot more dangerous to another telepath than they were for me.

But then Asskicker threw me across the room. "What did you do to him?" I banged off the opposite wall and fell to the floor. Asskicker strode over, grabbed a fistful of my chest and whammed me up against the wall again. "You little shit, I'm gonna twist you in half!"

He wrapped his other hand around my waist, and started to twist, and then

BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM

Asskicker's grip relaxed. He coughed. And fell on me. We slid to the floor. I pulled myself out from under Asskicker's inert body. Underhand was standing over him, gunsmoke wafting from one of the fingers of his artificial hand. He pointed the gun-finger at me.

"Winchell!" he called to one of his goons. "Take this fleck of shit to the room where we're holding the girl and let them both go. Make it snappy." Then he turned to me. "Listen to me. If Caroline has an eyelash out of place, if she's had the head knocked off one of her zits, if anything, I am going to hunt you down, your friends, your family, everyone you've ever met, and I am gonna personally rape you all to death."

"She'll be fine," I said, climbing painfully to my feet. "It'll be like all this never happened."

"It better," Underhand said as I slung my backpack over my shoulder and followed Winchell out of the room. "And you two," he continued to his other thugs, pointing at the crumpled forms of Asskicker and Nametaker, "get this crap out of here."

Winchell hustled up some hallways and down some stairs, and I struggled to keep up with him. He stopped and hammered on a door, and someone inside opened it.

"What?" the guy inside said.

"It's all off. Let her go," Winchell said.

"What? Why?"

"All kinds of shit just happened. Let her go."

"Jesus," the guy said, and shut the door.

Winchell and I continued down the hallway, and he opened the next door. It was a big ballroom-type place, with mirrors all over the walls, ceiling and floor, and giant spotlights shining all around. I shielded my eyes. The far wall had some french doors leading outside, and the near wall had Ingrid, being lowered to the floor on some chains. I have to admit, this was a pretty good Greyghost-trap. God knows how many guys were on the other side of those mirrors with guns.

The left side of Ingrid's face was all bruised and puffy, and she favored one leg as she stood. She looked totally pissed off. Once Winchell unchained her, I said, "Come on, let's get out of here."

"Before we go I want to fuck some people's shit up," she said.

"We're really short on time, though," I said. "C'mon." I pointed to the french doors.

We started across the ballroom floor, and Winchell said, "Hey!"

"It's okay," I called back. "We're just gonna go out this way."

"What's up?" Ingrid said.

"I'll explain as we go," I told her.

Outside the ballroom was a little patio, and beyond that, grass and little trees and graveled walkways and rolling hills. From what I remembered of Cole's maps, we'd be okay at least until we got the far edge of the walkways.

"You look like hell," Ingrid said. "Look at all the blood on your shirt."

"Not all of it's mine," I said, getting the Discman out of my backpack. "From here until we're off Underhand's property, could you walk right behind me and don't step anywhere I don't step?"

"Why - what - ?"

"Part of his security includes a minefield," I said, and turned on the Discman.

Super-Power 5: Minesweeper

When I called Itzhak and told him I needed a mine detector camouflaged in a Discman, and gave him the specs of the mines Underhand was using, he said it was a problem, because the mines were not only radio-armed but also radio-jammed to prevent detection. So I said, well, what can you do, and he said he could give me a jamming detector that'd let me know how many mines there were in my immediate vicinity. Say, within six feet or so.

This was perfect, because it made things more like the game.

I've played the Minesweeper game that they give away free with Windows for a long time. A long time. I'm not bored with it; I just keep playing. I've even hunted down all the variants - Minesweeper with triangular grids, Minesweeper with hexagonal grids, Minesweeper where you can have more than one mine in a space, even Minesweeper where you don't know what the hell shape or size any area is. Mastered them all.

This situation was a little harder than the game, in that:

1. Anything in real life is different from sitting in front of a computer screen and flicking your thumb on a button.
2. In the game, when you click on a space where there are no mines anywhere around, it'll show you the entire extent of the safe area right away. In real life, nothing shows you anything.

On the other hand, it was a little easier than the game, in that:

1. In the game, you have to find all the mines. But all I had to do here was find one safe way across.
2. In the game, you start with no safe place at all. Here and now, I was already standing on a real big safe place. Well, relatively safe.

"Well then why the hell are we going this way?" Ingrid screamed. "Why don't we just go out the way you came in?"

"The thing about that," I said as we made our way along, "is that we can't let anybody follow us. As soon as they think it's safe they'll want to grab us both and use us as hostages against Greyghost. I want us to disappear before that happens, and that means we have to leave in a way they don't expect. For one thing, I'm sure they've got some kind of tracking thing in the car I drove here in." I had the poker chip dispenser in my other hand, and flipped a chip onto the grass everyplace I figured there was a mine. Conveniently, Itzhak had rigged this thing so that the track display on the Discman showed me the number of mines within a seven-foot radius.

"You're crazy," she said. "I thought I was supposed to be the one with the stupid plans."

"It was a pretty stupid plan," I said, "but this part of it's solid. I can absolutely do this."

In fact, it went pretty smoothly. We didn't blow up. There was only one part, where Ingrid and I were staring at a cloud of poker chips I had scattered around, and I said, "As far as I can tell, our best bet is to walk through the middle of that."

"No way."

I looked at it again, and thought. It was the old 4-6-4 pattern. Of course we had to walk through it. There was no other way for it to work. "Come on," I said, and walked.

She gasped, but when nothing happened to me, followed.

It only took us a couple of minutes to get to the fence. I cracked open the Discman and took out another little gizmo of Itzhak's. I threw it at the fence. It sizzled and sparked for a moment, then stopped. Then I took out another little gizmo of Itzhak's: miniature wire cutters. I snipped us a little hole in the fence and we were away.

"I was half expecting there to be six guys watching us cross the minefield, calling in our location to someone in the house," I said. "We may be ahead of their train of thought. Or maybe they're just smart enough not to let us see them."

"Where to now?" Ingrid said.

I pointed up the road. "That way, and first right. We should probably run."

We did.

We were halfway to the right turn. Ingrid said, "I can't run any more," and ran some more.

"Me neither," I said, and ran some more.

We got to the car Ron left for us, and I tossed the keys to Ingrid. "You drive," I said. "I have to make some calls." Still panting, we piled into the car.

"Where to?" she said.

"City. Don't let anyone follow us."

I called Nick and told him we were clear and that he and Suchit should get out of there. Then I called Greyghost.

"Hey. Ingrid and I are driving away from Underhand's now."

"Are you all right?"

"Mostly. Listen. Before you go pound Underhand into the floor. Rank Frank called me this afternoon. He tipped me off that Underhand was really Rafhaiel Thing."

"Yes?" And then: "Mm."

"Yeah. So you might want to hold off on going after him."

"You know better than that."

"I know. But be careful."

"Mm."

He hung up, and I clicked off. Ingrid said, "What was all that about?"

"One of Greyghost's informants told me today who Underhand really was. Which didn't help us out much, because we already knew. But it was interesting anyway, because Underhand has lots of other powerful enemies, and if Greyghost's guy knew, it was only a matter of time until they knew."

"So?"

"So, if we really want to get rid of Underhand, all we have to do is wait, and some hit man will take care of it for us. But of course Greyghost isn't going for that."

"Well, no."

"I don't think it'll matter, though," I said. "I don't think Greyghost is going to get there in time to bring Underhand in. I think he'll be dead when he gets there. Which is one of the reasons I wanted us to get out of there so fast; we don't want to get caught up in all of that."

"Uh huh. Well, Victor's pretty fast. Usually if he wants to save somebody, he does."

"Yeah, but this is different. This is a criminal mastermind who knows Greyghost's secret identity."

She almost took her hands off the wheel. "So you think he'd just let him die? Jesus, Dennis!"

"No, no. He's gonna try his best, I know that. I'm just saying the universe won't let it work out that way. I think Underhand dealt himself the Queen of Spades when he found out Greyghost's secret identity. He might as well have tied a toe tag on himself right then."

"Is this your hexagon thing again?"

"My what? Oh. Yeah. Yeah, kinda."

We didn't talk much the rest of the drive.

I had arranged to meet Greyghost and Cruickshank at the warehouse where Greyghost and I handed out the penphones to all the other Empire City superheroes. Cruickshank was there when we arrived. His jaw dropped when we limped in.

"What the hell happened to you two?" he said.

"The usual stuff," I told him.

Ingrid looked around our ratty surroundings and picked out a tarp in the corner to collapse on. "Wake me when Victor gets here," she said.

It turned out that Greyghost was about forty-five minutes behind us. He was looking bloody and charred himself as he straggled in. "Is she all right?" he said about Ingrid before saying anything else.

"I'm fine," she said, fighting her way up into a sitting position. "What happened?"

"Two helicopter gunships attacked the mansion as I was arriving. I tried to get Rafhaiel out of there, but he was dead before I could do anything."

"Hold on a second," I said. I was never a big comic book guy, but I've read enough to know what kind of a deal this was. "Did you actually see him dead? You personally saw his corpse and verified beyond doubt that it was him and he was dead?"

"Mm? Yes."

"Okay, then," I said.

"All right," Cruickshank said. "Now that that's all over. Let's get the hell out of this place."

"Just a second," I said. "There's one more thing." I faced Greyghost. "I'm quitting my job. I can't do it any more."

He looked startled. "I think you've proved that you can."

I shook my head. "I didn't realize it until this happened to Ingrid. But the superhero world isn't a place for human beings. It grabs us and won't let us go and chews us up and eventually it'll probably kill us. You can handle it. I can't. And I won't. I'm glad for all the time I spent working for you, and I'm proud of it, but I did what I could do and now I'm finished. And I'm leaving while I still can."

"Dennis..."

"Victor. It's just not safe working for you."

"So what are you going to do?" Cruickshank said.

"I don't know, exactly. I'm going to go find some medium-small city, someplace with, like, a Double-A baseball team, and I'm going to rest there for a while. Then eventually I'll find a job, and I'll get a life that doesn't come from some damn comic book plot." Taking a deep breath - here we go - I looked over at Ingrid. "Do you want to come with me?"

There was a pause while she considered exactly what might be involved in that question and her answer to it. For a second she looked at Greyghost. Then she grinned and said, "Yeah, okay. Let's try that."

I reached out my arm, and she used it to pull herself up. We said our goodbyes to Greyghost and Cruickshank, and limped away. Ingrid and I leaned on each other all the way out of the warehouse and into the evening sunlight.

2005-08-26T00:35:00.000-04:00

"I," I said, "am going to use my super-powers."

"What--you're going to fly in and save her?" Cruickshank said unbelievingly.

"No. I can't do that any more. You know that."

"Then what are you going to do?"

"Obviously," I said with dignity, "you haven't been paying attention the last couple of years."

"Dennis. This is important. If you have a plan, I can call Bob and Jack and--"

"No! No superheroes. For this plan to work everything has to go just right, and I don't want some mask-wearing son of a bitch screwing it up."

"Dennis."

"I know. Look, Ingrid's my friend too, and it's going to be my ass on the line if this plan doesn't work. But it will work. You have to trust me."

Long pause.

"Mm. What's first?"

"Uh. Well, basically we've got a couple of hours. That might change if Underhand calls, but right now I'm going to take half an hour to start setting things up. So for the moment just keep yourself available."

Then I began to exercise my super-powers. First, I got all the information together I was going to need - Cole's stuff, everything in the Underhand folders, maps, surveillance records.

Super-Power 1: Filing

Once I had done that, I fired up some project software on the computer and started typing all the stuff I had to do into it. In just a couple of minutes I had a very helpful Gantt chart, and with one eye on the dependencies and time factors I was able to move on to other things in a more organized way.

Super-Power 2: Dicking Around on the Computer

After that it was time to delegate. I called Itzhak and gave him some brief technical specs. I called Cruickshank and Nick and Suchit into the office, gave them some car keys and told them what I needed from them. I called Ron and asked him for a favor.

Super-Power 3: Working the Phones
As a sample, here's the conversation with Ron.

"I need you to do something for me. It's life and death. Can you get away from work?"

"If it's life and death? Sure. What's up?"

"Too long a story. Here's what I want you to do. Bring your bike to the corner of Orchard and Fourth. I'll be there with a car. You throw your bike in the trunk and drive the car to a place on a map I give you. Leave the car there, get your bike out of the trunk and ride it home. Clear?"

"Sort of. Really life and death?"

"Really."

"Because, listen. If it's that bad, I could call Linnet. See, she's kind of... I think she could help."

"No. No way."

"No, I mean it," Ron said. "I think I should call her."

"Ron. I don't want Linnet involved in this. I have reasons. Okay?"

"But--"

"Listen to me. If you call Linnet and she gets mixed up in this crap, I will personally hunt you down and shove you up your own ass. No Linnet. Got that?"

"All right, all right."

"I mean it."

"I said all right."

"All right."

"Be there in ten minutes. What do you want me to do with the car keys - leave them in the car?"

"What?"

"The keys for the car you're giving me."

"Oh. No, you hang on to them. I have my own set."

"Okay, see you."

"See you. And thanks."

It was a little after that that the phone rang. When I answered it, the voice on the other end sounded like a glacier cracking in half. "I want to speak to Victor Scigrave."

"Just a moment, please," I said. Wow, I thought. Is that Underhand?

I called Greyghost to the phone. We exchanged glances, and he put it on speaker. "This is Mr. Scigrave," he said.

"My name is Underhand," the voice said. "You've been pissing me off for years now, so I know you know me."

"Yes, Rafhiel."

There was a pause.

"So you found out. You know, I always thought you were just some pussy artist, but you've caused a lot of trouble for me. That's over."

"Mm."

"I've got a little girl here named Ingrid Montanez. If you want her to be alive tomorrow, come alone to my place. Six o'clock tonight. You turn yourself over to me, I let her go. You don't, I kill her for a long time."

"Six o'clock."

Underhand hung up.

"Perfect," I said. "We'll be finished long before six. I wonder why he set it so late? That gives you hours of time to try to screw him."

"That's why," Greyghost said. "He's ready for me now, but wants me to think he isn't. What part do I play in your plan?"

"You are going to clean up Underhand once I've got Ingrid out of there. What you should do now is go up there, somewhere not too near his house, and wait for me to call you. Expect to hear from me around--" I checked my Gantt chart "--around quarter to five. If you don't get a call by five, use your judgment."

Greyghost stared at me for a moment, like there was something he didn't understand. Finally he said, "Mm. Good luck, Dennis. Be careful," and left.

I waited around a while longer. Threw a couple of things in my backpack - some water, various cellphones, the poker chips - and kept waiting.

Finally the courier showed up with a package from Itzhak. I opened it up, took out a Discman, and planked it in my backpack. I was now ready.

But before I got out of the office, the phone rang again. It was Rank Frank, one of Greyghost's informants.

"Dennis. My man."

"Hey, Frank. Listen, I'm in a bit of a rush."

"Oh, you'll want to sit down and put your feet up for this one. I got something you want."

"The guy you and the Ghost have been hard after? I got his name for you."

"Underhand's name?"

"His name exactly."

"Let's hear it."

"Rafhaiel... Thing."

"Interesting," I said, and meant it.

"You know who that is?" Frank asked.

"Yeah, I do," I said. "That's good information, Frank. That's helpful. How'd you find it?"

"Dennis. I don't ask you what you do with my pearls of wisdom, do I? Please do not insult me..."

"Okay, sorry. How about this. When did your source find out?"

"Shit. Must have been yesterday. I guess."

"Thanks, Frank."

"Dennis. I want double for this one."

"You'll get triple," I told him, and we signed off.

I looked at the timetable to see if there was any way we could tighten it up. There really wasn't.

I took my stuff, got into one of the company cars, not one of the ones I liked, and headed to Rafhaiel Thing's mansion. As I drove, it occurred to me that I had a pretty good idea what had happened to Dennis2... I shrugged and mentally changed subjects.

I hadn't been perfectly honest with Greyghost about why it was necessary to follow my plan rather than one of his. Again, he probably could have gotten Ingrid out of there alive all by himself. But the problem is that he's a superhero, and things tend to work out okay for him. And in this case that means that he and Ingrid probably would have ended up getting back together because of this episode. Not because Ingrid has no free will; hell, she has enough will for any three people. Just because things tend to work out for Greyghost.

And the same goes for any other superhero. They could all get her away from Underhand, probably. But they can't get her out of the superhero world, and that's where she wants to be. I mean, if she wants to get back together with Greyghost, that's cool. But it shouldn't be because of the actions of a freaking criminal mastermind.

This all has to do with this sense I keep having, that some parts of superhero-reality are straight out of comic-book plots, that they're too artificial and contrived to be real. Like the hexagonal landscape in the Generic Fantasy World. Well, another thing that happens in comic-book plots is that the hero's girlfriend gets killed a lot. So even if Greyghost does save her, he isn't necessarily saving her. Or maybe this is the time he doesn't save her.

So I'm trying to deal with this by making it a little less superhero-ey and a little more real. I don't know. It's kind of a crazy idea, and it's a pretty thin rationale for me to be risking my life over. But then again, I have a good plan, and everything should work out okay.

I called Nick. "You guys in position?"

"All set. She's due in about ten minutes."

I checked my watch. "Good. That's about how far away I am from Underhand's place. Call me if there's a problem."

"Roger."

I clicked off.

These next parts I'm imagining. But it must have gone pretty much like this.

Ten minutes later, actress Caroline Noah turned left off Rafferty into the little winding lane leading to her condo complex. Behind her, Cruickshank pulled into the lane, drove halfway to the building, waited for her to get out of sight, and hauled his car around to block the entryway. He then pulled a lever on the dash that dropped a bunch of weights into place within the car, turning it into a pretty good roadblock. (Greyghost's carfleet kept a couple of these cars around, for just such an occasion. They're close to untowable.) Cruickshank stepped out of the car and headed for a nearby subway station, leaving a small traffic jam behind him. Among those whose cars were trapped in the entry lane were the two thugs Underhand employed to keep watch over his girlfriend.

One minute after that, Caroline Noah boarded the elevator that was to take her up to her floor. Suchit, who had been lurking around the corner, also made it onto this elevator. He pressed a button above Miss Noah's floor.

Seconds later, the elevator stopped, between the third and fourth floors. It wouldn't move. Probably someone tried to call security with the alarm button, or with the little emergency phone, but nobody was answering either of those. Probably some of the passengers tried to use a cellphone to call for help, but it wouldn't have worked, because Suchit had one of Itzhak's cellphone jammers in his pocket, and only Suchit had a cellphone that could place or receive calls through that kind of interference.

(I had said to Nick, "You know you've got the most important job, right? You've got to get the security guy in her building to shut the right elevator down at exactly the right time, and hold it there for about a half hour, no matter what happens. If you can't do that, the whole plan's shot. If she makes it to her apartment, the bugs and cameras there will pick her up, and we'll never convince Underhand we've kidnapped her."

"Easy," Nick assured me. "The company in that building is affiliated with ours. You'd be surprised how often we cooperate on shit like this. Well, not exactly like this. It'll be cake.")

One minute after that, I pulled up at the gatehouse in front of Underhand's mansion. Holy crap, it was impressive. Like a combination of Michael Jackson's place and an English country house. Guy had his own golf course. With peacocks on it. And a windmill. I was wondering where I had seen it before, and then I realized it was just my Marcy-related deja vu again.

I said to the guy at the gatehouse, "Could you please tell Mr. Thing that John Caruthers is here to see him?"

He talked on the phone for a second and waved me through.

I parked in front of the house, slung my backpack over my shoulder, and headed for the front door. Before I could get there, a whole batch of security guys landed on me. They searched me from head to toe, poked all through my backpack, and checked every inch of the car. Then two of them picked me up by the arms and carried me into a big front room.

Rafhaiel Thing was there. I recognized him from his picture.

"John Caruthers my ass," he said. "You're Dennis Relser. What the hell do you want?"

I was determined to be polite to him. Mostly because I didn't want him any more pissed off than he already was. But also because, screw him, I wasn't going to let him throw me off guard.

Super-Power 4: Not Getting Thrown Off Guard By People Insanely More Powerful Than Me

"Good afternoon, Mr. Thing. I'm here because of Ms. Montanez."

"Yeah? You know you're not going to live out the day, right?"

If only he knew.

"Mr. Thing, Ms. Montanez and I aren't really part of the struggle between you and Greyghost. You don't want us for anything. So I'm here to ask you to let my friend and I go home."

He sat down on a big leather couch. "Why should I?"

I pointed to a telephone. "You don't know about this yet, because probably nobody thinks anything important has happened, but if you call your security people, they'll tell you that they don't know where Caroline Noah is."

He was a big, mean-looking guy before, but now he became damn menacing. Like his eyes receded back into his head by a whole inch. He picked up the phone and muttered into it. After a minute he slammed it down and looked at me. "Well?"

I waggled a cellphone in the air. "If I don't place a call on this phone in the next half hour to my associates, telling them to let her go, Caroline Noah will be shot in the head as many times as it takes to kill her. I'll place that call as soon as Ms. Montanez and I are safely on our way out of here."

He gestured to the two guys to grab me again. They did. He loomed up over me. "Horseshit," he said. "You superheroes don't work like that."

Which was the whole crux of my plan. "You're right, Mr. Thing. They don't. But I'm not a superhero. I'm a guy who dicks around on the computer all day. And I want to take my friend home."

"Greyghost would never let you do this shit."

"Greyghost doesn't know about it. This is just me," I said, watching his eyeballs go farther and farther back into his head.

Then he relaxed. "So that's the deal, huh? Okay." And he punched me in the stomach as hard as he could.

I doubled over, and gasped, "What..."

He laughed like an earthquake. "We got almost a half hour to kill. You two walk out of here, I get Caroline back safe? You ain't gonna take that deal off the table just because I beat the shit out of you." And he smashed me across the face.

There were a couple more of those before I started laughing. I guess what I found funny was that, all along, while working for Greyghost, I had been against violence for two reasons:

1. It's unpleasant.
2. It doesn't get at the roots of the problems it tries to address.

And, now, finally, Underhand was proving me right:

1. I wasn't having any fun, and
2. By his own admission, Underhand wasn't solving any problems by pounding on me.

Maybe you had to be there.

Anyway, once I started laughing, he seemed to lose interest.

"You got some kind of proof for me?" he said.

I nodded, wiped the blood and snot off my face, and picked myself up. I called Suchit.

"Hey," he said.

"Hi," I said. "You got a picture?"

"Yup. It's perfect, too; you can't tell she's in an elevator at all. Didn't catch me shooting it or anything."

"Send it over."

"Sure. You okay?"

"Apparently I didn't plan for quite everything," I said. "But I think it's okay."

Seconds later he had sent me a picture file of Caroline Noah, sitting on the floor of an elevator, her head in her hands. It was indeed the perfect picture for my needs.

I showed it to Underhand, and said, "You can check with your security people that that's what she's wearing today."

He nodded and rubbed his knuckles. "So I'm supposed to just let you and the bitch go, is that it? Just trust you to make the call?"

"I'm trusting you too, Mr. Thing. I'm trusting you not to be some kind of Keyser Soze guy who'd rather kill everyone he loved than let anyone put pressure on him. Anyway, you can trust my word. I work for a superhero. Besides, we aren't really interested in hurting Miss Noah. She's never done anything to us."

Underhand nodded again, and said. "Still. I wanna handle it a different way." He stuck his fingers in his mouth and whistled.

Two supervillains entered the room. One was eight feet tall, wearing studs and leather all over, and built like an Olympic boxer. The other was smaller, thinner, with a black ninja suit.

Asskicker and Nametaker.

Oh crap.

I hadn't thought of them. The whole time I was making my stupid goddamn plan, I didn't think of them once. And Nametaker was a telepath. He'd be able to tell in two seconds that I was trying to pull a Mission Impossible on Underhand, and then I was dead, Ingrid was dead, maybe Greyghost was dead, Nick and Suchit and Cruickshank and Ron were eventually dead...

Underhand said, "Pry his head open. I want to see what's inside," and Asskicker picked me up by the scruff of my neck. Nametaker put his hands on my face...

I had really screwed the pooch this time.

2005-08-23T22:56:00.000-04:00

Every day, among the reports that come in to our computer system is a listing of recent crimes that were, or were suspected to be, committed by supervillains. So I was doing a bunch of things - reading that report, checking out some highly entertaining reports from Cole on Rafhaiel Thing's security, noodling around on the computer - when one item caught my eye.

A veterinarian was killed in his office and stuffed into his own filing cabinet. The vet's name was Ramirez, and that sounded familiar. Where did I know him from?

Maybe it was just deja vu. No. I really did know the name from somewhere.

Uuuhhhhhh! Oh, hell.

I checked back over previous days' reports. There it is, missed it the first time I read it. Yesterday, a guy named Wong was beaten to death by, probably, supervillains, in his house. Yikes.

I called Ingrid. No answer.

Greyghost and Cruickshank were plotting in the blue room. I yelled, "Greyghost!"

They came out. "What's up?" Cruickshank said.

"I think Ingrid's in trouble. I think Underhand's got her."

"How?"

"The first time I was John Caruthers, I talked to a guy named Wong at that Finnish bank. While I was there, Ingrid called me on my cell. She asked me to pick up her cat at the vet, and she did that thing where she makes you repeat back all the details. Well, Wong's dead and the vet's dead, both in the supervillain file, both in the last couple of days. And Ingrid doesn't answer her phone."

"Come on," Cruickshank said. "That's pretty thin. How's Wong supposed to remember all that crap about the vet, after all this time?"

"Because Nametaker is a telepath," Greyghost said, heading for the door. "He can read the faintest memories. Thing must be holding Ingrid at his mansion; it's the only piece of property he owns in his name in the city."

"Wait!" I said. I didn't know why I said it, but it seemed necessary. But he didn't wait.

"Jesus," Cruickshank said. "If he's got a telepath, and he's got Ingrid... hell, Ingrid knows everything about us."

"Greyghost, hold on!" I said. Still trying to figure out what I was going to say next.

"Dennis. It's Ingrid. I have no time."

"Take time. I have to think. Give me five minutes to think. It's important."

He stood by the door and folded his arms.

I whirled my chair around and thought about a bunch of things. I knew I only had five minutes, so I tried to discipline myself.

First. If Underhand had Ingrid, then presumably he'd use her to set a trap for Greyghost. Presumably it'd be a good trap, specially tailored for his powers. Therefore Greyghost shouldn't walk into it.

Second. If Greyghost doesn't go walk into an Underhand trap, what do we do instead? I thought about Cole's reports on Rafhaiel Thing's security. About our other files on Underhand and his habits and ways. "Dammit," I said.

Third. Assuming Ingrid was still alive - a reasonable assumption, but not a guarantee - we had a bit of time. Until we heard from Underhand, we had time.

Fourth. What made me call Greyghost back in the first place? Okay, the trap argument is a good one, but he's a superhero; he deals with stuff like this all the time. What's my real problem?

The real problem is that I'm pissed off about Ingrid. Not only am I regular-pissed-off that one of my friends has been taken prisoner - I hope - by a criminal mastermind, but I'm extra-pissed-off that she was out and now this war has pulled her back in. Ingrid broke up with Greyghost largely because she was tired of dealing with all his superhero bullshit, and quite rightly too. And she made it stick. She separated herself from the superhero world. That was what she wanted, and she did it. And now she's been hauled back in. And doesn't deserve it.

So... "Aw, hell," I said.

I leafed through some more of Cole's reports. I thought about people, and car keys, and surveillance, and maps. "Goddamn it," I said.

"Are you thinking or just swearing?" Cruickshank said.

"Dennis? Do you have anything?"

"Yeah," I said. "First, you're the wrong guy to go after Ingrid. Underhand is going to be waiting for you. You'd be playing right into his hands. Especially since he probably wants very specifically to kill you right now."

"Go on."

"So what we need is to throw him off guard. Damn it."

"What's wrong?"

I sighed. "Unfortunately, I have a plan. Even more unfortunately, I'm pretty sure it'll work."

"What's wrong with that?" Cruickshank said.

"What's wrong with that is, I have to go into Thing's mansion and get Ingrid."

"You!" Cruickshank said. "What the hell are you going to do?"

"I," I said, "am going to use my super-powers."

2005-08-22T22:40:00.000-04:00

Big action starting at midnight last night. Greyghost sprung all his traps.

Apparently he got a goldmine out of John - detailed financial and organizational information about Underhand's entire operation - and was now ready to cash it in. He spent all last week rigging things so that the only judges and district attorneys and cops on duty would be honest ones, ones that weren't in Underhand's pocket. And then he and a bunch of superheroes and a bunch of cops went out raiding.

And they got a huge haul. Cruickshank and I were in here working the phones all night. Cruickshank was arranging things with the cops and D.A.s' offices, and I was coordinating Greyghost and Bob and Prowl and Neontetra and One-Eyed Jack. They brought in a whole passel of corrupt cops and bankers and lawyers and judges and gangsters and racket guys and local politicians. They got Underhand's lawyer, Jonas Brand. And, to top it all off, the Mayor of Empire City, Gavin Garment. All under arrest.

With hard evidence, too. I spent quite a while compiling and photocopying the right paperwork and collating it into the right envelopes; one envelope per guilty guy. This is not only stuff that John provided, but also stuff that Cole found while in deep-undercover mode, stuff that Cruickshank came up with based on Underhand's responses to our Dieter Solarin activities, and stuff from Greyghost's informants.

The newspapers have been going nuts. All the arrests - a total of three hundred and seventy-one of them - have set off chain reactions all over the city. Stores and factories going out of business, buildings burning down, gang fights, suicides... Underhand's network must have reached pretty far.

This afternoon Greyghost and Cruickshank and I were sitting around the blue room taking stock of the situation. Operation Dustpan got almost all of Underhand's criminal empire, but not quite everything. Asskicker and Nametaker were still out there somewhere. Fountain, but it's not clear how much Underhand could count on him. And Underhand himself, whoever he is, of course.

Also Caroline Noah, whose name I had noticed in the Underhand file months ago. "What's up with her?" I asked.

"She doesn't seem to be guilty of anything. It's likely that she's Underhand's lover," Greyghost said.

"She's not Caroline No's secret identity?"

"She's an actress," Greyghost said. "Caroline No's real name is Jennifer No." Of course.

"I have news," Cruickshank said. "One of your guys called in with a phone number. He got it off the cellphone of a banker who blew his brains out this morning. I had my guy at the phone company run it down. Ever hear of anyone named Rafhaiel Thing?"

Greyghost stood up.

"Yes."

"His name is what?" I said.

Greyghost walked out to look at the fish. First time I've ever seen him take notice of the fish. Except it feels like I've seen him do it before. "Rafhaiel Thing is well known in high society circles. He's a hotel and casino owner and a philanthropist."

"You think he's Underhand, don't you?" Cruickshank said.

"Certainly."

"Well, hell, I could have told you that!" I said. "Jesus! His name is Rafhaiel Thing! Look at this picture!" I spun my monitor around to display the picture I had just called up on SearchSquirrel. Big, handsome guy in a tux; dark hair and an eyepatch. Also, he had an artificial hand with some kind of cool gizmos built into it. "He's a goddamn James Bond villain! Of course he's Underhand! You knew that this guy existed, all this time, and you didn't put it together yourself?"

They looked at me for a second.

"Anyway," Cruickshank continued, "I called Cole and had him start surveillance on Thing. So we'll see."

Greyghost pinned us both with a glance. Which was cool, since we weren't standing near each other. "We're close. After all this time. We're very close."

2005-08-21T22:48:00.000-04:00

My doctor was giving me a hard time the other day. I was in there because I have this cough that's been bugging me for a while, and he wouldn't prescribe anything for it.

"Look," he said, "you should be as healthy as a horse. I don't like prescribing medication for healthy people."

"I just want to get rid of this cough," I told him. "It's been months now."

He put down his pen and clipboard and held out his hand to me. "I'll make you a deal. If you go two weeks where you get eight hours of sleep a night, eat three meals of nourishing food a day, and spend a reasonable portion of each day getting fresh air and light exercise, and your cough still doesn't go away, I will not only prescribe something for it, I will buy it for you out of my own pocket. Shake on it?"

I didn't shake. "I sleep. I eat. I just don't have a lot of time, that's all. Things are crazy at work these days."

He didn't look impressed. "How much sleep did you get last night?"

"Uh... about three hours. But that was because I had to get up early to come in here." And because I had the getting-shot-in-the-head nightmare again.

"It's ten-thirty in the morning," he told me. "When was the last time you got six hours sleep in one night?"

I couldn't remember.

"Okay. What did you have for breakfast this morning?"

"I only had time for a glass of water before heading out," I said.

"And what did you have for supper last night?"

"I forget. Stuff I had lying around."

"Think back," he told me.

"Half a can of Pringles."

"Dennis. You've got to take better care of yourself. This cough you've got is just the beginning of what could happen."

"I told you. Work is really hectic these days. Once things settle down, I'll be able to rearrange things a bit more."

"All right. Well, tell me about the rest of your life. Last time we talked, you were getting a new apartment. Did that work out?"

"Actually, no," I said. "The afternoon I was going in to see the new place, I got called into work unexpectedly." Fell-Swoop had just busted out of prison, and Greyghost needed me to work the phones.

"You also mentioned something about getting a car."

"Yeah. I keep meaning to go out to a couple of dealerships but I haven't been able to make the time."

"Anything else going on?"

"Not really. Mostly just working, but..."

"I know," he said. "You can't talk about it."

"Yeah."

"You know, everything you tell me is confidential. I have other patients who do classified government work, and--"

"I keep telling you I can't talk about it," I said.

"I think you should talk about it with somebody," he said. "It sounds like there's a lot of stress in your job, and it might relieve some of it if you could talk it over with someone. I could recommend--"

"I really can't talk about it. At all."

"What about with a girlfriend? I know you told me you broke up with a girlfriend, but... is there anyone new?"

I shook my head.

"Anyone on the horizon?"

"No," I said. "I'm... I don't know. I don't really feel like talking to people at the moment. There are some days where I don't see anybody all day. I had a couple of those in a row last month. I think I went about sixty hours without saying a word to anyone. It was actually kind of nice."

He waited for me to talk. Eventually I couldn't take it anymore and filled in the silence with:

"...which I know isn't good for me and I have to get out of my room and be with the people."

He nodded. "Dennis, you're in here talking to the wrong guy. I can't do anything for you. You know what's good for you, and you're the only one who can make sure you get it. If you do, you don't need my help, and if you don't, I don't know what I can do that will help." He stood up. "Okay?"

I coughed, pointedly, but the conversation seemed over anyway.

2005-08-18T00:26:00.000-04:00

So Inkling and Greyghost managed to mop up Alabaster and the other guy. The other guy turned out to be Qualm, another one of Underhand's big supervillains. Underhand is definitely hurting for personnel. After that was all over, I went back to the office and finished up a few things.

And I thought about Omicron. Man, back when I had super-powers, I couldn't imagine not using them. Could. Not. Imagine. I had them, and I was damn well going to use them. And he's gone without for how many years now? That's some willpower.

But it also kind of makes sense. I've been beating myself up and having nightmares - not so many now that I have to share head space with Marcy - about pummeling Icecap. Imagine how much worse it would be to have disintegrated a guy.

Anyway, that wasn't the only interesting thing to happen that night. On the way home, I stopped at a convenience store for a bag of chips and a pop. (Not the store I tried to rip off when I was out of my mind with super-powers. I haven't had the nerve to show my face in there since then.)

I'm there at the chip rack, trying to decide between Psycho Nacho Cheese and Sociopathic BBQ, and I get a glimpse of the counter. A guy's there holding the place up.

And I thought, oh hell.

I knew that I wasn't armed and he was.

I knew that stores like this just tell the counter guy to hand over the money, don't get hurt, don't be a hero, these things happen.

I knew that holdup guys were not part of my job description. I knew that if I wanted to take a bite out of crime, the best way of doing it is to go to work every day and help Greyghost do his thing.

But, standing there, I couldn't not do something. I couldn't face the idea of going into work the next day and have to say that I stood there watching a holdup and didn't do something to stop it. Couldn't face it.

In my defense, I knew I was being stupid. First, I called the emergency-summon-Greyghost number on my cellphone.

I took one of those big plastic bottles of Sprite and hucked it at the edge of the counter next to the stickup guy. It hit the edge, side-on, and the thing started fizzing and spraying everywhere like crazy. The clerk ducked out of the way. The guy with the gun swore and started rubbing his eyes.

I figured I'd just run up and yoick the gun out of the guy's hand, problem solved. But as I was running up, he recovered, saw me, and fired.

I thought to myself, I've seen this before. This has happened to me before. Then I realized it was just deja vu again. Which was totally annoying. Imagine: you're about to die. You see your life passing before your eyes. Then you realize that it's not really your life.

It almost seemed like I could see the bullet coming all the way. Like I could feel the life leaving my body early, trying to avoid the rush or something. It took a really long time.

But it was kind of anticlimactic. He missed. And I threw myself to one side, into the chip stand, and cut my hilarious head open. Then I kind of lost track of things for a moment.

After I came to, there were all kinds of things with cops and paramedics and stuff. I wasn't that badly hurt, but it was a while before I could get them to admit it. Nobody seemed impressed by my incredible act of heroism. Probably because the guy got away with the money anyway.

Greyghost certainly wasn't impressed. "You didn't have to do that," he said. "It's not what you're good at. It's not why you're valuable."

"I know," I said. "I had to, though."

"I understand," he said, and melted into the darkness. "But you have to do the things you can do, and not the things you can't do. Go get some sleep."

"Didn't you already say that?" I said, but I don't think he heard me.

2005-08-17T00:20:00.000-04:00

I just blinked at Inkling, or Cabrera, for a second. He blinked back.

"Actually I didn't know this was your store. But, yeah, I'm running from a supervillain. There're two guys out there fighting Greyghost and they're pretty tough. Can you help?"

He sighed.

The other guy in the store, the customer in the chair, said, "Go on. You know you'll feel bad if you don't."

Cabrera nodded, slowly, and took a book down off the shelf. It was a big old beaten up antique wood-bound thing. He started to read it, and as he did, the print from the book started to flow off the pages and up his hands, up his arms. He read faster and faster. The pages flipped until they were a blur. The text whirled and ran just under his skin, reshaping him, creating horns and wings and claws. In seconds, it was hard to see Cabrera himself. He had become some kind of ink demon.

Inkling roared and leapt out through the front window of the store... but it didn't break. He just passed through it like a ghost.

"Wow," I said.

The other guy nodded. "If you don't mind my asking, how did you get involved in this?"

"Well. I guess it's kind of obvious from what I said. I sorta help out Greyghost in some ways."

Another nod. He gestured out the window after Inkling. "I hope you know what that cost him, to transform himself like that."

"I don't. I've only met him once before this, and I really don't know anything about him."

"That demon he can turn into, the one in the book, is an evil creature that's only barely under control. For Joseph to become Inkling, he has to invite that monster into his own mind. It takes him days to recover from it."

"No wonder he doesn't do it much," I said. "I mean, I know super-powers can mess you up, but that's crazy."

"That's why I don't use mine anymore," he said.

"You?"

"I used to be known as Omicron," he said. "Then one night I was fighting some supervillain, and I used my powers to make him disappear. He wasn't there anymore. And I thought about how easy it had been, and how little I thought about it before doing it.

"That was the last time I used my powers. And the last time I ever will."

I had nothing to say to that. But I did eventually remember to close my mouth.

2005-08-15T23:50:00.000-04:00

So I drove Greyghost to an intersection near some kind of diamond repository. His explanation was that, right now, Underhand needs lots of cash and he needs it quick, and therefore Alabaster would be there to rip off a bunch of diamonds. And therefore, if Greyghost could prevent the theft and nail Alabaster, Underhand would be double-screwed.

We got there right on time. Two guys were carrying locked handcuff cases into a big airlock-lookin' door at the diamond exchange, and three cars screeched to a halt near them. A bunch of masked guys jumped out (sensible, as there were all kinds of cameras around. Which is also why we had the car with the mirrored windows) and surrounded the diamond couriers.

Greyghost rolled out of the car and plunged into the scrum around the couriers. He threw them around for a few seconds, making his way to Alabaster, a looming slender figure in a three-piece suit on the other side of the crowd. Then the air turned red.

There was a guy standing next to our car, all of a sudden. Young guy, Goth makeup, baseball hat. He snapped his fingers and the engine died. He snapped them again and something invisible smashed into Greyghost and spun him out of the way.

Aw, hell, I thought. An ambush. Or maybe they were just well-prepared.

The guy went to snap his fingers again and I sprayed him with windshield wiper fluid. Well, he was standing in the perfect spot.

He turned toward me, incredulous, and for lack of anything better to do I squirted him again.

He snapped his fingers again and the car disappeared entirely. I landed on my butt in the street.

Meanwhile, Greyghost was recovering. He and Alabaster were trading punches, and the two couriers were making themselves scarce with their cases.

The snapmeister, whoever the hell he was, turned away from me. And now I had a quick decision to make. I could either attack this guy physically or let him catch Greyghost off-guard. Didn't like either option.

So I compromised. I ran up to him and pulled his hat down over his eyes. Then I booked.

I ducked into the nearest store. It was an antiquarian bookstore I had noticed as we were pulling up. 'J. Cabrera, Bookseller', I think. Anyway, I staggered to a stop in front of the counter, where J. Cabrera was talking to a customer in an easy chair. Cabrera looked up at me, and his eyes widened.

"Dennis?" he said. "You came in person? It must be serious."

It was Inkling.

2005-07-27T23:42:00.000-04:00

Underhand update. Not that I know much.

I think Greyghost has talked to John, but I don't know what he got out of him. I know he's been spending a lot of time lately talking to judges and district attorneys and cops and stuff. And Cruickshank kicked me off my desk today for an hour and a half so he could use all the phones and computers at once.

And Greyghost had a long phone conversation with one of his secret informers about some kind of operation taking place tomorrow. Apparently we're going after Alabaster. Alabaster is one of Underhand's top supervillains; he's a cold-ass killer and a very dangerous and elusive guy.

2005-07-25T21:19:00.000-04:00

I just finished reading the paper by Ingrid's professor, the one on literary origins of superheroes. Ingrid brought it by the other day. God, it's death. Academic writing. Never fails to make my eyes glaze over.

There is some actual information in the article, though, and I was able to keep myself out of the coma long enough to extract some of it.

Basically the idea is this. Superheroes showed up in the mid-'80s. There's no disputing that. We don't know why people suddenly started getting super-powers, but we know they did, and we know when. So that's fine. But the people who got the super-powers immediately started behaving like comic-book-type heroes and villains. Must have been because of something they read or saw in a movie or on TV. Because why else would you put on a mask and call yourself Radish man or whatever?

So, Ingrid's prof is saying, therefore we can study the comics and books and TV and movies to try and figure out where all this is coming from. And he does a lot of that. And it's all semiotics this and postmodern that and who gives a crap. But he does make a couple of interesting points. Here's my favorite:

In the real world, we can isolate who the first superhero was according to super-powers. The first guy to have super-powers and who was a good guy was the first superhero. (Thunderhead.) But the first person in literature to have super-powers and who was a good guy was Gilgamesh or somebody. Which doesn't necessarily advance our discussion. Because on the one hand it's easy to have super-powers in legend or in fiction, and on the other hand hardly any of the people with the super-powers behave like superheroes or supervillains.

For instance. Jesus could obviously do stuff that your average joe could not do, and by all accounts he was a good guy. Do we then have to call him a superhero? We could, I guess, but how does it help us to understand what guys like Greyghost and Bob are up to? It doesn't, that's how.

So if we're talking about modern, mask-wearing, here-I-come-to-save-the-day type superheroes, we need something other than super-powers to identify them. And Ingrid's prof has decided that there are two flags to look for: 1) fighting crime, and 2) the secret identity. And it has to be routine crime fighting, too; if you just want revenge on some people like the Count of Monte Cristo did, that doesn't count. And the secret identity has to have two pieces to it; you have to switch back and forth between one and the other. So the Lone Ranger doesn't count either, because he was Lone all the time.

It's weird. We could have had superheroes at any time. There was nothing stopping some guy like One-Eyed Jack from putting a bag over his head and going out to bust up some drug dealers decades ago. The secret identity and the crime fighting don't depend on the powers. But none of it happened until the powers came along. Why?

On the other hand, there was nothing stopping anybody from writing about secret-identitied super-powered crimefighters centuries ago. But they didn't, until the 20th century. Why?

Anyway. The only other thing in the paper that grabbed my attention was the trackback of just who was the first literary superhero. Obviously Superman was the one who put superheroes on the map. But even before Superman, there was a hero called the Crimson Avenger in comics. This was all in the 1930s. And even before that, outside of comics, there was Zorro, starting in 1919. And even before that, there was the Scarlet Pimpernel, in 1905. If there was one before that, Ingrid's prof didn't track him down.

Oh, and this is one of the things that appeared in the footnotes.

2005-07-24T22:24:00.000-04:00

Last week I had the best poker game I've played since I got to Empire City. I took home forty-five dollars. Most of that money was Greyghost's, and that almost never happens. The key hand was where I bluffed everyone out of their socks with a lousy pair of sevens.

It's weird not having Ingrid at the game.

2005-07-21T23:15:00.000-04:00

"What do you mean you know him?" Cruickshank said. "You know him know him?"

"His name's John," I said. "I know his fiancee from college."

Cruickshank slid a pad of paper across the desk to me. "Write it all down," he said. "I want forty thousand details. I think this guy is our big break."

I started writing. Took me a while to remember his last name, but I got it all down. In particular I made a point of describing the time his bodyguards followed me down the street that time I met Erin and him in the coffee place. "Just to put all this in context for you," I said as I was writing, "he's an executive at Laslin Dufresne Cathcart. Big financial guy."

"Mm," Greyghost said.

"Jackpot," Cruickshank whispered.

2005-07-20T08:57:00.000-04:00

I finished telling Greyghost and Cruickshank about the Professionals, and Surefire, and the Defense Posse, and T, and Fountain.

"I agree that Fountain's behavior isn't consistent with someone working for Underhand," Greyghost said. "Underhand has no inhuman abilities, and if Fountain truly believes that humans aren't part of the future..."

"I wonder if we can use this," Cruickshank said.

"Meanwhile, Tinliz has been able to apprehend Scari in Chicago, so that's one fewer of Underhand's people we have to bring in. And it's preferable that as many of them as possible be incarcerated outside Empire City, because the risk of their being freed through corruption is lessened."

"I want you two to look at some pictures," Cruickshank said, putting his briefcase on the desk. "We've had this guy Jonas, Underhand's main lawyer, under surveillance for a long time. But he's slippery, and it's tough to get any good information out of watching him." He pulled an envelope out of the briefcase. "With all the pressure we've been putting on their organization recently, he's been very busy, and yesterday one of our men got these pictures of him meeting with another guy. I would like very much to know who he is." He planked some photographs down on the desk.

They showed two men sitting in some kind of skanky bar, talking intently. One of them was thin, middle-aged, grey-haired. The other was younger and dark-haired.

"That's Jonas," Cruickshank said, pointing at the older guy. "Memorize the other one's face. If you see it anywhere, if you see him in the files anywhere, I want to know about it."

"Easy," I said. "I know that guy."

2005-07-18T22:05:00.000-04:00

The next day I was sitting at my desk, working my way through the piles of work and whistling a tune, when Greyghost walked in. "You warned me," I said before he could say anything.

"What happened?" he asked.

"His lead on the Holy Grail of Superheroes turned out to be a bust. But there are interesting developments with the Professionals and the Defense Posse. I'll fill you in later. Then Thunderhead decided that he could solve all the world's problems by making nice with his family, or something, and had me drive him to Blackheim." I did my best to spear Greyghost with a pointed glance. But I really don't have the knack.

"Mm."

"So I got out of the car and left him there. I don't know what happened to him and I don't care. I'm not getting mixed up in that crap."

Greyghost sat down on the edge of my desk. "You're too young to remember Thunderhead when he first acquired his inhuman abilities. I hadn't seen him in years--he left my mother in the mid-1970s--but I recognized him instantly on television. Obviously, I had mixed feelings about him, but I was very proud of him that he was Thunderhead."

"Seriously. I don't want to know this stuff."

"Then Incandesca died. I think that affected him strongly. In any case, he dropped out of sight."

"Greyghost! I said I don't want to know about it! I'm just the guy who does your photocopying, okay? I don't want to hear about you and your dad, or how you screwed things up with Ingrid, or anything! None of my business." Jesus Christ, the guy doesn't say three words to me for two years, and now he wants to open up.

"It will help you to understand," he said. I don't know if that meant that understanding about his messed-up family would help me, or if he was helping me to understand about his messed-up family. "By that time I had my own inhuman abilities, and I decided that if my father wasn't prepared to use his abilities on behalf of humanity, then I would use mine. I've only seen him a few times since, when he's tried to recruit me for help in ridding the world of inhuman abilities, and he doesn't know who I am. I'm sure it's better that way."

"Are you done?"

Greyghost picked up his mail, and stood up. "I'm glad you're back safely," he said. "There's always the potential for danger around Thunderhead."

"Didn't you just say that?" I asked.

2005-07-17T23:49:00.000-04:00

I wasn't concentrating on the road at all as we drove back toward the city. I was thinking about my mind. I felt ruined. Or violated, or something.

My mind is what I use to think about stuff. What do I do now that I've got some random woman's memories in there?

This is what I get for hanging around with superheroes. Bad enough I get beaten up and shoved around and turned into a freaking cockroach and kidnapped into manual labor on another planet--now my mind has been damaged? I can't even blame Greyghost for this one; he told me not to go with Thunderhead.

Eventually I calmed down, though. Whatever chunk of Marcy's mind was lodged in my head didn't really seem to mix with my thoughts too much. It made my dreams a little weirder, but that's it. When I'm awake the only difference is this constant feeling of deja vu, which is annoying but tolerable.

Thunderhead wasn't talking much either. He just chewed on his fingernails and stared furiously out the window. Finally we started getting close enough to the city that I needed directions, and I said, "Where're we going?"

"There's only one place left I haven't tried," he said. "Probably should have been the first thing I did."

"Where's that?"

"Take the exit after the fireworks place," he said. "Well, I've really screwed things up."

"Does this have something to do with Incandesca?"

He looked at me, a little surprised. "No, no. Candy was long after. Poor girl died much too young. Yeah, I really screwed things up."

I wasn't sure how much of an answer that was.

"You blame yourself for her dying? I thought she was in L.A. when it happened."

He nodded. "Probably wouldn't have happened if she hadn't got mixed up with me, though. I've screwed a lot of things up for a lot of people."

"Uh huh. So... where exactly are we going?"

"Somewhere I might be able to fix all this," he said. "When you're on the off-ramp, turn right at the lights."

I followed his directions. They led me to a pretty rich-looking neighborhood outside a medium-sized town--Brookheim or Brockheim or something. Once we had the right street, Thunderhead gave me a street number. I drove along, looking for it.

"So what is this place I'm looking for?" I said.

"Home," Thunderhead said, confirming my suspicions.

"And just what the hell are we going to do at your home?"

"Put things right," Thunderhead said.

I saw the house number, and pulled up next to the gate. "Whatever," I said. "What's the connection between super powers and your family?"

"I failed them," he said. "I should never have left." I was starting to come around to Cruickshank's point of view. This did seem pretty crazy. Then I saw the gatepost.

The name on the gatepost was 'Scigrave'.

"I don't believe it," I muttered, and yelled at Thunderhead, "Hey! Take your mask off!"

"What?" he said.

"Take your mask off! Right now!"

He looked confused, but, hesitantly, peeled it back from his head. The guy was the spitting image of Greyghost. I couldn't believe I didn't notice before.

"That's it," I said. "Enough. I am not getting mixed up in this. Jesus Christ. I thought I was helping get rid of supervillains and here you drag me into this soap opera." I got out of the car and walked away.

Long walk to Brickheim, and a longer bus trip back to Empire City, but that's better than getting tangled up in Greyghost's family history. I mean, any more than I already am.

2005-07-15T00:03:00.000-04:00

We had left the heroes and villains behind when the girl said, "You don't know where to go. Let me drive." I was about to say something, when my hands and feet started moving on their own. She was controlling my mind. Thunderhead wasn't paying attention; he was riding backwards, looking out the window and covering us.

Surefire was up in the air again. He launched a jet of fire at us. We swerved and almost ran over a woman with a grocery cart, who screamed. We swerved again, and I could feel the girl split her mind control--one half to keep me driving right, and one half to make the woman dive out of the way. Surefire seared at us again, and the girl said, "Shit!"

My foot slammed down on the brakes, and there was a wash of memories into my mind--my name was Marcy, I was a single mother, I worked checkout in a department store, I read the dictionary for pleasure--and then it was gone, leaving only a sense of deja vu. Thunderhead reached out the window and rumbled the air at Surefire, who tumbled out of the sky and lodged in a tree.

She parked us under a billboard behind an abandoned car wash, and released me. I moved my arms experimentally. "That was weird," I said. "What happened?"

"I lost control," she said. "I accidentally copied a bit of that lady's mind into yours. It shouldn't get in your way much, though. You'll probably only know it's there when you dream."

"What?! You put someone else's mind in my brain?"

"I couldn't help it! And I told you, you won't notice! Anyway, it'll go away in a few years or so."

"A few years! And why do I keep having deja vu?"

"Oh, yeah. That," she said. "Yeah, you'll have deja vu for a few years too."

"Goddamn it! Can't you fix it? Jesus Christ. My mind is broken. I can't believe it," I said. "Oh, my God."

"No, I can't fix it. You'll get used to it. Look, you guys are the ones who are screwing up my life," she said to us. "Give me one good reason why I shouldn't kill you right now."

"We're on your side," I said. "If you're really a hot-shit mind reader you know that."

"He's not," she said, indicating Thunderhead.

"No," Thunderhead said, "I'm not. Superpowers are ruining the world. There are more and more all the time, and it's getting worse and worse. There's no point even in fighting crime any more. It's a drop in the bucket. The only thing that will help now is to turn them all off, to get rid of all superpowers at once. I don't give a shit about you. But you're the key to everybody's superpowers, and one way or another, I'm gonna turn you."

She just shook her head. "You've got me wrong," she said, and looked deep into his eyes. They didn't talk; she just stared at him. Eventually, his expression changed.

Thunderhead's face sagged, and he took off his hat. He looked down, rubbed his nose, and scrunched up his eyes. "Then--then what..." After a long pause, he raised his head again. "Sorry for wasting your time," he said to her. "Dennis, let's go. We've got one more thing we can try."

"What's your name?" I said.

"Tina Snavich," she said.

"Hi. Look, we're gonna go, but you're not going to get rid of the rest of them that easily. Do you know what you're going to do?"

She shook her head. Something was familiar about the way she shook her head.

"I'm not much on superheroes," I said, "but it's a hell of a lot better being a superhero than a supervillain. So if you have to choose."

"I just want to be left alone. You know, be normal," Tina said.

Thunderhead spoke up. "You got too much power for that," he said. "It won't go away, and they'll never leave you alone. If you don't use it right, you'll get used."

"Those guys," she said. "The Defense Posse. They're being used, right? That's what you're thinking."

I nodded. "I think Fountain's trying to build some kind of super-powered army or something. Which is actually kind of a weird sort of thing for him to do. But the rest of them are okay. Well, really they're kind of dickheads. But they are superheroes, and you could probably help them with Fountain."

"I don't want to," she said, and got out of the car. But she didn't walk away.

"Honey," Thunderhead said, "The only things worth doing with power are the things you don't want to do."

Is that true?

Anyway, she didn't answer. She just stood there until Fountain showed up. He had a black eye from Thunderhead's shockwave. Tina approached him and said, "Is there any room for me on your Defense Posse?"

Caught off guard, he said, "Uh. Yes, of course. Welcome aboard." And took another swig of his diet cream soda.

"You can call me T," she said, and waved goodbye at us.

I said, "Watch out for yourself," and we pulled out. Everything seemed strangely familiar again.

2005-07-12T23:59:00.000-04:00

Stupid for so, so many reasons. First, what did I think Surefire was going to do? Even if he did recognize me. The guy has sunk so low that he's become a supervillain, apparently; what the hell have we got to say to each other? I've met the guy about four times in my life. What am I going to tell him?

Second. There are about a dozen super-powered maniacs fighting for their lives over there. They have to learn to settle their disputes all by themselves; if I keep interfering they'll never learn.

Third. If Fountain hears my voice, and recognizes it, I'm screwed.

Anyway. Everyone turned and looked at me. I cowered behind the car door as the other flying guy from the Professionals fired a bunch of force bolts at me. The door bounced off me a few times. Then Icecap distracted him with his cold ray, or whatever it is.

The girl's eyes widened. She gasped, and put her hands over her ears. Then Thunderhead broke free of Margay, who had kind of wrapped herself around his neck, and clapped his hands together hard.

The girl was partly braced for it, and Thunderhead was unaffected, but everyone else was completely bowled over by a giant wave of force. I got some nasty bruises from the car door, and my ears were ringing. Thunderhead grabbed her and booted it for the car.

Fountain, who was far enough away not to get caught in Thunderhead's blast, saw them running and broke into a run himself. I caught the girl's eye and pointed at him. She looked back, saw him, and tried to do what she had done to Sugarbear and Fantastic Man and Keyring, but apparently it didn't work.

By the time they were in the car, people across the parking lot were starting to pick themselves up, and Fountain was almost on top of us. Thunderhead snapped his fingers and dropped him in his tracks, and I patched out.

2005-07-11T23:07:00.000-04:00

"Okay, well if we have to get to her first, let's try the school," I said to Thunderhead.

He nodded toward the donut shop. "Go on in and ask somebody where it is," he said.

"Or," I said, holding up a candy bar wrapper with the school's address printed on it, "we could just go down the street."

"Ah, yes. Very good."

We pulled out.

"Let me do the talking when we get there," Thunderhead said.

"Do the talking?" I said. "You can do the whole thing. I'm gonna wait in the car."

"Scared of something?"

"A few things, yeah. The Professionals, for one. Fountain, for another. A dispute between you and the girl, for a third. I've got a book here, I'll be fine."

We arrived at the high school. I parked in the visitor's spot, pulled out my book, and started reading, as Thunderhead climbed out of the car and approached the main entrance with his tricorder or whatever it is. Looking back on it, I suppose I should have been keeping watch for anybody else going into the school, or at least paying attention to what was going on around me in some way. But for some reason I had decided that Thunderhead was on his own this time.

A few minutes later there was a rumble from the school. The car shook.

"Uh-oh," I said, and put the book down. I started the car up, just in case, opened the door and stood up between the door and the car, looking around. Keyring was hovering over the school roof in his Famous Reciprocating Jetpack, and I could see Icecap, Fantastic Man and some other guy out of Keyring's field of vision at the other end of the parking lot.

Another shockwave hit, and I stumbled. Shadow-Falcon and the girl, whatever her name is, barged out a nearby side door and ran for it. Shadow-Falcon took to the air, but kept circling over her to provide cover. Keyring swooped down after them.

Icecap and Fantastic Man took off from the other end of the school, with the other guy riding on the back of the Icycle, to intercept Keyring. I looked around for a hole to crawl into; if all these guys were getting into a fight I didn't want any part of it.

Margay and Sugarbear, looking kind of beat up, came out the same door Shadow-Falcon had, glanced around, and followed everybody else. Would it be wrong to leave without Thunderhead?

Thunderhead was the last one out. He didn't look damaged, but his old screwed-up coat was more crumpled than usual. I saw him just before two other guys showed up, flying in from up and down the street, firing energy beams into the midst of the Defense Posse.

I called Thunderhead over, but he ignored me, and joined the fight. It was pretty much a free-for-all now, with the girl at the center. On the ground, Thunderhead and the guy I don't know from the Defense Posse were fighting Margay and Sugarbear. In the air was a dogfight between Icecap, Fantastic Man and Shadow-Falcon on the one hand, and Keyring and the two new guys on the other.

The girl, meanwhile, was getting irritated. She started pointing at the various heroes and villains around her, and as she pointed at them, they collapsed to the ground.

That was when I noticed two things. Almost simultaneously.

One was that Fountain was walking up the street, idly shaking up a couple of cans.

Two was that one of the new flying guys, currently shooting fire at Icecap, was, in fact, Surefire.

"Surefire!" I yelled, and then said to myself, "Whatever you do, don't yell or do anything to attract attention."

2005-07-08T00:08:00.000-04:00

Thunderhead kept trying to ask me stupid questions while I was thinking. "So, you know these guys?"

"Yeah."

"You know what they're doing here?"

"No."

"What's the story on the soda cans?"

"Could you give me a minute, here?" Only one way to deal with this. I took out my penphone. Who's best to call? None of them ever really impressed me with their smarts. I dialed Icecap up.

It rang a couple of times. "Yo," he said.

"Dennis," I said. "I don't think you can speak freely. Say 'yeah' if Fountain is there with you."

"Yeah."

"Okay. I need to talk to you about why you're here. I'm gonna park behind the donut shop on the corner. Come see me when you can. Don't bring Fountain."

"Whatever," Icecap said, and hung up.

"What's this?" Thunderhead said.

I shrugged. "I guess we'll see." I helped myself to a candy bar and drove us down to the donut shop.

Icecap showed up a couple of hours later. He slipped into the back seat and said, "Dennis, what the hell's going on? Are you following us around?"

"No. This is Thunderhead. Perhaps you've heard of him."

"No," Icecap said.

"Ah. Thunderhead, this is Icecap. Perhaps you've heard of him."

"No."

"Okay. We're here to--"

"Never mind what we're here for," Thunderhead growled.

"Fine. We're here for a mostly unrelated reason, and we saw you, and were wondering what you were up to. Does it have anything to do with that girl?"

"Yeah," Icecap said. "We heard she had super powers, and we want to get her to join the Posse. You got a problem with that?"

"You believe this shit?" Thunderhead said.

"Actually I do. How'd you find out about her?"

"I don't know. Fountain has ways he hears about stuff like this."

"That was going to be my next question," I said. "What the hell are you doing hanging around with Fountain?"

"I didn't know you knew him. He's the guy who organized the group. If I knew you knew him I would have just told you last time you asked."

"He organized your group? From the beginning? Jesus, Icecap, the guy's a supervillain! He works for a giant crime thing in the city!"

"Bullshit he is," Icecap said, uncertainly. "He's trying to, I don't know, fulfill his vision of the future for people with superpowers, or something."

"He's really not," I said. "Look, do what you want, but be careful about what you let him get you into, okay? He's dangerous. Oh, and for Christ's sake don't tell him we're here."

"Yeah, yeah," Icecap said, and left.

I turned to Thunderhead. "I say we get out of here."

He shook his head. "Not until we've completed the mission."

"There is no mission! We didn't find your magic thingy. We found a teenage girl with super-powers. And believe me, she can take care of herself."

"How do you know?"

"I talked to her, while you were spying on the Professionals."

"What'd she say?"

"That she has powers, that she doesn't know anything about how to turn off everybody else's powers."

"She's wrong, or she's lying," Thunderhead said confidently. "She's the key to all this, and we have to get to her before Soda Can Man or the Professionals do. Good thing you just let her walk away."

He sounded really sure of himself. Maybe he knows something I don't. Maybe this isn't over yet.

2005-07-05T23:58:00.000-04:00

Thunderhead had only been gone for a minute when I heard a knock on the passenger side window. It was the girl with the backpack. What was this? I leaned over and rolled down the window partway. "What?" I said.

"Could you get out of your car, please? I don't want to talk to you sitting in your car like that."

Okay.

I got out of the car.

"What's going on?" I asked.

"I don't know who all you guys are or why you're following me, but if I yell my brother and his friends will show up." She really did seem mad.

"Okay," I said.

"I will, too. Except on one condition."

"Yeah?"

She pulled a small cardboard box out of her backpack. "We're selling these to get new instruments for the school band. You're buying a box."

"Cool. What is it?"

"Chocolate bars. Forty bucks for the box of twenty."

"Oh! Is it the ones with the caramel inside? Those are great."

She shrugged. "They have caramel."

I paid her and took the box of bars. Damn it, there's no way Cruickshank would ever let me claim that on an expense report. Not since I wasn't supposed to be on this trip in the first place. "Listen," I said, "I probably should tell you what we're doing here. I don't know about all these other guys, but we're not here to follow you at all. I didn't even know you existed until a minute ago."

"Uh huh."

"The guy I'm driving around has the idea he's found some magical thing that will take away the super-powers of everyone in the world. I think he thinks you're carrying it around with you. I think he's probably wrong, but that's not the point. The point is, he thinks he detected something, and I guess so did all these other guys."

She just looked at me.

"Do you mind if I ask - do you have any kind of mystical thingamabob that can turn off everyone's superpowers?"

"No."

Oh well. I knew it was a longshot, but I really was hoping we'd be able to solve the whole supervillain/superhero problem.

"My other guess," I said, "is that you have some kind of really kick-ass super powers, and that's what my passenger's gadget was picking up on. And all these other people, whoever they are, are here to recruit you or exploit you or something. Am I warm?"

She nodded, slightly.

"Really? You can't, like, turn off other people's powers or anything, can you?"

She frowned. "I don't think so."

"Oh well. Anyway, the other guy is scouting around to see if he can find who's staking the neighborhood out. I don't know what we're going to do. You can take care of yourself, though, right? You can call your brother or unleash wrath or something? Because I don't think you should be here when he gets back."

"I don't like all this," she said, scowling. "I think you should buy another box of bars."

"Aw, come on."

But she was adamant. I got out my wallet again, and as we were transacting, I said, "My name's Dennis, by the way."

She looked at me pityingly. "Your name is Dennis Relser. You work for Greyghost. The other dude is Thunderhead, and he's a famous superhero. You had superpowers once and you're thinking very condescendingly about all the wisdom you can tell me about how to cope with it."

My jaw dropped and she stepped away with eighty bucks of my money.

Thunderhead returned. "Take us out of here," he said, and then noticed the forty chocolate bars. "Breakfast," he said, and unwrapped one.

I drove away. "Find anything out?" I said.

"Yeah. Two groups of supers. One is the Professionals. Ever heard of 'em?"

"Sure. Keyring, Margay and Sugarbear. Mercenaries. They're here?"

"They're here and they've got another couple of guys with them. They're the ones across the street."

"Huh. What about on the roof?"

"Don't know 'em. One guy with a bandolier of soda cans across his chest, and a bunch of kids."

Soda cans... Fountain is here? Crap. "What did the kids look like?"

He sat back, crammed the entire candy bar in his mouth, and thought. "Four of them. I remember one had a kind of ice costume. Another one in power armor. Two other punks in Lone Ranger masks."

No way. He was describing the Defense Posse. Icecap and Fantastic Man and, I guess, Shadow-Falcon and the other guy. With Fountain? What the hell?

I was going to have to think about this.

2005-07-04T23:04:00.000-04:00

Thunderhead and I pulled up in front of a run-down '70s-era apartment house in one of the more run-down neighborhoods of a run-down little city on the shore of a run-down lake. He was consulting some kind of electronic doohickey that looked like it cost more than his entire body. After all, it was shiny.

"Any time you want to let me know exactly what we're looking for," I said.

"You don't know yet? The source of all super powers," he told me, peering up at the building.

"Right... does it glow in the dark or something? How will we know when we see it?"

"Quiet. There's something wrong here," he said.

"What?"

"Sssshh. There's someone on the roof. And someone watching from across the street."

I looked around. Couldn't see a damn thing. "Really?"

"Fourteen years of pickin' apples," he said, and checked the gizmo in his hand again. "Shit! It's moving. How the hell is it moving? Get ready to drive."

I started the car up, and waited.

"Here it goes," he said, and we craned our necks. A teenage girl was trotting down the street with a backpack of books over her shoulder. "What the hell?" Thunderhead said. "She must have it in her bookbag."

The girl looked right at us, just for a second, and sped up. I turned the car off.

"What's the matter?" Thunderhead said. "Fire us up."

"No. We haven't found what we were looking for, and I think we should go home. At least we shouldn't do anything else until we find out who these other people are watching this building."

"You wanna go home? Go. I'm not quitting when I'm this close."

"You're not close to anything right now. Do you know who else is staking the place out?"

"Shit," he said. "Let me go check." He hoisted himself out of the car and stumped off into the darkness.

I should have driven away right there.

2005-07-03T01:13:00.000-04:00

I won't say I was excited about getting to drive around with Thunderhead. But still. He's the world's first superhero. He's been missing for years. And he has quite the audacious plan. So definitely I was intrigued.

My photocopy of T.Z. Kane's book Mask Warshas some details on Thunderhead. He was already kind of old when he started off as a superhero in '86. He was like in his forties. Had shockwave-type powers that he used to basically overwhelm a bunch of supervillain street gangs that were terrorizing Empire City. A couple of months after he showed up, Incandesca started fighting crime in L.A. and the two of them worked together every now and then. Their big moment was probably in '89 when they fought off the

Then in '93, Incandesca got killed and Thunderhead disappeared. This was before Greyghost first showed up (at least as far as anybody could tell), and a year before SPIA was founded. I had thought nobody knew where he went after that, but from what Greyghost and Cruickshank were saying, he's been on this quest for the Giant On-Off Switch.

So I thought he'd be kind of an interesting guy. And I suppose he is.

Except he's been on the road alone too long. He's spent too much time hacking through jungles, sleeping in duckblinds and drinking spaghetti sauce straight out of the can.

Since we started driving upstate yesterday, Thunderhead has displayed the following personal habits:

in defiance of open-bottle laws, drinks at will from his flask of Old Four-Eyed Monongahela
issues extensive and soupy farts at least once every hour, and seems too bored by this to crack a window
picks his teeth with a machete. A machete
blows his nose in his hat
insists on playing nothing but the most obscure and crappy '50s rock'n'roll on his clapped-out cassette deck. I mean, 'The Twistolettes, Live At 'I Like It Like That''? Over and over

And he's not answering any of my questions, either. He won't tell me where we're going, or how long it'll take to get there. I mentioned Mask Wars to him and he just said, "Kane. Now there was a shithat for you."

When we stopped for the night, I insisted on getting a separate motel room for myself. Wait, that's deceptively put. Thunderhead intended to just pull off to the side of the highway and sleep in the car. I had to fight for the motel. He may actually have slept in the car; I don't know and don't care.

He did once open up a bit. I asked about Incandesca. He just nodded for a while, and said, "Yeah..." I thought he had fallen asleep until he said, "What do you want to know about her?"

"I don't know... Did you know her really well?"

"Pretty well." He paused. "She was a better superhero than any of the assholes out there these days. A great girl, really something special. Lot of people still alive we could do without more than Candy. Hell, I miss her more than I miss my family."

He's got a family?

2005-06-30T23:25:00.000-04:00

"He said he'd swing by tomorrow to pick me up. Oh, and he also said I shouldn't tell anybody. Obviously I'm ignoring that part," I said to Greyghost and Cruickshank.

They were silent for a second.

"You're not going, of course," Cruickshank said.

"I'm considering it."

"Dennis, for Christ's sake. Thunderhead is a crazy old man. God only knows what kind of shit he's trying to get you mixed up in. You don't want anything to do with him."

"Yeah, well, maybe he's not all that tightly wrapped, but what if he's on to something?"

"I can't spare you for however long Thunderhead wants you. Things are heating up with Underhand. I'll let Thunderhead know you're not available."

"Just like that," I said.

"You aren't employed for the benefit of Thunderhead's quixotic efforts." I think he was glaring at me, but it was hard to tell with the mask and cowl.

I glared back. "Oh. So you're saying that if I took a few days to check out whatever he thinks he's found, you'd fire me?"

"Are you going to risk your job for a wild-goose chase?"

"Well, obviously. After all, if he does manage to turn off all the super-powers in the world, there's certainly no need for me around here anymore. Come on, you know the math--you guys weren't making any progress shoving the supervillains in jail one by one. Here's a way to get 'em all at once."

Greyghost paused to regroup. "You should not go. Thunderhead is... unreliable. It's not wise to put any trust in his judgment."

"I don't know about that. But I've noticed one thing, dealing with superheroes the last couple of years. And that's that you guys tend to be right about stuff a lot more often than you have any right to. So I figure my odds are decent here."

"Dennis, he's out of his goddamned mind," Cruickshank said. "You know where he's been for the last ten years? He's been looking for this magical on-off switch. He looked in Chichen Itza. I think he looked in the Kremlin. He's been all over the world. He looked in Angkor Wat. He looked in Disneyland. He looked in, I'm not kidding, Marilyn Monroe's grave."

"Angkor what?" I asked.

"Yeah."

"What?"

"I said, yeah."

"Yeah, what?"

"What?"

"Enough. Dennis, Thunderhead grew impatient with his responsibilities. He wants a shortcut. He wants to invade an ancient temple and smash the idol. I don't believe that the problems that come with these inhuman abilities have such a direct and simple solution."

"All right. I think it's worth checking out anyway. So I'm going. Then I'll come back and catch up on work. Okay?"

Greyghost turned to go. "You aren't fired," he said.

2005-06-29T23:16:00.000-04:00

So there I am. Doing another wait-fax for Greyghost, eating chicken out of a bucket and watching my Crush Camel DVDs. And the desk phone rings. The desk phone never rings.

I looked at it for about half a minute before realizing I should answer it. It was Nick.

"Dennis," he said.

"Yeah."

"There's a guy here to see you."

Does not compute. "What?"

"There's a guy here to see you."

"What do you mean?"

"There's a guy here to see you."

"Just a second," I said. "You're in the lobby, at your desk. And there's a guy, there, standing in front of you, asking to see me. Right there in the building. Is this what you're telling me?"

"Yeah."

"Really?"

"Yeah."

"Who is it?"

"He won't say. Some old guy. I can't see his face."

A mysterious old guy. "Uh huh. He wants to come down here, does he?"

"No. He wants you to come up."

Pause. "There's really someone there to see me?"

"Yeah."

"It's not like a surprise birthday party, is it? I come up and there's everybody with balloons and cake?"

"Is it your birthday."

"No. That's my point."

"No party, Dennis."

"There really is a guy there."

"Yeah."

I collected my phone, just in case, and went up the elevator. Nick pointed across the lobby to a guy in a dirty old overcoat, facing out the windows.

"I'm Dennis," I said to him.

He turned around. In addition to the overcoat, he was wearing a filthy old Tilley hat on top of a superhero mask. A salt-and-pepper beard poked out of the nose-and-mouth hole of the mask. Under the coat was a frayed Hawaiian shirt, a pair of shorts, and sandals. "Still got my package?" he asked in a voice that suggested too much booze and smokes.

I had no idea what he was talking about for a moment. Then I remembered: the envelope with the keys and crummy printouts that Cruickshank had told me to circular-file. "Oh! Right! Yeah, I've still got it. That was you who brought that?"

He nodded. "It's probably useless now. But you should hang on to it anyway, in case this doesn't pan out."

"In case what doesn't pan out?"

"Sit down, Dennis," he said, gesturing at the radiator ledge. I arranged myself awkwardly on it. "I need your help. I'm gonna be doing something that could be dangerous, and I need someone with two brain cells firing to back me up. You're working for Greyghost, so you must have something on the ball, and I hear you got a mind of your own."

"Why don't you just get Greyghost, then?" What I really wanted to ask him is who he was in the first place, but the conversation seemed to have moved past that and I didn't have enough of a handle on things to bring it up.

"Can't trust him. Nobody with super powers."

"Oh. Huh. What about One-Eyed Jack?"

"He ain't good for anything except jerking off. Are you in?"

"Not until I know more about it than this. Like, who are you?"

"What it's about," he said. "What it's about is what I've been trying to do for over ten years now. I'm trying to find where super powers came from, so I can get rid of them. And I think I finally found it." While I tried to take this in, he continued. "As for who I am, you can call me Thunderhead."

2005-06-27T22:58:00.000-04:00

I've been spending more time thinking about Bob's job offer. The more I think about it, the less I like it.

The competitiveness thing aside. Bob is... I don't want to call him flighty, or suggest that he has ADD or anything, but he... how should I put this? When it comes to his interests, he's kind of a serial monogamist.

Bob will get into something, and extract everything he can from that topic, and then abandon it and move on. Now, I believe him when he says he wants to get the same advantages out of whatever it is I do that Greyghost gets, but he'll be much less enthusiastic about the idea later.

Plus there's this. Greyghost and Bob have different powers and different styles. Greyghost is subtle and low-key. He needs all the information he collects; he wouldn't be able to hunt effectively without it. Meanwhile, Bob is famous and flashy. Trouble comes to him. He doesn't need to research it. Sure, it'd help him if he became more systematic, but he's been doing okay so far without it. I'd rather be where I'm necessary than where I'm a frill.

2005-06-25T11:24:00.000-04:00

Saw a bumper sticker today that said, "I don't want your gun unless I get to pry it from your cold, dead fingers."

2005-06-23T23:40:00.000-04:00

Greyghost just walked into the office.

He was only eight inches tall. I almost missed him.

"What happened?" I said.

"No calls for me for the next two days," he answered, on his way to his private tunnel.

I checked the police reports later. They showed that a supervillain named Downsizer had been brought in, but didn't mention anything about Greyghost.

I wish I had been able to take a picture. My cellphone was right there; I could have gotten a great shot of him. Just didn't think of it in time.

2005-06-22T23:26:00.000-04:00

One of the doors out of my office, the rightmost one on the wall opposite the elevator, has been locked since I started working here, and I've never found a key for it. There isn't even one in Carl's emergency stash-o'-keys.

Today I noticed that the carpet in front of that door was rucked up a bit. Not that I'm Sherlock Holmes over here; it could have been like that for days. But it hasn't always been like that. So I went over to check the door, and this time it opened.

Beyond the door was space.

An endless purple void of space, filled with an eerie green glow.

A staircase, starting at my doorway, zigged and zagged up and out and across this void, ending in front of a red-sparkling portal hundreds of feet away. Similar portals hung in the violet air as far as I could see, some near, some far, above, below, left and right. Strange triple-winged birds screamed distantly as they swooped past clusters of floating rectangles.

I closed the door. I had been hoping for something more interesting than that.

2005-06-20T22:05:00.000-04:00

I did something bad tonight. I'm not sorry, though; I'm actually kind of proud of myself.

The Pioneers were in town to play the Emperors, and Cruickshank scored me some really good tickets - right on the right-field line.

In the eighth inning, the Emps were down 5-4 but were rallying off McKittredge. With two out and a guy on first, Zynzmeister laced one over first base, down the line. That was gonna produce the tying run, no question. And I knew what I had to do.

I reached out and speared the ball before Garcia could get to it, and held it up, grinning, like I'd done something cool. The runners were sent back to second and third, the fans booed like crazy and threw things at me, and security escorted me from the ballpark. (Bad call by the umpire, by the way; the guy on first should have scored and Zynzmeister probably could have made it to third. But most umps will make that call that way.)

A couple of reporters stopped me on the way out to ask me what the hell I'd been thinking. I gave my name as Sam Billabong, told them I was a Pioneers fan, that I hoped the Pioneers won this game, and that if the Emps finished one game out of first this year I'd laugh my ass off.

By the time I got back here the game was over. The Pie were victorious, 5-4. And the radio call-in shows were full of much hatred towards the idiot fan who had cost the Emps a win. Ha ha!

I hope the TV cameras didn't get a good shot of my face.

2005-06-20T00:03:00.000-04:00

Got together for a while with Ingrid the other day. I asked her what she had been up to since graduation.

"I've been helping one of my profs with some research," she said. "He was one of my advisors, and he's doing a few papers, so he's throwing me a few weeks worth of work. Then we'll see. Anything so I don't have to move back home."

"I thought you liked it there."

"I do," she said. "I love it. But in our family, if you move home after college, you never leave. That's just the way it works out. So I want to stay off that track."

"Huh. So what kind of research?"

"Actually you might be interested. He's doing a thing on the literary origins of superheroes."

"The literary origins? How the hell does that work?"

She shrugged. "Superheroes only showed up in '85. People were writing about them long before that, so you figure it out. I can show you the paper once it's written, if you want."

I nodded. "Thanks. That'd be good. So... does he know about your... special qualifications?"

"What, you mean does he know about Victor? No. Doesn't matter anyway. I don't think I learned anything about superheroes from him that's been any help to me in the research."

Pause.

"Mind if I ask you something personal?" I said.

"I don't know. Give it a try."

"How'd you and Greyghost get together, anyway? I could never figure you two out."

She shrugged. "Aah. It's not very interesting. You really want to hear about it?"

I shrugged too. "The only thing I could figure was that, like, he saved you from being mugged or something, and--"

"Eew! God, Dennis!"

"I know. Doesn't really sound like either of you."

"I hope not!"

"All right, all right..."

"No. It was a few years ago when I was in undergrad. I was on this committee that arranged guest speakers, and we really wanted Victor to be one of the speakers. I forget exactly why. But I was the one who was calling Tamar all the time and basically pestering him to come speak at the school.

"Eventually he agreed. But by that time I had decided that he was totally sexy and fascinating and I just kept pestering him, like to go out for dinner and stuff. I used every possible excuse. We have to go over your speech. We have to talk about your honorarium. We have to talk about this or that."

"I can't believe it," I said. "You're an artist groupie."

"Listen, I wasn't the only one. You have no idea. Anyway. Of course I ran out of excuses, especially after Victor's speech was over and he had been paid and everything. I had to say to him, 'I don't have a pretext this time, but can we go out anyway?'"

I laughed.

"He didn't know how to deal with me," she continued. "I mean, he's not shy or anything--you know him. I think the age thing bothered him a bit. Hell, I know it did. It took him a while before he finally accepted that, you know, twenty-five years difference or not, I wasn't going away. But then it was okay."

"Weird," I said.

"Well... you don't know him like I know him. You know him as Greyghost first. And he's different when he's just being Victor Scigrave. He talks more. He's... he's not so much the Grim Reaper. I didn't even know he was Greyghost for almost a year."

"How'd you take that?"

She glared at me in that pointy way she has. "I did not like it. But the more I thought about it... oh, well, it could be worse, the guy I went out with in high school used to put strawberry jam on his hamburgers."

2005-06-16T21:08:00.000-04:00

Very weird conversation today. I was typing the daily supervillain updates into the database when Bob came in.

"Greyghost around?"

"Nope. I think he's at home painting."

"Right, right. Do you have a minute?"

"Well, I'm--"

"Good. Here's the thing. How would you like to work for me?"

Now what? "I don't know, Bob," I said. "The job I have now takes up a lot of my time--"

"I know, asshole. That's the idea. You quit this job and work for me instead. You know, 'instead'."

I pushed my keyboard back. "Doing what?"

"Pretty much what you're doing now. Except you'd have better hours, a window somewhere in the room and you wouldn't have to feed any fish."

I thought about it. Something about the idea didn't sit right with me. "I don't know..."

"Probably more money, too."

"Can I say no without pissing you off?"

He sat down on one of the desks. "Why the hell would you?"

In the time it took us to say that much I had thought of two good reasons. "First. Your headquarters has been blown up five times in the past three years."

"Yeah, but that's--"

"Second. Greyghost can pay me because he's rich. He has steady money. You can pay me because you have sponsorships and crap that fluctuate depending on how popular you are at the moment. Not steady money."

He paused, and sighed. "Those aren't the real reasons."

"Don't sit on my desk and analyze me, okay? And if you say I'm staying here out of loyalty to Greyghost I'll break your nose. I will. I'll wing you with this stapler right here."

"Not because of Greyghost. Although I bet that's part of it. I think it's because of how much hard work it is and how crappy the hours and working conditions are."

"Huh?"

"If you quit this job it'll be like you wimped out. If it ever becomes easy for you, then maybe you'll quit. You're too competitive. You can't quit this job until you've kicked its ass."

"I wasn't planning on quitting anyway. And, you're calling me competitive? Oh, and if you already knew I wouldn't go for it, why'd you ask me?"

"Hey, Dennis, I saw you playing that video game. I've fought enough whacked-out supervillains that I know every type of competitiveness there is, and you've got some." He stood up. "And I asked you because I want you to take the job. Let me know if you change your mind."

And he left.

2005-06-14T23:55:00.000-04:00

Today, just for the hell of it, I took a stroll down to the back room where the interdimensional teleconferencing equipment is, for a chat with Dennis2. But when I turned on the set, he wasn't there. This hasn't happened before. I wonder what I'm up to.

2005-06-13T20:40:00.000-04:00

Today I said to Greyghost, "How come nobody has useless powers?"

"Pardon me?"

"Everybody who has super-powers has powers that are really useful for crime or fighting or something. Nobody has the power to make a really good pizza, or to go for three days without taking a whiz, or to automatically pick out songs for a mixtape that add up to exactly ninety minutes. It's all flying around and fire and magnetism and stuff. Why?"

He thought about it.

"Even when I had powers," I continued. "They were weird, but still pretty tough."

"Mm."

"You don't know, do you?"

"No, I don't. It's an interesting question, though; I had never thought about it in those terms. I presume you have a theory?"

"Huh? No. I really wanted to know. It doesn't seem like the kind of thing that could happen by accident."

"Mm."

And we left it at that.

2005-06-12T23:00:00.000-04:00

Recently I haven't been having the mustard nightmare as much. I've been having one where I've still got my powers and am fighting Icecap again, only this time I kill him and keep beating up his corpse. Not pleasant, especially since I feel guilty about that fight in the first place. Sure, he was being a tool, but nobody deserves what he got. I must have been out of my mind; I actually enjoyed hitting him. And normally I hate hitting people.

So I called up Icecap on his penphone.

"Hey," he said, answering it.

"Dennis," I said. "I want to talk to you about a couple things. Can you meet me someplace for a few minutes?"

"Sure," he said. "How about that warehouse from before, at four?"

That was cool, and, come four o'clock, there we were, out in front of the warehouse where we had the superhero summit in which Greyghost and I gave out the penphones in the first place..

"What's the problem?" he said.

He seemed friendly. That was weird.

"Two things, really. The first thing is, I want to apologize for back when I had super-powers. I'm really sorry about that."

Icecap laughed. "Don't apologize, for shit's sake, Dennis! It was a great fight. I didn't think you could do it. But you really showed me something that day. I was impressed."

Didn't expect that.

"I used to think you were all mouth," he continued. "But you can back it up. That's good. So what's the other thing?"

I don't understand this guy at all. Oh well; I said what I had to say. "Um. The other thing, I was wondering, who organized the Defense Posse?"

He was on his guard immediately. "Why?"

Here's where I knew I had to give him some of the old razzle dazzle. "Why do you think?"

"Because Greyghost is an asshole who has to know everything about everybody."

He had a bit of a point. "Well, yeah. But that's not why. Look, in twenty years, superheroes haven't been real good about teaming up. SPIA is really the only long-term example, and there isn't a lot of teamwork involved there. Now all of a sudden you guys show up. It's not weird to wonder what's behind it."

He shrugged. Time to roll the dice.

"So, with you guys here, and the Righteous in L.A., and that bunch in Chicago, all showing up at the same time... Who's paying for all this? And what does he think he's getting for his money?"

Icecap grinned. "Let's just say it's an anonymous philanthropist," he said. "And what he's getting is three safer cities."

So I didn't get a name. At least I confirmed that all three of these groups were set up by the same person. The old razzle dazzle... works every time.

2005-06-10T21:56:00.000-04:00

Talked to my brother today. He was telling me about his three-year-old. Apparently one of his acquaintances asked the kid what she wanted to be when she grew up, and she said, "A pickle."

My response was, "Exactly."

2005-06-10T00:45:00.000-04:00

The main event that evening, the steel cage video death match between Greyghost and Mr. Scarab, was of course cancelled. We all knew they weren't going to do it, I guess. So instead the eight of us who had put money down decided to settle the bet with a single-elimination tournament. Whichever one of us could win three games of Bonestorm collected the money.

A word here. This tournament was basically me and seven superheroes - Cassie, Liz, Billy, Bob, Scintilla, Daylighter and Wildthing. Of the eight of us, I am the slowest. I am the weakest. I have the slowest reflexes. And I may very well be the least intelligent. And I knew I was about to kick everybody's asses.

See, one thing about superheroes is this. They're all Type A personalities. They're motivated. They know what they want and they're effective at achieving it. Even people like Bob and Cassie who come off as laid-back. They aren't laid-back. They're low-key and relentless, and they don't turn aside from their goals. All of which implies that these aren't the sort of people who will, say, spend two hours in an arcade every day after school for several years.

I, on the other hand, was. Am.

Now, when you're playing video games like Bonestorm (an older game that I know very well indeed), it does help to be faster than your opponent. But only up to a point, because the game itself only moves so fast and it doesn't help you to be any faster than that. And anyway, it's even more important to know the game, and especially for your hands to know the game. You have to have the muscle memory, and there's enough of a learning curve with almost any video game since about 1990, that you need a lot of practice to get it. I have had that practice, because I am something of a loser.

Bob hasn't. Bob couldn't care less about video games. Cassie hasn't been in an arcade in her life. Daylighter's been saving the world since he was fifteen. Billy was too busy supporting his parents since he was twelve to have any quarters left over. Scintilla lived in a castle in Italy until four years ago. Wildthing lived in the Cytherean jungle until three years ago. And Liz was too much of an athlete to bother with anything where you were in a darkened mallnook instead of out in the sun. I was looking forward to this.

As Liz was figuring out who the opponents were going to be in the first round, I figured it was only fair to warn everyone what was about to happen, and said, "I just thought I'd let you know that I am going to kick every ass that passes in front of me, I am going to make it look easy, and I am going to collect one hundred sixty American dollars."

Six superheroes smiled at me condescendingly. (Cassie was the exception.)

In my first game, I was playing Daylighter. Daylighter is capable of flying at the speed of light. But as we started on the first room, he said, "How do you make the guy shoot?" The game didn't last long.

Bob, Billy, Liz and I made it to the next round. I played Liz. This was actually a bit of a break for me, as Liz's powers--the ability to build, maintain and drive a giant robot suit--don't really give you much in the way of extra speed or reflexes. On the other hand, she had clearly played this game, a little, sometime before tonight. I revised my estimate of her; she was an all right player. She clicked her tongue at her obvious mistakes, and even at a couple of her inobvious ones. But I won.

I was up against Billy in the final round. I had been watching him play, and he was definitely getting the hang of it. Like Liz, he had definitely played this before, but he was much faster than Liz, and in this context he was even faster than Daylighter. But I had had an idea this might happen, so I used my secret weapon.

See, if you hit both fire buttons while slamming the joystick a certain way, you can shoot backwards, which is often helpful. Only the real experienced players know that trick, and I hadn't used it in the previous games. I was saving it for this round.

I figured that even without the backwards-shooting I knew enough Bonestorm strategy that I'd be able to edge Billy out even with all his speed, but I didn't want to edge anybody out; I wanted to make them my bitches. It was funny. He kept saying, "What the hell are you doing?" and I ended up outscoring him by more than I outscored Liz.

Once the game was over, I ambled over to the table to pick up my envelope of winnings. I was trying to keep the smirk off my face, but I guess I kind of failed, because Scintilla said, "You know, Dennis, just because you won a kid's game doesn't mean we're not superior to you in every way that actually matters in the world."

Well, there is that, of course.

She was kidding, of course, or at least thought she was, but it's exactly the kind of thing that pisses me off to even think about. I sputtered a couple of times but let it pass. Then Billy, who had been studying the controls, said, "I want a rematch."

Oh, no. That's the other thing about superheroes. They learn stuff fast. A guy like Billy could easily become good enough to beat me in an evening, and I definitely wanted to quit while I was ahead. "No, no," I said. "It's going to take me the rest of the night to count my money."

"If you don't want to play him, what about giving me a try?" said Lana, who had been cleaning up around the perimeter during the tournament.

"Yeah, okay," I said, and we stepped up to the console. And she beat my brains out. I was hopelessly behind and down to my last life after three screens. I strung it out after that for a couple of minutes but there was nothing.

"Good game," she said, even though it hadn't been, and we retired to our separate quarters. There were many congratulations for Lana, and Bob and Billy mocked me a little, but that's okay; it's not like she was a superhero.

The seven of them wandered across the room to join Greyghost, Mr. Scarab, Whitecap and Glory, who were relaxing and telling superhero war stories. I could think of nothing I'd rather do less, so I turned on one of the TVs and flipped around until I found the Pioneers game. The Pie were winning 7-0 in the second inning, which never happens. Even that lamo Garcia had an RBI double. I sat down happily to watch. If the Pioneers hung on to win they'd only be five games out of fourth place.

Two and a half hours later, the Pioneers had triumphed 16-3. I turned off the set and looked around. The place was almost empty and almost dark. Lana was finishing putting everything away as I was finishing my Coke, and we fell into conversation. The two of us eventually agreed that there was no point in Lana driving for an hour back to the city tonight and then drive back out for breakfast early the next morning, when it'd be so much easier for her to stay over in my room. So that's what we did.

Which is why I was able to get extra blueberries on my pancakes the next morning.

Driving home with Greyghost, I did some thinking, and realized that I had finally ended my half of my relationship with Cassie. Even before Lana. Saturday night, at dinner, Cassie and I had been sitting together, and getting along great like usual, but with no thing hanging between us. We were done. It was over. I'm glad we still like each other, though, because she's still cool.

It worries me a little bit that the last two women I've been to bed with have been ones I've met at superhero conventions.

2005-06-08T23:56:00.000-04:00

I can only remember another couple of things discussed around the table that would stick in the mind of any sane human.

One was Greyghost, who gave a quick summary on what he was up to with Underhand. Some of the others, like Bob and Cassie, were already mostly familiar with the whole extravaganza, but there was much whistling and raising of eyebrows among the rest.

He finished by saying, "I expect to need to move against Underhand's assets in other cities, and will no doubt be calling on some of you for your aid in that area."

Nobody said anything for a moment.

"Well," Daylighter said, "you think big."

"If you're trying to pick off his supervillains one by one," Scintilla said, "you should probably start with those two torpedoes of his. Asskicker and Nametaker? Them."

"I've been trying to catch the two of them for years now. I'm still trying. They're my top priority. The largest problem is that they know I'm after them."

"I'll be damned if I'd try taking on Underhand now of all times," Whitecap said. "You can't even guarantee that the cops and courts will let you get anywhere--they could all be in his pocket, and then where are you? And Empire City is short of superheroes right now. I think you might have bitten off more than you can chew."

"Mm."

Which put an end to that discussion.

The other interesting part was Glory B, who started off by saying, "There's a new band of young superheroes in Los Angeles. They call themselves the Righteous. They've been recruiting, not aggressively, but judiciously. But it's not clear who organized them."

"Oh," I said, "that's like Icecap's group in Empire City. The Defense Posse. Except they haven't been recruiting."

"Yes, they have," Bob said.

"They have," Greyghost confirmed.

Oh.

"There's a group like that in Chicago too," Scintilla said. "It didn't occur to me to wonder who was organizing them."

We pondered this. How to resolve this question?

"Dennis, on Monday, see what you can find out about this." That's how.

(Since then, Monday has come and gone, and I found out what I could find out about it. Nothing.)

2005-06-06T23:34:00.000-04:00

The SPIA meeting this year took place just outside Stone City. I was a bit dubious when I read Tinliz's directions of how to get there, and even more so when Greyghost and I actually pulled up in front of the place late Friday night. Because it was a Randy's CometLodge.

I wasn't previously familiar with the Randy's CometLodges. Basically it's like a sports bar + video games + convention centre + hotel rooms + slot machines + water slides kind of deal. In other words, it's exactly Greyghost's type of place. So that's amusing. But kind of public for a superhero meeting, I would have thought. On the other hand, when we pulled up, the parking lot was basically empty.

Tinliz--well, Liz, anyway--was in the lobby checking people in. "How come we're here?" I asked her.

"The owner owes me a favour," she said. "We've got the whole east wing to ourselves this weekend, while some guys work on the roof in the main section."

"It's, uh, a little unusual for this crowd, don't you think?"

She held out a clipboard to me. "Billy and I have started a pool. Scarab versus Greyghost in Virtual Pong Warrior--" she gestured at the video games room "--twenty bucks to pick the winner, and by how much."

Awesome. I handed over a twenty, said, "Greyghost by thirty," snagged a couple of room keys and headed back to the car. I unpacked Greyghost's stuff into his room, my stuff into my room, watched some TV and went to sleep.

Next morning we all had breakfast in a little dining room off the video game room. Randy's CometLodge seemed to have provided staff for the event; a short chick with green lipstick, nametagged 'Lana'. Presumably--and I never did get confirmation on this--Liz did some kind of checking on Lana and her ability and inclination to keep her mouth shut.

Everybody I thought would be there was there. Greyghost and me, of course. Bob, Liz and Billy, Scintilla, Whitecap, Mr. Scarab, Glory B, Daylighter, Wildthing. Ms. Moxie was not there, which I wasn't expecting; she may be too pregnant to fight crime but she could still show up for the meetings. But then I did the math and figured that she was actually due to give birth any day now, so she gets a pass. And of course Cassie was there.

I was ready for it to be weird, seeing her again. I wasn't ready for it to be normal. I expected her to sit on the opposite side of the room from me, avoid eye contact, and smile politely if I approached her. I didn't expect her to sit down beside me and start talking like... well, like we used to do. And I didn't expect myself to be able to join in without even thinking about it.

"I paid down forty," she said. "I've got Mr. Scarab by ten and by fifteen in Virtual Thing-Pong or whatever it is. What about you?"

"I just wonder if they know they're playing," I said. And everything was great.

Then the boring part, which was the meeting itself. It could have been cool, with Cassie and I writing sarcastic comments back and forth to each other on the Randy's CometLodge stationery we all got. But no. I had to pay attention, in case Greyghost needed me to remember a point or supply a detail or anything.

The first issue that came up was membership. Billy suggested a guy in Cleveland named Redstart, and Scintilla voted it down. Then Greyghost nominated Prowl, and I shouted, "Whoo hoo!" I knew he was going to do that!

Everyone turned to look at me, naturally, and what could I say? That I had just won a bet with myself?

Moving on.

Daylighter said, "Next point. Nefario."

"How is he a point?" Bob asked. "Greyghost took him down and turned him over to the cops. He's been extradited to France. He's locked up."

"Exactly," Daylighter said. "Which means everyone is breathing a little easier. It means the government is a little more relaxed. They can take the time to think about how much they really don't trust us, and they can come after our funding."

"What do you mean--we should bust the man out of jail so the government will come crawling back to us?" Billy asked. "Exclude me from your plan."

"No, that's not what I mean!"

"Then explain yourself," Scintilla said, "because I heard it the same way Billy did."

"I mean," Daylighter said, "that conditions have changed. We have to be more careful now. The government's going to be paying more attention to our public reputation."

Whitecap slumped down in his seat and sighed.

"Which brings me to Whitecap and the Centuryon," he continued.

"I had no choice," Whitecap said.

"That's not the point," Daylighter told him. "The point is that it makes us look bad. You saw the headlines: "Superhero Kills Nine-Year-Old Girl"."

"That nine-year-old girl," Whitecap snarled, "was seven feet tall, with tits out to here, stronger than me, with a ten foot golden flaming spear she was trying to rotisserie me with. I was fighting for my life. And even then, she only died because her powers cut out on her at the wrong time."

"We know," Bob said. "That's not the point."

"Well, what do you want me to say?" Whitecap said. "This kind of shit happens. And I'm not the only one. Everybody in this room. All of you, you've all killed people."

"I haven't," I said, because that's the kind of jerk I am.

"I haven't either," said Cassie, which I was glad about.

"Me neither," said Lana, as she poured out another jug of water in front of Mr. Scarab. "Although," she added thoughtfully, "it's still early in the day."

"You will," Whitecap said, addressing Cassie. "I can't speak for Dennis or Lethal Lana here, but your day will come. And you'll hate it. But there's no way to avoid it; super-powered fighting is just too dangerous. You can take all the precautions you want but sometimes people will die anyway. And then you get to defend yourself in meetings like this."

"All I'm saying--" Daylighter said.

"Your point has been made," Greyghost said. "Next?"

"Next," Daylighter said, "is Surefire."

"What about him?" Bob asked.

"Where is he?" Daylighter said.

"I've searched for him, when I've had time," Greyghost said. "I've found no trace."

"I'm worried about him," Daylighter said.

"Screw him," Bob said.

"I'm serious," Daylighter said. "The guy's lost his life. Who knows what he's up to now, or what he's thinking? I'm worried he could go off the rails. And never mind what kind of publicity problems that could create for the rest of us. I don't like the idea that this could happen to one of us."

"I'll keep looking. And I'll pass any information along if it seems relevant."

I'm kind of blending these little subconversations together because I can't remember everything everyone said or the order they said it in. So let's say that this is where we broke for lunch.

2005-06-05T23:45:00.000-04:00

Very tired now after the long drive back to Empire City from the SPIA meeting. There's a lot of stuff I want to type up about it, including the sex I didn't expect to have, and the hundred and forty bucks I didn't expect to receive, but it'll all have to wait because I keep doing that thing where my head sags forward and then jerks back upright.

2005-06-02T23:07:00.000-04:00

One of the things I do every now and then is get out the maps and figure out new routes around the city. Not for me, but for Greyghost. It's difficult, because I have to take the heights of buildings into account. He already knows most of the tricks, but occasionally you can see things on a map that aren't as obvious in real life.

This is all just to give him an edge, or maybe a way of sneaking around to protect his secret identity. It's not like Batman or Spider-Man where he patrols the city every night, swinging from rooftop to rooftop. Greyghost doesn't patrol very often, for these reasons:

1. You really can't move very fast that way, unless you're a cartoon character. It's faster than walking, but there's not much more you can say about it.

2. Not all crimes take place around where the tall buildings are. Even in this city.

3. It's a pretty random way of looking for trouble. Think about how terrible the odds are of actually arriving at a crime scene at the moment the crime is taking place. You'd be better off with a lottery ticket.

Greyghost'll patrol across the rooftops maybe once every month or two, just to stay in practice, but mostly he prefers to use his head. He collects information, from his informants and other sources, and analyzes them, and chooses his hunting sites. He then rides in quiet luxury to his quarry, in the back of a late-model sedan driven by a handsome chauffeur, sometimes enjoying a nutritious meal as he does so. Upon arrival he apprehends the ruffians with alacrity, turns them over to the local constabulary, and returns to the vehicle for a leisurely trip home. This is how a civilized superhero operates.

(I just got a new thesaurus.)

2005-05-31T20:52:00.000-04:00

Woo hoo! I just managed to improve my high score in Minesweeper for the first time in months!

Ultimately I'd like to get it down into two digits, but that probably won't happen anytime soon. Practice practice practice!

2005-05-30T23:56:00.000-04:00

Typically I only do office- and superhero-related errands for Greyghost. Occasionally I have to schlep some art around town for him, and I'm liable to be drafted into chauffeur duty for any kind of excursion. But only rarely have I been to his actual house.

I like it better that way. If he wants Victor Scigrave's life to be a Dennis-free zone, I think that's probably healthy for him.

The first time I saw Casa Scigrave I figured, this guy's place is going to be all black and white and grey and glass and silver and mirrors and angles and leather couches, and I went in, and that's exactly what it was like. How annoying. Except that there are basically two ways this kind of decorating look can go--one, it can look like nobody lives there, or two, it can look like someone does live there and is making the place kind of seedy. Greyghost somehow managed to avoid both of these.

Today I was in there to help set up for some kind of party he was having. I wasn't invited, of course, but he wanted certain of Itzhak's devices planted here and there, and the caterers could use the extra pair of hands. Made a nice change from the office.

And I can't deny that I did a bit of snooping around. I tilted everything I could find on the mantel and the bookshelves but the secret entrance to the Batcave refused to reveal itself. Oh well. Actually I was really looking for evidence of female overnight guests, but all I found was a couple of books that I think Ingrid had given him for Christmas.

Before I left I clouted a plastic container from Greyghost's kitchen and filled it with a wide selection of hors d'oeuvres from the caterers' van. Ron and Linnet are probably going to be watching movies at the apartment tonight, and I will be all the more welcome if I bring snacks.

2005-05-29T23:34:00.000-04:00

The other part of Greyghost's plan to bring down Underhand is that, once Cruickshank starts tightening the financial screws on him, Greyghost himself will start picking off the various supervillains Underhand uses as his shock troops, operatives, and troubleshooters. Actually that's not true. Greyghost won't be doing it all himself; he'll be going after some of these supervillains and getting other superheroes or even the cops to nail the rest. That way Underhand won't be able to figure out that it's specifically Greyghost who's after him. Or that's the theory, anyway.

So this weekend, they already got off to a good start. Greyghost set up some kind of stakeout at the airport and nabbed Rob U. Blynde trying to lift a briefcase of microchip samples off one of those handcuff-courier guys. Also, Bob and Headbanger had a fistfight in the middle of Moon Square last night that lasted forty-five minutes and is already being talked about as one of the most titanic hero/villain fights in the history of time and space. Bob won, of course, and Headbanger has checked into the crowbar hotel.

Which is all good. Greyghost has pointed out to me, though, that Underhand and his organization aren't likely to just sit there and take it. Once they figure out that all their problems aren't just coincidence, they'll try to take some kind of action against somebody. I say that Greyghost pointed it out to me, but in fact I had already figured it out, and am expecting the worst.

In other news. Ingrid fixed me up on a date yesterday afternoon with her friend Beautiful Sylvia. It went fine. Sylvia is, as billed, nice to look at, and she's cool, too; Ingrid doesn't hang with any losers. We had a good time, and we liked each other okay. We decided not to do it again.

I admit it. It's partly because I'm going to be seeing Cassie again soon and deep down I still have some hope. Which is pathetic. But it's also because, I don't know, it was just, I don't know.

That was put badly.

I guess she and I just aren't enough of each other's types. Or something. Or, I don't know.

If I was Ron, I would have tried to get her in the sack anyway. And probably succeeded. Which depresses me because I am in fact not Ron, and Sylvia's really pretty. But on the other hand if I was Ron I wouldn't have been out with her in the first place; I'd be engaged to a shapeshifting activist. Which actually makes me feel better in a weird way.

So I don't know where that leaves me.

2005-05-26T23:00:00.000-04:00

My efforts to housetrain Greyghost are finally showing some results. Last year he only told me about the SPIA meeting the evening before we were supposed to leave. This time I've got an entire week and a half of advance notice. I was wondering if they have it at Mr. Scarab's hideout every time, but apparently it moves around and Tinliz is hosting it this time.

Cassie's probably going to be there. That'll be weird.

2005-05-24T23:47:00.000-04:00

Spent so much time at the doctor's office today that I got to work later than I planned, so I went into work-like-fury-to-catch-up mode for a few hours. But everything was going smoothly by the time Greyghost stalked through.

I was slumped back in the chair drinking diet cream soda (I don't know--Cruickshank stocks it) while Greyghost checked his mail and other items of interest I sorted for him. He flipped through it, nodded, and turned to leave. Then he paused.

"Dennis."

Of course, I pride myself on being as clueless and emotionally stunted as any guy out there. But I do have my moments, and this was one of them. I knew, somehow, what was coming.

"Haven't spoken to Ingrid in a few days," I told him.

"Mm."

I gestured at the computer. "This thing's updating our index to all your Interpol forensic stuff, and it'll be at least another twenty minutes. So you can believe me when I say I have time to listen to you if you want to talk about it."

"No. Thank you."

"You know you screwed up, right? I mean, this isn't because of your personal qualities, or anything; it's just that you screwed up. So it might not be too late; you should go talk to her."

"I can't do that. If we're going to talk, she's going to have to come to me. Think it through."

That didn't make any sense to me, until I considered Greyghost's lie-detection ability. Any conversation the two of them had, he'd be getting more information out of it than she would. And Ingrid must know that. So, he was saying that that would only be fair if she chose it. Which, okay.

"Huh," I said. "Let me ask you something. If you don't mind, I mean. How'd you two get together in the first place, anyway?"

"I've never... quite understood," he said, and made his exit.

2005-05-23T21:29:00.000-04:00

I wound up not calling the Omicron number. I just couldn't figure out what to say. "Hi. Are you a retired superhero? You are? How you doin'?"

Erin and John had me over for lunch this weekend. At least, Erin did; I have yet to see any evidence that John is aware of my existence. I don't know why I keep accepting her invitations; it's always the same. Erin and I have the same boring conversations we always have, in which she tells me about people I don't know anymore, and I avoid telling her anything about my life, while John grunts and stares into space.

The only difference is that this time John kept getting interrupted by his phone, which he had to take in the other room. And he eventually wound up kicking me out because he had to run off to a big impromptu meeting. I guess I couldn't be trusted alone with his woman or something. Not that I was complaining; the conversation went basically:

"Hey, buddy, you gotta go; I have to--"

"Okay see you bye!"

2005-05-22T23:21:00.000-04:00

I finally got around to looking up Omicron. Greyghost had mentioned him in connection with the possibility that Icecap might be a bust as a superhero--which, I'm a little disappointed to say, hasn't really happened yet--but he didn't say why it was a good comparison.

Omicron was a superhero about seven years ago. He seemed to have some kind of mental powers and some other mystical-type abilities. It's hard to tell--these files are mostly based on newspaper articles annotated by Greyghost, and the papers don't tend to have good information about superpowers.

Anyway, he was only a superhero for a couple of months. And he seems to have done a pretty good job. His last case was a fight against a supervillain named The Sagittarian, who was trying to kill his ex-wife or something. Something must have happened, because The Sagittarian was never apprehended, and Omicron never did anything else after that.

The file doesn't have anything about exactly what happened, but there is a note in Greyghost's handwriting with an address and phone number in it, so maybe I'll check that out tomorrow, if I have time for it.

2005-05-19T22:28:00.000-04:00

Today was Ingrid's graduation. She's finished her Ph.D. in English literature and this afternoon Empire City University gave her a piece of paper that says so. It was a really nice day, too.

I got there a little early and wandered around the campus for a while before going into the big tent where they had the ceremony. It was a lot classier than the little crapcan State U that excreted me and my little science degree back in the day. I would have enjoyed going to school here. Only problems: money (not enough) and marks (not high enough). Not that it's the first time I've seen the place; I've picked Ingrid up and dropped her off here more times than it's interesting to count.

The idea was I'd meet up with Ingrid and Greyghost and her family after the ceremony and we'd go out and have some dinner. Fine, but that meant I was sitting next to families I didn't know, and your average graduation ceremony isn't really that interesting and it would have been nice to have someone to talk to.

The speaker was, according to the little programme I've got, Arabella Craye, who is "an avant-garde novelist, three times nominated for the Nystul award." Check. Her speech was mostly to the effect that the future's so bright we've gotta wear shades. Then they issued the degrees, and Ingrid got hers, and that was great.

Afterwards I just sort of hung out while Ingrid had a bunch of pictures taken with her friends Opal and Smart Annabel and Beautiful Sylvia. Then that group broke up to be with their families, and Ingrid skipped over to us, me and her family. Well, not her whole family; just her parents and one of her brothers and two of her sisters and one of their husbands. Most of them couldn't make it to Empire City.

Ingrid introduced me to them, and then took me aside for a minute. "Where is he?!" she hissed.

"Who?"

She punched me in the arm. "Victor! Who do you think? This is just like him!"

"I don't know where he is," I said. (Since then I've found out that he was on a hijacked train, fighting Suzie Lightning. Why anybody would want to hijack a train is another question.)

"He knew how important this was to me. He knew. I just wanted him to show up for one thing, this one thing, once. But no."

"Stop hitting me," I said.

"Well, this is it. It's over. Gimme your cellphone. I'm gonna tell him--No. You tell him. He thinks it's okay to not show up and just send you? Then--"

"Hey! He didn't send me. It's your graduation, of course I--"

"All right, all right, shut up, I know. It's how he thinks. If he can't be bothered to show up for his girlfriend's graduation, it's still okay as long as his flunky is there. Dial him up. No, wait."

"Look, if you--"

"No. I've had way past enough. It's over. Call him up and tell him we're through, that I'm not going to see him again, that he should leave all my stuff in a box on the porch. Tell him he screwed up big time and I'm not putting up with it any more. Now repeat that back to me."

"Ingrid says you guys are through, you're not going to see her again, leave all her stuff in a box on the porch, you screwed up big time and she's not putting up with it any more."

"Dial him up," she said. "Then we'll all go out to eat, because this is my goddamn day of maximum freaking triumph and I intend to have a good time."

And we did.

2005-05-17T21:12:00.000-04:00

One of the things I miss about having super powers is the baseball. I could just fly over the stadium and watch the game for free. Of course, my superhero ADD prevented me from sticking around much more than an inning, so I couldn't even take full advantage. But still. I even got to see the Emperors lose a game, which was a special treat as they're off to another one of their annoyingly formidable hot starts. The Pioneers, it hardly needs be said, are in the basement again.

Big day tomorrow!

2005-05-16T23:10:00.000-04:00

That ripoff superhero registry website sent me another load of stuff. Most of it was the same crap as last time, but there was one costume catalog that amused me briefly. The idea was you could order capes and masks and boots and gauntlets and leotards and build your own costume that way. I guess you had to provide your own insignia.

Anyway, the thing I found interesting was the mask section. I flipped through it and thought about all the masks I had seen these people wear over the past couple of years. Basically there are eight types:

1. The Cookie Cutter. This is the standard boring kind of superhero mask; it covers the entire top half of your head, has eyeholes, and leaves your mouth and jaw exposed. Icecap and Surefire have these. Not so popular with your female superheroes, who tend to opt instead for...

2. No-Frills Cookie Cutter. Same as above, but the hair is also exposed. I guess that women tend to have more hair than men, and it looks weird if you crunch it all up under a mask. Ms. Moxie and Daylighter wear this one.

3. Full-Face. Just what it sounds like. Not used often. Glory B has one of these, but she's kind of a special case.

4. ...To Be Hung By The Neck Until Dead. It's like the Full-Face except it's not a mask. It's a hood. I'm not sure what the advantage is; it seems to me that the eyeholes would get shifted out of position a lot. This is Greyghost's choice, and One-Eyed Jack's.

5. A Cloud Of Dust, A Silver Bullet. This would be your basic domino, or Lone Ranger, mask. Doesn't really do all that much to conceal the identity. Your discerning superhero will attach this with adhesive instead of a string around his head. Prowl has one of these masks.

6. Picture Frame. It's... I can't describe it. It's not a mask at all. It's like a ski mask that leaves your actual face bare. I really don't understand the point of it. Neontetra has one of these, but he's a weird sort of cat anyway.

7. No Mask At All. It's surprising the number of superheroes who don't bother hiding their faces in the first place. It's also surprising how they get away with it. Bob doesn't wear a mask, but he doesn't really bother with the whole secret identity thing in the first place. Mr. Scarab, same thing.

8. None Of The Above. This is the catchall category for superheroes who hide their heads in something other than your standard mask. Perseid, with her helmet and goggles, belongs here.

When I was flying around scarfing pennies, the last couple of weeks, I wore a mask. Like anybody cared who I was. The mask was a Cookie-Cutter. Which just goes to prove that I was never meant for this lifestyle in the first place.

2005-05-15T23:52:00.000-04:00

Ron and Linnet were sitting around the apartment today with a notebook, making wedding plans. I was there too, reading, and trying to pretend that I had no trouble believing my ears. Linnet was talking about flower arrangements instead of pummeling corrupt cops or the evils of globalization; no problem. Ron was talking about a Catholic service instead of strippers or pretzels; that's fine. Wait - a Catholic service?

"Since when are either of you guys Catholic?" I asked. They looked up.

Linnet held up her hands helplessly. "My parents are having enough trouble with me marrying a white guy," she said. "I figured the least I could do is have the big church wedding."

"And my family's Catholic on my mom's side," Ron said. "No big thing."

"So you've got, like, marriage classes and stuff?" I said.

"The whole thing," Linnet said. "It's fine, though. My parents are great; I don't mind doing this for them."

"But they don't like Ron?"

"They like me," Ron said. "I'm just not what they originally had in mind."

"I think that's what your parents said about you," I told him.

"Yeah, well. No, I get along great with Linnet's parents. You don't like the big wedding?"

"Um. I don't know," I said. "It's fine. It's just... Seeing you two in this situation is weird. You're using aspects of your personalities that I've never seen before. Everything seems out of context."

"Well, Dennis," Linnet said, pinning me back against the couch with eye contact, "people's identities are complicated."

Can't argue with that.

2005-05-12T22:29:00.000-04:00

These meetings are missing something without Cassie there. Now it's just me and Greyghost and Cruickshank, and I already spend enough time with those guys. Today's exciting topic: Underhand.

"We've completed Phase I of the plan," Cruickshank reported. "Dieter Solarin now has his fingers in every pie that Underhand makes money from, and some other ones besides. We have positioned ourselves to act.

"This week we start into Phase II. We start using our economic influence over Underhand's customers and suppliers, and use it to squeeze him. This is where it gets dangerous."

"I thought it had been dangerous," I said. "Didn't you guys warn me last year that my life was in jeopardy?"

"They did some poking around last year," Cruickshank acknowledged. "And there was some danger. But now it's going to get serious. We're going to deliberately try to piss them off. And they are going to come after anyone they can think of who's responsible."

"Underhand and his organization should be able to trace their problems back to Dieter Solarin and John Caruthers without too much trouble. The danger is that they find the three of us standing behind those false names, and we should be safe from that. But you should still exercise caution."

"Any more questions?" Cruickshank asked.

"Yeah. We're going to die, aren't we?"

"That's really more of a comment than a question."

2005-05-10T16:48:00.000-04:00

I have a huge backlog of database updates in front of me. The grappling-hook gun is on the Fix pile because it's clogged with dead spiders. Two-thirds of the fish tanks are overdue for cleaning. And I can't fly.

I'm very happy.

2005-05-09T16:07:00.000-04:00

I woke up and didn't know where the hell I was. It was dark. I shifted a bit, and felt all gritty. I groped around and found that there was some kind of fine powder all over me. The hell?

I got up and fumbled around. This seemed to be the back room in the office; I recognized it because what I was sleeping on felt like the old leather couch from there. I switched on the light. Man, I felt weird--lightheaded, and my legs were all rubbery under me. This was the back room, all right; I staggered out to the main office.

Greyghost was there. "What's this crap all over me?" I asked him.

"Metal dust," he said. "It's been coming out of your pores. I believe your system is ridding itself of your inhuman abilities."

"Really?" Blinking in the light, I pulled a penny out of my pocket.

As I was in the process of swallowing it, Greyghost said, "I don't think you should--" but it was too late.

I coughed and choked and gasped and got the penny about halfway down my throat before I barfed all over myself. I spit the penny into my hands. "Well, that's great," I said.

Greyghost nodded at the bathroom at the back of the blue room. "Go get cleaned up," he said. "Then we'll talk."

I hosed myself off as best I could, cleaning off as much of the yack and the metal dust as possible. My shirt was a dead loss, but I had a couple of spares around. When I came out of the bathroom, Greyghost was sitting at the table.

I sat down at the table, on a side adjacent to his side. "I guess I messed up."

"It wasn't unexpected."

"Thanks."

"Have you not noticed that most of the individuals who acquire inhuman abilities eventually become criminals?"

"Yeah. But--"

"Have you ever considered why?"

"Sure."

He sighed. "I'm not a scientist. So this is just a theory. Yet I think it holds water.

"Consider the human brain. It does many things, not all of which are well understood. Scientists can, I'm sure, point to different parts of the brain and tell us what their functions are. Now. What part of the brain was responsible for controlling your flight ability?"

I didn't know.

"There is no such part," he said. "How could there be? First, this kind of flight is all but impossible. Second, the brain evolved over millions of years, and you only gained your ability last month.

"Therefore your brain was being asked to do all of the things it normally does, and at the same time to defy the laws of physics in a completely new way. And it couldn't. You became irritable. You couldn't focus on details. You became impatient with complexity."

"I thought I was just having a bad few days."

"Mm. Almost everyone who gains such abilities suffers these problems. I don't, and Perseid doesn't, and nearly all of us who work as auxiliaries to the law don't. But most do, and you saw for yourself how easily it can lead to criminal behavior."

"So how come you're so lucky?"

"I don't know."

"That wasn't all of it, though," I said. "It was also... It was like..."

Greyghost nodded. "I know. The other thing that happens is that we can lose human perspective. When we gain these abilities, we become intellectually aware, subconsciously aware, even physiologically aware, that we are no longer strictly human. We become fascinated with our new secret, and we dismiss the concerns and priorities of people. If we aren't careful, this can lead to contempt for humanity or even to megalomania.

"This is why I suggested you spend time with your friends, and at the poker game. I didn't want you to lose touch."

"I guess that makes sense. So that's why you--"

"Yes. I don't enjoy the game of poker itself, but I highly value the time I spend with my friends. My relationships with Ingrid, with Cruickshank, with you... It's impossible for anyone to associate with all of you and be contemptuous of human beings."

Wow. "But you wouldn't..."

"Have you ever heard the story of how I received my inhuman abilities?"

"No."

"Mm. I was at a party. I am not the most social of men, but I attended this one. Many notable artists were there. Several of us fell into discussion in one of the smaller rooms, and one man explained to us his theories of life and art and consciousness. He believed in the use of powerful psychedelic drugs to promote artistic inspiration. The rest of us were more skeptical than he had hoped, and he became angry. Later that evening, he secretly dosed our drinks with such a drug.

"It gave me a vision. A nightmare vision, of an endless black void that I was falling into, forever. I thought I was lost. Then I became aware of a source of power in the void, and if I grasped it, I could lead myself out. I did so, and when the drug's effects wore off, the power remained.

"Dennis, I can still see that void all around us. It's waiting. All I'm trying to do in my life is to use the power I found to hold that darkness back. But the power itself is a thing of darkness."

"That's just a metaphor, though, right? It's just images that you had when you were stoned. There's, you know, no actual void."

"So I tell myself. But... In any case. You're aware of the nature of my inhuman abilities."

"You can detect lies, see in the dark, and when you're in the dark you can sort of merge with the shadow and you get a lot stronger and faster."

"Mm. That isn't the extent of my power, though. Within me is power I've never touched, power I don't even understand. I don't dare use it. I can't imagine the consequences, and I don't know what I would become.

"So it's important to me that I retain perspective."

"Huh. Hmm. So how come you're only telling me all this now? It probably would have done me more good a couple of weeks ago."

He shook his head. "You were in no condition to hear complex new ideas. You couldn't have listened."

I thought about all this. "I guess I owe Icecap an apology. And Prowl."

Greyghost shook his head again. "It's all part of the job for them. Simply, this is what we do--we try to minimize the amount of trouble caused by people in your situation. Prowl's been following you for the past few days, with one of my signaling devices, because we knew that something like this was likely to happen. Although I had some hope that your abilities would wear off before it did."

"Oh. Yeah. Good call, by the way. But how did you know my powers were temporary?"

"Typically, inhuman abilities gained independently are permanent, but those gained secondhand, like yours, are more ephemeral."

"Okay," I said. "I guess that's all of my questions."

He nodded, and stood up. "Good, then. Go home and get some rest; you've got a lot of work to catch up on in the next few days."

He's all heart, I thought as I sipped some water and he headed for the door.

"Dennis," he said at the doorway. I looked up. "Congratulations."

2005-05-08T21:12:00.000-04:00

As best I can remember--because, let's face it, I've kind of been out of my freaking mind recently--I started thinking about Cassie. I missed her. So I got the brilliant idea, hey, why not fly out to California and get her back? What's to stop me?

I mean, sure, there was the whole superhero thing. I still didn't want her to be a superhero, and I knew that that was still a dealbreaker for her... but now that I had superpowers too maybe it wouldn't matter as much. Or that's what I figured, anyway, and the thought of going flying with her was and is a very appealing one. So I got myself a big bag of change, and went down to the corner store to stock up on supplies for the trip. I figured it'd take me a day or two, so if I got some Gatorade and beef jerky and whatnot I'd be okay.

(Since then I've recalculated and figured out that I'd be lucky to make the trip from Empire City to LA in a week. And that's with not a lot of sleep.)

So I collected an armful of junk food and brought it up to the cash. The store guy punched it all in and said, "That'll be $34.82, please."

I checked my wallet and found no bills. I had turned them all into coins in the past week or two. So I picked up the bag of goodies and said, "I don't have any bills and I can't spend these coins. We'll figure it out later."

"Hey! You can't take that without paying for it!"

And I got mad. All I wanted to do was fly out to where Cassie was, and this insignificant guy was getting in my way with his little technicalities. "I don't have time for this," I said, and turned to go.

He yelled something else at me and hit the alarm button. At about that time Linnet poked her head into the store. "Hey, Dennis," she said. "What's up?"

"Nothing," I told her. "Out of the way, please."

"That guy's trying to leave without paying," the store guy said.

"You stealing stuff now?" she asked.

"Look," I explained, "I need this stuff. It's important. We can worry about the money later."

She noticed my backpack and the contents of the bag. "You going someplace?"

"I'm going to California to get Cassie back, and I think you should get out of my way."

"Oh, I get it," she said, sneering. "You're becoming a stalker. And here we were worrying about you turning into a supervillain! I suppose I should have realized you'd let your dick do all your thinking for you."

[Time out. I was using pretty bad judgment there, no question. And the California trip was one of the stupider ideas in the history of upright man. But I wasn't so far gone that you could really call me a stalker; even at my worst I realized that Cassie might not go for it, and in my mind, if she didn't, that would be that and I'd turn around and come back. I just wanted to have that typed out someplace. Time in.]

"I gotta go," I said, gulped a dime, and flew out of the store with my stolen stuff through the plate glass window.

"Shit!" Linnet said, and leaped for me. She caught hold of my legs as I was about fifteen feet in the air. I lurched back down toward the street.

"Let go!" I said, kicking at her.

"No! Now come down and we'll try to fix this! It's possible you haven't completely screwed the pooch here!"

But I wasn't in any mood to listen to her. I tried to do some loops and stuff to shake her off, but I just couldn't fly with all the extra weight, and in a few seconds wasn't really doing much more than bouncing us off the pavement.

I scrambled to my feet and tried to boot Linnet in the ribs, but she dodged easily, popped to her feet, and grabbed my arm. "You're not taking off again," she said. "Now calm down."

I tried punching her and she dodged again. "Is that martial arts?" I said.

"Yeah, it's called 'boxing'," she told me, punching me in the stomach but only hitting armor, "Ow! Damn it!"

We struggled some more and completely failed to hurt each other. She couldn't do much to get past my armor and I was too incompetent to hit her.

Then I heard, "Dennis. Enough."

"Don't call me that!" I yelled at him. "That's my slave name!"

He laughed. I had never heard him laugh before. Of course, I don't think anyone has ever said anything so obnoxious and loserly to him before.

"He was shoplifting supplies to fly to California," Linnet supplied.

Greyghost took this in and said, to me, "Well?"

"I don't have to answer to anybody," I said. "I'm going to California, and you don't want to get in my way."

"I'm in your way," he told me.

I wrenched away from Linnet and flew straight at him, fists first, like I had done to Icecap. If I had been thinking clearly, I would have noticed that he was in the shade. Of course, if I had been thinking clearly none of this crap would have happened in the first place.

As soon as I launched myself, Greyghost faded. He rematerialized once I was in his patch of shade, with one arm around my neck and the other hand on my face. He gently clamped my nose and mouth shut, and I heard him tell Linnet, "This is how you get around that kind of skin armor." I struggled for air, uselessly, and eventually blacked out.

2005-05-05T22:16:00.000-04:00

This morning I was reading one of Ron's manazines and I foudn that I was just staring into space. I'd try to read it and I'd have to make myself concentrate on every paragtaph . It got really frustrating. Finally I just tore the thing up and chucked it acrosst he room.

So I went flying around. everything seems easier up in the air. No annoying details and no anoying people.

Fountain flew up next to me. Once he saw I noticed him, he nodded his head at a nearby rooftop. we landed.

"I haven't lost your card," I told him.I'm just a little nervous about getting involved in stuff like that."

HE nodded. "Why is that?'

"Basically I'm nto a guy who wants any trouble," I said. "Doing illegal stuff, that's trouble."

"Well, no pressure," he said " But don't fall into their trap."

"Waht trap?"

Look," he said. "You know what you are, soince you got your powers? You're superhuman. As in, more than human. Laws were made to control human beings. Well, you're not human any more. You're better."

"Uh huh." The old soft soap.

"You don't think your'e better? Think of all thos e people down there," he said, pointing over the edge of the roof. "Don't they frustrate you? Aren't you sick of all the bullshit of their world?"

He had a point there. It wasn't nybody with super pweors who let Evil Danny Wilcox back otu on the street. God, that pissed me off.

"You don't have to put up with it any more," he said. "There are more people with super pwoers every day. Imagine what the world is going to be like in a hundred years. Hell, in forty years. IT's not going to be like now. There's a place for you in it, and a place for me, but all those guys down there? They're over and they don't even know it.

"I can't make you sign on iwth me," he contunued, "I mean, I think it'd be a beneficial arrangment for both of us. But whether you do or not, take my advice and don't be constrained by all this homo sapiens crap you see around you. You're a new thing. Make a new way." He shook up a Coke can, opened it, and blasted off.

So I've been thinking about that. I mean, I know it's self-srving bullshit and all, but there's a point buried in it. What are the ethics of having superpowers? If I really am, biologically, a new species, what is my correct relationsip to the pecies I used to be? And obviously it's temtping to think about how I can jsut do whatever I want, I mean, come o n. But the more I think about it, the more turned aROUND i GET AND THIS KEYBOARD IS PISSING ME OFFwith the goddamn caps lock and the keys sticking and mvoing around and SCREW T HIS

2005-05-04T00:19:00.000-04:00

This afternoon Bob called the office for Greyghost. While I tried to transfer him over, he said, "Oh, by the way, Evil Danny's out."

"What do you mean, out?"

"Out. On the street. You know."

"What the hell!"

"Hey, it happens. Superheroes are in a weird legal gray area. If a villain has a good lawyer, you never know."

"That's crap. You know what I found when I got home yesterday? A big scorch mark across the back of my jacket. He must have fired something off at me when I tackled him. And there's an acid splash on the shoulder, from one of his cyber-spray-weapons or whatever the hell. I risked my life there!"

"Yeah," Bob said. "I know. You did good, too."

"I risked my life and they're letting him go?"

"It's not like they want to let him go. They know damn well he's guilty. It's just the law, that's all. Don't worry about it."

I slammed the phone down. Stupid people. I'm not even a superhero, and I'm risking my life to bring down this dangerous guy, to protect them, and they let him out? What a bunch of jerks. I slurped down a quarter on the way to the elevator.

Outside, and into the air. First I tried flying up as far as I could. I got pretty high, but as the air got thinner the flying got slower. So I switched to power dives. Then I heard this buzzing sound.

It was Icecap, on his rebuilt Icycle. Not today, I thought, I don't want to deal with this guy. He swung up to me.

"What do you think you're doing?" he said.

"Building a treehouse," I answered.

"You're building some trouble, is what you're doing. I heard you got superpowers. But you're too good to be a superhero, huh?"

"I'm too good to be one like you."

"Well, now. If you're not a superhero, but you're flying around in a mask, and disrupting air traffic and being a public nuisance, what are you?"

Aw, man.

"I know!" he said. "A supervillain!" And revved the Icycle's engine. Little punk.

"Well, if I am," I said, "I guess that means I have to do this." And flew right under the Icycle, up the other side, and clotheslined Icecap off his seat and into empty air.

He fell and fell, and after a while created a whirlwind of snow to keep him in midair until he could remotely call the Icycle down to where he was. He put the Icycle into a steep climb and rocketed toward me, firing cold-blasts.

Apparently with the new flight powers, I was faster than he was, though; I was able to dodge pretty easily. This turned out to be a much longer fight than the brief skirmish with Evil Danny Wilcox. It was the first time I had tried to actually hit someone in years. We zoomed around for quite a while, trying to clip each other with elbows or icebolts or whatever. Then I noticed I only had about three minutes of flight left on this quarter.

I figured, let's end this. I looped away from Icecap, and went into an arc that pointed me straight at his windshield. A nice little game of chicken.

I didn't give and neither did he. I plowed through his windshield at extra-high speed, fists first, and caught him right in the chest.

The Icycle spiraled down and crashed someplace, and I landed on a rooftop with a gasping and struggling Icecap. I grabbed him by the collar and smashed his head into the bricks until he stopped complaining.

Then I stood there and looked down at him. He was pretty bloody, and groaning, and not moving much. "I should probably feel bad about this," I told him, "but it hasn't been a great day, so I'm not going to worry about it too much. See you." I popped a nickel and flew off. Man, the world ticks me off sometimes.

2005-05-02T22:57:00.000-04:00

Bob and I were having lunch the other day - bad pizza in the park. I had been bringing him up to speed on recent developments. He laughed when I told him about Fountain. "You, a supervillain?" he said. "Yeah, I can see that. What did Greyghost say?"

"He said just forget about it. He's got his plan, it's ticking along, no need to start improvising now. I think Cruickshank wanted me to string him along, but it's probably just as well; I didn't really want to mess with the guy too much."

"Huh. So--just a second." Bob started looking around.

"What?"

"I heard something."

"What?"

He kept looking. "I don't know. But I know it's not right." He started towards the woods, checking to his left and right as he strode. I followed, at a distance.

"Torque!" yelled a voice from the trees. "It's time to settle some old business!"

"Ah, hell," Bob said. "It's Evil Danny Wilcox. Dennis, you've got super powers now. Can you back me up here?"

"No way," I said. "I'm no superhero. I'm rear echelon."

"Look. Evil Danny's here for revenge. What he usually does in that situation is grab a hostage and try to get the superhero to jump off a bridge or something. I don't want you to fight him; I want you to get the hostage out of there. Now strap on a pair and let's go."

Aw, man. I ate a quarter.

Bob picked his way into the woods, making sure to make some noise, and I flew in, above and off to one side. In a clearing, I could see a guy in an orange battlesuit standing about fifteen feet from a big round glass thing. He had some guy tied up at his feet. "Don't get cute, Torque," he called out. "I've got a hostage here!"

"I'm here," Bob said, entering the clearing. "What's the idea?"

Evil Danny pointed to the big glass ball. "Get in."

"What is it?" Bob said, looking around for me. He saw me, and gave me a little what-are-you-waiting-for nod.

"Let's just say you're about to become the coolest souvenir ever produced in Empire City," Evil Danny sneered.

I didn't want to go down there. The guy's battlesuit was covered with spiky-looking weapons. Superpowers or no superpowers, I wasn't like an action guy. Crap.

I swooped in low, from behind and to the side, flying as fast as I could. The idea was I'd hit Evil Danny's legs so hard I'd wipe him out completely, and I could grab the hostage on the way by and drag him out of there.

Amazingly, it worked. I took the pins right out from under Evil Danny, and while Bob was smacking him around a little, I hauled the hostage away from the dangerous part.

That was actually kind of fun.

2005-05-01T16:43:00.000-04:00

Well, I found out who that was who had been following me, and I'm definitely going to need Greyghost's advice on this one. Possibly Cruickshank's too.

So I'm flying around the other night, doing the old skyscraper slalom, the way I do, and I spot someone flying up from behind me. By my watch I had nine minutes to go on this quarter so I swooped around off to the side and hovered; whoever it was could either approach me straightforwardly or continue on through.

He veered toward me. As he got closer, I could see it was a dark-haired guy with sunglasses and a beard. He was propelling himself through the air with the aid of a Coke can in his hands, that was belching out fire beneath him. He was also wearing a bandolier with various other cans of pop strapped across his chest.

"Neat trick," I said over the roar of the Coke jet.

"Yours works better," he said. "Mind if we land for a minute?"

I nodded, and pointed at a rooftop. We went there.

I stepped down lightly onto the gravel, and Coke Can Man maneuvered himself down retro-rocket-style. It looked like a pretty awkward way to fly, but he was good at it.

"So who are you?" I said.

"You can call me Fountain," he said. Fountain! Underhand's new guy! What the hell do I do now?

"That sounds familiar," I said.

He nodded. "And what can I call you?"

I had thought long and hard about this. "Frequent Flyer," I said.

"Heh. You're new, right? Haven't been wearing that mask long?"

That sounded safe to answer. "That's right."

"So have you thought about what you're going to do?" He's trying to recruit me! Holy moley.

"I was planning on flying around some more and then maybe getting some sleep."

Fountain grinned. "You think you'll be left alone to zoom around all your life? You won't."

"Well, no. You're here, for one thing."

"Yeah. And I won't be the last. People will want you to become a vigilante, which means you'll get about ten opportunities a week for someone to kick your ass. Plus the government's always sniffing around people with superpowers. And there are all kinds of people out there looking for ways to exploit you."

"Which one of those groups are you in?" I asked him.

He grinned. "Oh, the third one, for sure. But I'm telling you that up front. I'm not trying to shit you and I'm not trying to screw you."

"Okay... so what do you want?"

"I'm looking for good people. People with superpowers, who are willing to mix it up a bit, who'll stay loyal to the man who pays them. Lots of opportunities for people like that."

"Mm."

"You don't have to answer now," he said, and handed me a card. On one side was a picture of a soft-drink dispenser. A soda fountain, if you will. On the other side was a phone number. "Give me a call next week sometime."

I stood there and looked at the card like an idiot as he shook up another can of Coke and jetted away.

2005-04-28T23:21:00.000-04:00

The poker game was tonight. I played a couple of hands but it was tough. I kept miscalculating what I had in my hand and making stupid decisions. It didn't help that Ingrid and Suchit were being really irritating while I was trying to concentrate. So I told everyone that I was goign to get some air and left. And got a whole lot of air.

the weird thing is, I think someone was following me. Occasionally when I checked my six I thought I saw someone else flying back there. And heard a kind of whooshing noise, too.

2005-04-26T22:19:00.000-04:00

Blew off work today. I just couldn't make myself go in. I woke up really tired; it was like my mind had been racing the whole time I was asleep. I flew around instead. I did take Greyghost's advice and wore a spare mask he had in one of the back rooms.

Taking Greyghost's advice, I was going to catch a movie with Ron tonight, but then it seemed like a really boring thing to do so I blew it off.

2005-04-25T23:00:00.000-04:00

Had a little chat with Greyghost today. I walked into the office and he was waiting at my desk. "Is there anything you'd like to tell me about?"

"Um... I've recently developed superpowers for no apparent reason?"

"Tell me about it."

"I think I'll sit down first," I informed him, and did so. "It started last week. I had a couple of nights where I couldn't sleep, and kept having weird dreams about money. Then Thursday morning I woke up and started eating all the coins I could find."

"Unusual."

"I thought so. I ate a whole lot of change to start with, and then a bit every now and then throughout the day. Then Friday morning I had a dime and it gave me the power of flight for ten minutes. Then a nickel for five minutes. And I found that all the metal kind of went into my skin." I banged on my arm to demonstrate.

"And now you can fly. This is why you haven't been in here as much recently?"

"Yeah. I'm sorry. I've just been kind of preoccupied. I can't--I don't know. I'll catch up, though."

He waved it off as unimportant. "I wonder what could have caused this. If I didn't know better, I would have said that you got these abilities from one of Mojo Mofo's artifacts, that you picked up early last week. But even if there was anything among them that could have bestowed this kind of power, your gloves should have shielded you from the effects."

"Oh, yeah, the gloves. Right." Oops.

"Mm. Let me think about this for a minute."

He thought about it for a minute. I fidgeted. I thought I was going to go nuts waiting for him to say something; I almost did laps around the room.

"It's likely that these abilities are temporary," he said. "Which means you have little to worry about. Enjoy them, I suppose, but carefully. Use your judgment. If you fly in public I suggest you wear a mask."

"I don't think it's temporary," I said. "It feels pretty permanent to me."

"That's possible. If so, you should start making plans."

"What kind of plans?"

"Plans for what your life is going to be like. Having this kind of inhuman ability changes things. If you're so inclined, I could use your help in my line of endeavor."

"Oh, no. No way. Not me. Have you heard nothing I've said for the past couple of years?"

"Mm. In any case we can address the future later. In the meantime I suggest you spend some time with your friend Ron."

"With Ron?"

"Yes. Also, I may get Nick to organize a poker game for this week."

I swear I have no idea how to explain the things that come out of this guy's mouth. "Um... okay. I guess I could do that."

"Mm."

"By the way, were you planning on congratulating me for achieving superhuman status, at all?"

"Not at present."

Now that's cold.

2005-04-24T20:58:00.000-04:00

This is so cool.

The first morning after the day I ate all the coins, I woke up and I kind of wanted more. So I swallowed a dime and felt kind of different. I got up off the couch and started kind of floating through the air. I was flying! I zoomed around for a while, at first using my hands to push off things, but eventually just moving like I was swimming. Only I didn't have to kick my feet or anything.

Then after ten minutes I crashed to the floor, and made a clanging sound. But it didn't hurt. Which is when I figured out what had happened to all the metal of the coins--it was in my skin. I looked the same, and when I touched my arm normally it felt the same, but if I hit my arm fast, it was metallic. Both my hand and my arm. I could fly and I had armor. Super powers!

I popped a nickel and flew around the apartment some more. This time I fell after five minutes. It didn't take me long to crack the code.

Since then I've been spending a lot of time soaring around town. God, flying is fun. I don't know how I ever did without it. I went in to work on Friday and Saturday for a while, but couldn't really concentrate on stuff, so I left early.

Typing is boring, and I have a couple of quarters calling my name. Maybe I'll post again tomorrow, and maybe I won't.

2005-04-21T22:40:00.000-04:00

God, this is getting weird. I'm scared even to see a doctor about it.

I woke up this morning and the first thing I saw was a pile of change I had taken out of my pockets and put on the table the night before. I didn't even think. I just reached out, grabbed a nickel, put it in my mouth, and swallowed it.

It didn't really taste like much of anything, but it felt really good to eat. I just sat there for a couple of minutes, trying to figure out why I had done such a weird-ass thing. And stared at the rest of the coins. I didn't want to eat them. It seemed like such a sick thing to do. But it was all I could think about.

Eventually I reached out and ate a penny. It had that awful coppery taste, but for some reason I didn't mind it. Anyway, that broke my resolve; I ate the rest of the change on the table and then went looking for more. Just coins; no bills. I ate all my coins, and five bucks in nickels and dimes from Ron's coin jar (which I paid for with a bill from my wallet). By the time I left the apartment, I had eaten thirteen bucks worth of small change.

Since then, every couple of hours or so, I've been getting hungry for more. Not much more; maybe a quarter or two. I haven't binged like I did this morning. But it hasn't gone away, either.

And the really scary thing is that I feel great.

2005-04-20T22:43:00.000-04:00

Didn't sleep well last night. I kept tossing and turning, and I had all these weird dreams about money. And I think I had a fever.

I didn't feel any better today, either. It was one of those days where neither Greyghost nor Cruickshank nor anybody else happens to go into the office, so I'm all alone the whole time. I couldn't concentrate on work, either; I was just kind of staring into space the whole time. Eventually I gave up and went home to stare into space there.

Maybe some Doritos would help.

2005-04-19T22:55:00.000-04:00

Greyghost had me picking up at one of his battle scenes again today. It was in a field way the hell out in the country. The place looked like a yard sale, there was so much equipment lying around. I had to make four trips to the car.

I didn't catch the name of the supervillain Greyghost had been fighting, but he seems to have been a magic-type-guy. There were magic wands and potion bottles and a crystal ball that was still glowing faintly when I packed it up. Among the many things Greyghost has never told me is what he *does* with all this stuff. It isn't in any of the back rooms.

2005-04-18T23:35:00.000-04:00

So there I am, working away at a big pile of database updates, when Cassie comes in.

"Hi," I said, because I'm that kind of guy.

"Hi," she said, and sat down on the corner of the desk. "I have something to tell."

She looked serious. I shuffled my chair over. "What's up?"

"I just talked to Greyghost, and he said... Anyway, I'm going to Los Angeles. I'm moving. Greyghost said I was ready."

"What?"

"Dennis, I'm moving to Los Angeles," she said.

I sat back. "Wow."

"Well, you know I'm a California girl at heart. I'll be closer to home. And I never could handle the weather here."

"Yeah."

"And it's not like... They need superheroes just as much there as they do here. I already talked to Daylighter and he said I'd be godsent. So, you know, pay Peter to rob Paul."

"Yeah."

"I'm sorry," she said.

"Were... I don't want this to sound like it probably will. Were you going to move back there all along? Was this always the plan?"

"No! I would have stayed, if we were still together. But I don't want to stay now that we're not."

We sat there for a couple of moments, staring into different corners of the room.

"Okay," I said.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Good luck, and take care of yourself, and, you know..."

"...And all that crap," she finished.

"Yeah."

"Thank you."

"When are you off?" I asked.

"Tonight, actually," she said. "I'm gonna see if I can fly the whole everlasting way."

"What about your stuff?"

She hefted a knapsack. "This is it. You know me."

"Traveling small."

"Yup."

We stared into the corners again for a while.

"So is that it?" I asked.

"I think that's it." She got up and slung her knapsack over her shoulders.

We said goodbye, and shook hands. And she left. And that was it.

I wanted to talk to somebody. But who? Cassie was gone. Ron didn't know the background. Greyghost? As if. Cruickshank? Double as if. Bob, maybe, but he's been on some space mission recently. Ingrid? Mmm... no.

So I walked down the back hall to Room 28 and switched on the interdimensional teleconferencing machine. Dennis2, on the other end, was turning his set on at the same time, and waved at me.

I waved back.

He gave me the single-up-nod, to ask me what was going on. I extended my arms like Cassie does when she flies, and looked at him questioningly.

He closed his eyes and shook his head no, slowly, twice. I held my hands out, palms up, but he just shook his head again. Finally I nodded acceptance.

Then I looked up to see if there was anything Dennis2 wanted. He mimed pulling on an imaginary jacket and buttoning it up. Then he looked at me questioningly.

I didn't know what he was getting at for a second, but then I realized the way he buttoned up the jacket matched this jacket I got as a birthday present for Ron. I had stowed it in Room 8B for safekeeping; there's nowhere to hide stuff like that around the apartment. Dennis2 must have forgotten where he left it. I wrote '8B' on a piece of paper and showed it to the camera.

Dennis2 slapped himself in the forehead, grinned, and gave me the thumbs-up. So, you know, there's one problem solved.

2005-04-07T23:06:00.000-04:00

Today I tried a batch of McClay's Frozen Pancakes.

Vile.

Vile with butter, vile with syrup, vile with butter and syrup.

I could hardly finish my second helping.

2005-04-06T22:48:00.000-04:00

Woke up this morning and Ron was sitting on the other couch eating Sugar Smacks and drinking Coke. "Hey," he said when he saw my eyes were open. "Wanna hear my news?"

"Sure," I said, pulling myself upright.

"Linnet and I are engaged."

Does not compute. "What--to be married?"

How the hell does that work? The Twinkie-eating Don Juan is marrying the shapeshifting political alterna-chick? How is this a viable relationship?

I guess I was mulling that over too long because Ron said, "Yeah, why? There's, uh... no problem with Linnet, is there?"

I knew that tone of voice. Ron was trying to be subtle. And in this case it meant that Linnet had told Ron about how she was a superhero (and good for her, I guess), and Ron was trying to figure out if I knew. "No, no problem. It's just, you know, Ron getting married? No way!"

He grinned. "Yeah, I know. So you like her?"

Do I like Linnet? God, there's a hard question. I'd like her a lot better if I didn't have to deal with her. "I do, actually. She's cool."

"I gotta say, I wasn't expecting to get married either. But she's just so great. She isn't like anybody else. I just feel really lucky, and... I don't know, I wanted to keep going with that. Oh, and by the way, I haven't heard the word 'congratulations' come out of your mouth yet."

"Oh. Oops. Congratulations. Sorry, I'm kind of out of it. Cassie and I broke up last night."

"Christ, really? And here I am being all happy in front of you. I suck. What happened?"

"Bridge Out."

He winced. "Ah, hell. God, I'm sorry. That's terrible. How are you doing?"

"You know. Bad, but familiar bad. I know my way out of this territory. I'm gonna play a lot of Minesweeper and in two weeks I'll be fine."

I wish I could ask him how he's dealing with the whole superhero thing. I would ask him if I could do it without giving up Cassie's secret identity and my association with Greyghost. Does it just not bother him? How deeply has he thought about it? Do Linnet and Cassie have the same attitude toward it?

Not that this information would do me any good now.

Back to Minesweeper.

2005-04-05T23:49:00.000-04:00

Maybe it'll be better if I just type all this out.

I drove Greyghost and Cassie out to the particle accelerator lab this evening. His information suggested that Scorch's raid would be between 8 and 9 o'clock. So I parked nearby, while Greyghost skulked around by the entrance Scorch and his henchmen were supposed to be using, and Cassie prepared to put the hammer down on any getaway plans. The place was deserted; no other parked cars at all, and no people walking around.

Twenty minutes later a car pulled up in a parking lot on the other side of the building. Three guys got out, one of them obviously Scorch, and ran to Greyghost's entrance. I could see Scorch doing something fiery to the lock, and they were inside pretty quickly. Greyghost followed a moment later. Meanwhile, Cassie swooped up and fired a couple of silver bolts at the empty getaway car.

She landed next to me. "Their car doors are shut sealed," she reported. "I'm supposed to follow Greyghost in in a minute, but I think I'll eye around first and see if I can figure Scorch's other way out." And took off again.

I got out of the car and sat on the hood. I had a book in one hand--God knows how long this was going to take--and a SuperSoaker next to me in case Scorch broke through the perimeter. I could see Cassie zooming around the lab.

As far as I could tell, the plan was for Greyghost to shadow Scorch and the boys until they got to this one particular chamber inside where there was higher security. They'd be delayed there trying to get through the next lock, and Greyghost could nab them there without them ever touching anything really valuable. Plus Cassie would be arriving via their only escape route so they were screwed that way too.

Cassie landed by the car and said, "Didn't see anything. I'm gonna head in now," but before she could take off again the lab blew up. Heat and grit threw me back against the windshield of the car and Cassie sprawled across the asphalt. Flames shot from a big hole in the side of the building, and two guys ran out and took off in different directions. Behind them, Scorch flew out of the hole with some kind of apparatus strapped to his back, and made himself scarce.

I rolled off the car in Cassie's direction, and the two of us helped each other to our feet. "I've gotta get Greyghost out of there!" she said, but I hung on to her arm.

"Are you crazy? There's no way he lived through that!" It was really a huge explosion, and there were still serious flames shooting out of the hole in the wall.

"Gotta try anyway," she said, pulling at my arm. "Come on, Dennis, let go."

"You'll get killed in there!"

She looked at me. "If I want to be a superhero, those are the risks I have to take."

Without thinking I said, "Well, I don't want you to be a superhero, so--" and stopped. And we looked at each other.

She removed my hand from her arm, gently, and said, "I thought you understood."

Then she struck like a lightning bolt into the heart of the fire.

I sat down on the hood of the car. To kill time I called 911 and told them about the explosion.

Probably Cassie was only in there for about a minute, but it seemed like much longer. And when she flew out, she was dangling Greyghost below her; he was holding on to her hands and therefore obviously in good shape. I ran over to them.

"You were right," he said to her. "Good analysis. Where's Scorch?"

"Took off that way," I said, pointing.

"I'm on it," Cassie said, and blasted off again.

Greyghost and I went back to the office. He seemed okay, but had pretty obviously had enough for the night. On the way back, we discussed what had gone wrong. First, most of the security was wide open in front of Scorch, so he must have had some kind of inside man. This allowed him to get farther and faster than Greyghost was expecting. Second, that doohickey he stole did something to boost his powers to the point where he could make his own exits to any building he was in, and therefore didn't have to worry about an escape route. So Cassie was right about a couple of things in a pretty short time there.

Cassie showed up at the office a couple of hours later.

"Get him?" I asked.

She nodded, and waved her hand dismissively. "Dennis... How could you say that? That you don't want me to be a superhero?"

I sighed. "I've always been leery of the whole superhero thing. You know that."

"I've heard you say stuff, but... I thought you were just, you know. Devil's advocating."

I shook my head. "And it's dangerous. I don't want you to get hurt or anything."

"So you basically meant it, what you said." She sat down on the desk.

I nodded, and she nodded too.

"Being a superhero is what I want to do. I've always wanted it, and I want it more than anything else. And I can't be with someone who doesn't support it," she said. Her goggles were up on her forehead.

"I support you! I'm not telling you not to do it or anything! You can be anything you want and I'll support you!"

She shook her head. "It's not enough. I mean wholehearted support."

"Cassie."

She stood up. "I've really thought about this, Dennis. I love you, but it won't work." And headed for the elevator. She stopped, and pulled the necklace I gave her out from around her neck. "Can I... do you mind if I keep this?"

I have to admit I have no idea what I said there, but the necklace isn't here in front of me, so she must still have it.

I'm done typing. It isn't better.

2005-04-03T23:13:00.000-04:00

I wandered into the blue room tonight to get a can of Jolt. Cassie and Greyghost were in there arguing.

"He has no choice," Greyghost was saying.

"He must have," Cassie answered. "It doesn't make any sense otherwise."

"The blueprints speak for themselves. That corridor is his only way out, and that's where we'll trap him."

I looked at the blueprints. It was for one of the classified labs near the particle accelerator at the university. And there was, in fact, one area that seemed to have only one corridor leading out of it. As in, no windows + really thick walls + no back doors.

"He's not going to let himself get trapped in there," she argued. "He's got another way out. He must know that as soon as he gets in there, security's going to come down on him like a duffel bag of pudding. And he's not powerful enough to shrug that off. He's got another plan."

Greyghost gestured at the blueprint. "There is no other plan. He can't have one."

"Who are we talking about here?" I asked.

"Scorch."

"Oh, right. I remember him."

"He's setting up a raid on this lab for Tuesday night," Cassie said. "We're gonna squash his dreams and make him cry."

"Cool."

"To resume. The blueprints are clear. Also they are consistent with my knowledge of the building. We'll go with my plan."

"It's a mistake," Cassie said. "The last day or two I've studied Scorch's dossier everlastingly. He's not a genius or anything, but he always has some kind of getaway in mind."

"You've made your point. We'll go with my plan."

She was silent for a moment. "Okay," she said. "Your plan it is."

And none of us said anything for a moment.

Then she looked at me. "That stuff will kill you," she said, pointing to my Jolt. "Why do you think I put that case of juice in the fridge?"

2005-04-01T22:47:00.000-05:00

Last night Linnet was over watching videos with Ron. I hung out with them, biding my time, until Ron said he was going down to the corner store to get some more Coke.

Once the door closed behind him, I turned to Linnet and said, "I will give you five seconds to apologize for what you and that reporter were up to, before I pull this lever and drop you into the hottest fires of hell."

She sighed. "Nefario's in jail, right?"

"Yeah."

"And did Claudia get her story?"

"Not much of one," I said.

"And why was that?"

"Because the way everything fell out, other newspapers were reporting pieces of it before she could get her own paper to understand she was still alive."

"And did the Table get their cover-up?"

"No. They're all over the papers. Everyone's blaming them for Nefario."

"Greyghost's identity is secure? You and he and all your people are safe?"

"Yeah."

"Then why don't you take that hell-lever and shove it up your ass?" Linnet asked, smiling.

"You mean that--"

"I mean that it's good for you and Greyghost to get a taste of what it's like when the law doesn't support you. We don't all have the government on our side, you know."

"You can't just--"

"Shh," she said. "Ron just got off the elevator."

"How do you know?"

"I," she said, "am a superhero."

I'm beginning to think that one feature of superheroes is that they always have an answer for you.

2005-03-29T23:59:00.000-05:00

Maybe I was zonked from being encased in ice, but I couldn't help thinking that I already knew how this was going to play out. I wasn't even scared when Nefario's goons pointed their guns at me. I knew, knew, that Greyghost and Cassie were about to show up and save everybody. I didn't have any basis for knowing this, of course, but I was convinced of it nevertheless.

And I was right. They were just about to pull the triggers on me when the air filled with silver bolts. Nefario's men dropped like flies and there were a couple of big splashes as hovercrafts hit the drink. As Cassie cleared up all the cannon fodder, Greyghost, from nowhere, snagged Nefario with some kind of line from his grappling-hook gun and yanked him back down to earth.

So of course there was a big fight between Greyghost and Nefario. And it was a pretty apocalyptic fight. Or it should have been. I had a hard time watching it, for one thing; I couldn't turn my head and my ice floe kept bobbing in the wrong direction. But, again, I knew Greyghost was going to win anyway.

So what was going on here? Either a) I was getting jaded, b) I was psychic, or c) I was on to something weird. And not for the first time. I was so busy thinking about this I hardly even noticed when Cassie melted me out of the iceberg. I still don't know what to think about it all. But I don't like it.

2005-03-29T00:07:00.000-05:00

Not that I got anywhere near the door. Prowl grabbed me and said, "Oh, no. You can't just turn loose a supervillain and hide under a rock. Get on your spy phone and call for help; I'm not facing Nefario alone."

So I did. I was already feeling bad by that time anyway. Nobody picked up their penphones, but I left a bunch of messages with various superheroes explaining the situation. Or the important parts of the situation, anyway, like the fact that Claudia Calhoun was still alive. Meanwhile, Calhoun was on her phone talking to some people from the Table, telling them, I guess, to be on the lookout themselves.'

"They say if we can get to their lab on Horan Island we ought to be all right," Calhoun volunteered after hanging up.

"We can do that," Prowl said. "Let's go now. We can let Nefario and the cavalry fight over an empty apartment." And the three of us headed out. I was toying with the idea of trying to ditch them, but a) I didn't think I could pull it off, and b) I kind of felt guilty anyway. But still mad.

So we were half-walking, half-running down the street (nobody had a car) when Icecap swooped down from four-o'-clock-high. "What's the plan?" he called down, hovering.

"Can you give us a ride to Horan Island?"

He dipped lower. "Hop on."

Calhoun climbed on the back, gingerly, and Prowl turned into a cat and leapt up onto the front. I looked for a place where I'd fit, but it really wasn't much bigger than a motorcycle and there were already about 2.2 people riding it.

"Why is he coming?" Icecap said.

"He was the one who tipped Nefario off," Calhoun said.

Icecap's eyes widened, and he said, with some satisfaction, "Well, we don't want him running around loose, then, do we?" and gestured at me.

Then everything went blue and blurry and erratic. I knew, on some level, that he had just encased me in ice, but it was hard to think about anything. One thing that surprised me was that it wasn't cold.

I could tell that Icecap did something to tow my personal berg behind the Icycle, and I remember us getting to the water, somehow, and then I missed a bunch of details. Obviously that's when Nefario and his guys attacked, and some of the ice was blasted off me, and I wound up bobbing in the water.

When my vision cleared, Claudia Calhoun was clinging to a floe about ten feet from me, and Prowl and Icecap were having a dogfight with a couple of Nefario's hovercrafts. One of the hovercrafts looped down low, towards us, and kicked up a lot of spray as a couple of guys hung over the side, grabbing for Calhoun. I couldn't move.

A giant icebolt from above turned this entire section of harbor into one big mass of ice, encasing the low-flying hovercraft. The men aboard jumped out onto the ice and surrounded Calhoun and me.

From a nearby quay, Nefario, a tall white-haired man, stepped up into the air on a column of golden light and gestured at the Icycle. It fell apart, and Icecap plummeted flailing into the water.

Prowl, flying a stolen hovercraft, aimed directly for Nefario, kamikaze style. He easily floated up out of the way and whirled to kick her as she went by. He probably would have taken her head off if she hadn't changed into a cat and abandoned ship.

The guys who had Claudia Calhoun surrounded were signaling for another hovercraft to come down and pick everyone up. The ones guarding me had given up on chipping me out of the ice and were raising their rifles to finish me off.

"You guys obviously don't know how this is supposed to go," I said through a faceful of ice.

2005-03-27T23:03:00.000-05:00

I kind of feel like a jerk. By which I mean I suspect I am a jerk. No. I know I am. But I'm also an extremely pissed-off jerk. I don't remember the last time I felt that mad. But at least everything's over now.

Greyghost and Cassie had been missing for days. I couldn't even get Cruickshank or Ingrid on the phone. And I didn't know what to do. Finally, after a couple of hours of staring at the phone in the office, I said, "Screw it." I picked up some sunglasses and one of Greyghost's spiffy walking sticks, and headed down to Claudia Calhoun's hideout.

Of course, it was possible that the Table guys had moved her someplace else, but I had to try something. Anyway, I walked right up to her building, but before I got to the door, a couple of Table drones made a move on me. I let them get close, and then closed my eyes and banged the walking stick on the sidewalk.

The bulb in the pommel of the walking stick popped with a searing flash I could see through my sunglasses and eyelids. One of the Table guys kind of reeled against the building, and the other one said, "Shit!" and fell down. I continued through the front door. Those things are one of Itzhak's neatest tricks; no permanent damage, but there's really not a lot you can do if you're not ready for them.

The good news, of course, is that if those two goons were on the job, Claudia Calhoun must have been still there. And when I knocked on the door, a voice said, "Who's there?" (No peephole.)

I recognized the voice. Not Claudia Calhoun's, but someone else I knew. Goddamnit. "It's Dennis. Let me in or I'll burn this building down."

The door opened. Prowl was standing there, scowling at me. Claudia Calhoun was sitting on the couch. Apparently they had been having a nice little conversation. "What do you want, Dennis?" Prowl asked.

"Guess," I said, pushing past her. "Ms. Calhoun, we haven't met. My name's Dennis, and I need to know what you're up to with Nefario and Greyghost and the Table."

"How did you find me here?" she said. Didn't sound as intimidated as I had hoped.

"Never mind that," Prowl said. "Dennis, if you think she's going to tell you any of that, you're crazy. Go home before I kick your ass."

I didn't turn away from Calhoun. "I'll tell you how I found you here if you answer this. Has Prowl here been helping you hide out all this time?"

"Don't answer that," Prowl said.

"Yes, she has," Calhoun said. "Now give."

"A friend of a friend saw you through a window," I said, and rounded on Prowl. "You knew she was alive all this time, you decroded bitch. You drove us into hiding, you sicced those other masked assholes onto us, you chased me down the goddamn street, and the whole time you knew she was alive. What the hell do you think you're doing?"

"Dennis, do I have to use the phrase 'kick your ass' again?"

"I want to know everything, or I'm blowing the whistle. I know enough to ruin whatever it is you're up to, and I'll tell everyone. I will."

They exchanged glances. Prowl said, "It's probably safer to tell him. He can keep a secret."

"Where do you know him from?" Calhoun said. Prowl just shook her head. "Okay. Here it is. I was working on a story about Nefario, and how he got his super-powers from a Table experiment, and I was talking with Desmond from Table. They feel responsible for Nefario, and they want to stop him, but they don't want any negative publicity about it. And they were under pressure because they thought Nefario was about to raid them for more of the same technology they used to create him."

"I guess they were right about that," I said.

"Yeah," she said. "So I made a deal with Desmond. I'd get to write the story about Nefario's capture if, in return, I downplayed the Table's role in him getting his powers. But to arrange his capture, we needed to force some superheroes to go after him for some kind of crime. So they said they'd fake my death, and pin it on some superhero, and that would force that superhero to investigate. We'd rig the evidence so it pointed to Nefario, and the superhero would have to nail Nefario to vindicate himself. And Prowl--I knew Prowl from before--said that she could help me put pressure on whichever superhero we picked."

"And that's why you were investigating Greyghost's secret identity. Not because you wanted to know, but because you wanted to frame him for murder."

"Tone it down, Dennis," Prowl said. "There's nothing stopping me from giving you a slap in the head."

"It sounds like kind of a stupid plan to me," I said. "It's too complicated. What made you think it'd work?"

"Well, I figured it was a dangerous story to write. But if I was supposed to be dead, I'd be safe from Nefario. Plus I'd have Prowl and the Table to protect me. And if it worked, I'd be famous for coming back from the dead with this great story," Calhoun explained.

"I don't believe you guys," I said. "This is the worst thing I've ever heard." I was so mad I was shaking. I could hardly dial my phone.

"Who are you calling?" Prowl said.

I punched in a number I had noted down from Greyghost's Nefario file. We had been harassed by low-rent superheroes for weeks, I had been caught in the raid on the Table building and punched in the stomach and dropped out of a hovercraft... "This message is for Nefario," I said into the phone. "I'm sure you'll be interested to know that Claudia Calhoun is alive and preparing to lower the boom on you, and can be found at 878 Lower Franklin Street, Apartment 2G." Actually I only got the first half of the word 'apartment' out before Prowl kicked the phone out of my hand.

"What the hell!" she said.

"You guys asked for it," I said, and headed for the door.

And that's what makes me a jerk.

2005-03-23T00:07:00.000-05:00

I just reread the last couple of entries. It's like I'm trying to keep myself in suspense here, like I don't know that I eventually got away.

Which I did, but I can't really tell how it happened. Oh, I can piece together some of it... the hovercraft was zooming along at high altitude, and something happened, and my giant Baggie fell out into somebody's rooftop swimming pool. Then the pool owner found me and cut the bag open, drenching me big time. Which was good because it helped wake me up. The guy wanted to call an ambulance, but I felt okay.

So I squelched home from there. I didn't care about all the superheroes trying to nab me anymore; I could send them right to Claudia Calhoun. Whatever the deal was with her being alive, it wasn't my secret to keep.

Walking home, I tried to figure out what was going on. I also called Greyghost's voicemail to update him on all this.

By the time I got to the apartment, I knew two things.

1. Someone had to squeeze some answers out of Claudia Calhoun.

2. I absolutely required a Boston Creme donut.

2005-03-22T00:05:00.000-05:00

A couple of the invaders hustled me out to a waiting hovercraft while the rest of them continued to conquer the office building. They were a lot rougher than Jean Jacket was. "Cool hovercraft," I said, and one of them punched me in the stomach. I almost threw up, and it occurred to me that it might be to my advantage if I did, so I did.

It almost worked, too. Most of it went on one invader's leg, and he recoiled and let go of me. The other guy's grip loosened, too, and I took off.

I had just been punched in the stomach, so I wasn't really at full speed, but I was putting some distance between me and them. Then I got blown off my feet by some kind of golden blast, and ended up stunned and crumpled against a Subaru.

A big hand picked me up by the scruff of my neck. "What's this?" a deep and accented voice asked.

"He was running from one of the Table ops," said someone. "We figured he might know something."

The big guy tossed me back on the ground. "Put him in a bag," he said. "We can open him later." I caught a glimpse of him as he strode off, and recognized him. He looked exactly like pictures of Nefario.

That was it, then; I had to get out of there. I didn't mind matching wits with the hexagon/star guys--the Table?--but Nefario was another story entirely. He'd just kill my ass dead if he felt like it. Unfortunately my arms and legs didn't seem to be working right.

The two guys picked me up and shoved me into what looked like a giant Ziploc bag. They had a whole pile of these empty peoplebags in the back of the hovercraft. My bag was sealed and flung into the hold.

There were some kind of gas-release capsules in there with me that had me yawning and drifting off to sleep, so I don't remember much right after that, but I do remember I could hear the familiar zots and zorches of Cassie's energy blasts as the hovercraft was powering up and pulling away, and I thought something about what lousy timing she had.

2005-03-20T23:56:00.000-05:00

Jean Jacket Guy ran out to see what the deal was with the explosion, and Desmond and the driver hauled me out of my chair. "Take it easy," I said.

"Put him in the basement room," Desmond said to the driver. "I'll finish with him later." Desmond was picking up a phone as the driver shoved me out the door.

The building was one of these ones where there's a big long hallway that runs straight through from the front lobby to the back lobby, with the elevators in the middle. Some guys with helmets and guns were storming in from both directions, with us trapped between them. At first I thought they were security, but then I saw the way they were subduing and roughing up the few other people in the lobby.

I didn't see much hope for escape, but I figured I had a better chance then than I would later, so I broke free of the driver and made a break for a hallway that looked like it ought to lead to a side door.

And that's how I got captured by Nefario's international criminal organization.

2005-03-18T00:18:00.000-05:00

I did something kind of stupid.

I went out to check if Claudia Calhoun was really alive or not before telling Greyghost. And I never do stuff like that. Honestly, I can't imagine what I was thinking.

Anyway, that's what I did. I went down to the neighborhood Greyghost's informant told me about, and started looking around. And I really was trying to be nonchalant and inconspicuous about it. Apparently I'm not much of a pro, though; I had just made a move toward walking around to the back of the building in question when a guy with perfect hair and a jean jacket put the arm on me.

I resisted until I felt the suggestion of a gun in my side, and then went along with him. He hustled me down the block to an unusually unmemorable idling car, and we got in the back. I realized they must have noticed me a few minutes before in order to set this up. The driver put the car into gear and we pulled away.

"Give me your wallet," Jean Jacket said, displaying the gun a little.

"I don't want to give you my wallet," I said.

"And I don't want to shoot you," he said. "But one or the other's gonna happen."

I passed over my wallet. He flipped through the ID.

"Dennis Relser," he said. "Okay, Dennis, what brings you to this part of town?"

"I'm a very stupid man," I said. "That's the only explanation I can come up with." The driver laughed.

"Don't screw around," he said. "You're poking into something classified and dangerous, and you're going to tell me why right now."

The problem was, if I told this guy anything, it'd be terrible for Greyghost's security setup. It might even blow his secret identity. On the other hand I didn't want to die to protect that. "I'm sorry," I said. "I really can't tell you anything. Is there any way we can rig this so I keep my mouth shut and you don't shoot me?"

He tossed my wallet back in my lap. "I don't know. But it's not looking good." He called to the driver. "Desmond had better see this guy." The driver nodded, and turned left.

We drove out to this industrial park and parked in front of a building with no logos on it. They led me inside and shoved me into a room just off the lobby. It was much nicer than our office building, which is getting a little run down. This place was all shiny. Jean Jacket and I waited there for five minutes, until the driver returned with the guy from the picture. The guy who had been wearing the hexagon pin and arguing with Claudia Calhoun.

"Makes perfect sense," I said before they could say anything. "Are you Desmond?"

All three of them froze. "You know me?" he asked.

"I didn't know your name, but Captain Coiffure here mentioned a Desmond in the car on the way over. I've seen a picture of you, though," I said.

They surrounded me. "What picture?"

"You and the Girl Reporter in a restaurant, arguing over some piece of paper."

Desmond and Jean Jacket exchanged glances. "Where did you get that picture?"

"I don't know where it came from," I said, which was true enough. "It wasn't that interesting a picture anyway. This is great, though. I didn't think we had anything to talk about, but we do."

Desmond gestured toward the table in the middle of the room. We sat down. "Your name's Relser?" he said.

"At the moment," I told him, hoping to be able to fake them out. Hey, couldn't hurt.

"Whose interests do you represent?"

"Interests? Uhh... I don't know. Other than mine, I mean. Could you guys give me a second? I'm starting to figure some things out here and I may be able to shorten this conversation." Either these guys knew Claudia Calhoun was alive, and were protecting her, or they were keeping her prisoner. Either way they were involved in faking her death. Why, though? Something to do with Greyghost? With Nefario? Couldn't be Greyghost; if it was, chances are I would have known something about it.

So let's say it's something with Nefario. Fine. So who are these guys?

Well, Greyghost went to Washington investigating the hexagon/star symbol, which suggests government. And Nefario's a cosmopolitan kind of guy, which suggests government intelligence. Were these guys CIA?

Jean Jacket shoved me. "We didn't bring you in here so you could daydream. Talk."

"I'm just trying to decide if you guys are CIA or not. I don't think so, though. I think you're some kind of corporation who does subcontracting to U.S. government intelligence. If you were CIA you'd already have the top of my skull sawed off and my thoughts and ideas would all be lying on this table in alphabetical order. But you guys haven't exactly done this kind of thing before."

"Go on," Desmond said.

"I went down to that neighborhood looking for proof that Claudia Calhoun was still alive. It looks like I got a bonus, 'cause now not only do I know she's alive, I know you guys helped fake her death in the first place."

"Why do you suspect Miss Calhoun is alive?" Desmond said.

"I'd answer that, but you wouldn't find it interesting," I said. "Anyway, that's not the point. The point is, what's this all about, and what happens next?"

That's when the explosion hit. And it's when I really started to figure things out.

2005-03-16T00:30:00.000-05:00

One of Greyghost's informants just called. It took a while for her to convince me of this, but convince me she did:

Apparently Claudia Calhoun is still alive.

The informant spotted her through a window in some random neighbourhood on the west side. So now I have to decide what to do. Greyghost isn't in town. Cassie's off doing something secret. All the other superheroes are out to get us. Am I going to have to investigate this myself?

I hate the parts of this job where I have to get up out of my chair. I always spill my Coke.

2005-03-13T22:52:00.000-05:00

Greyghost hasn't checked in in days. I'm not really worried about him, but I am worried that he's on the wrong track.

His GPS info coming through on the penphone shows that he's in Washington. Which I don't get. Meanwhile, I've been looking through some of his notes on Claudia Calhoun that he left here, and I think I've found something important.

Seems she wasn't only investigating Greyghost when she died. She was also checking out somebody named Mourn. I thought it sounded like a supervillain name, so I looked it up, and I was almost right. It's the real name of a supervillain named Nefario, who I've definitely heard of before. He's a, I don't know, an international powermonger type. He had his own archipelago once. I wish I had an archipelago.

But I don't think anybody else is acting on this. I don't think Nefario's in Washington. I'm not even sure he's in America. I've talked to Bob about the Calhoun murder and he didn't mention anything about Nefario. I called Prowl on her penphone (partly to see if I could get her and Icecap and those guys to leave us alone) and she didn't say anything about Nefario.

Unfortunately Greyghost isn't answering his phone. I left a message but there's been no acknowledgement.

2005-03-10T23:54:00.000-05:00

The apartment Ron and I share is about fifteen feet by fifteen feet. There's a little bathroom. There's a kitchen counter with a sink and a stove and a fridge. There are three couches. There are several arrangements of milk crates, on which can be found the TV and the computer, and in which can be found our clothes and books and whatever else we own. There are many pizza boxes. There is not room to walk; mostly, when we move around the place we climb over couches. It hasn't been really cleaned in all the time I've lived there, it's freezing cold and none of the couches are really long enough to sleep on comfortably.

I never realized what a paradise it was until I couldn't go there anymore.

Greyghost hasn't solved the mystery of Claudia Calhoun and the hexagon/star pin yet. Therefore he and I are still being hunted by misguided superheroes. They know my real name, now that Prowl's working with them, and where I live. So I can't go home, and I shouldn't even go outside.

Cruickshank brings food and other stuff to the office. I shower in one of the offices on the third floor, when nobody's there. I sleep on the couch in the back room.

I'm bored out of my pants. I need fresh air. I need sunlight. I need to get away from all this superhero crap for a while. Except there are informants' reports that need compiling again.

2005-03-07T23:56:00.000-05:00

I was stuck in the elevator for four hours today. No big thing; I had a bottle of water and a book with me. But it's a weak spot in the procedures around here. See, there are only a few people who are cleared to do anything with this elevator, especially when it's on its way to the basement, and they're hard to get hold of. More to the point, they're impossible to get hold of from inside the elevator.

So I had to call Greyghost. Who was, understandably, busy. Which is one of the reasons why it took four hours to get me out of there.

I can report that there are six hundred and sixty-eight little tiles making up the roof of the elevator.

2005-03-06T23:38:00.000-05:00

Someone caught it on camera.

Icecap and his compadres caught up with Greyghost this evening, and tried to bring him in on suspicion of murder. The videotape made it to air, I taped the broadcast, and I've been replaying it ever since.

The tape starts with the shot of a rooftop. I can't tell what building. Greyghost is running across the rooftop, but is blocked by the sudden appearance of a wall of ice in front of him.

He whirls around, and is hit by floodlights: Fantastic Man, floating in midair, is lighting up the entire area. Next, Prowl (in human form) leaps down from the Icycle to fight Greyghost hand-to-hand. Icecap covers her by shooting icebolts at Greyghost. Prowl is careful to keep Greyghost between her and Fantastic Man's lights. Which also lets Icecap get better shots at Greyghost.

When I saw what kind of strategy they had cooked up, I started to worry. It was pretty smart; use the lights to remove Greyghost's advantages, and then come at him from both sides. They even kept Shadow-Falcon out of it, which is what I would have done. After all, he's still pretty much just a green kid, and his darkness powers would have played right into Greyghost's hands.

I stopped worrying about eight seconds later. Greyghost decked Prowl with one punch, turned, ripped off his cape, and swirled it up at Fantastic Man. It blocked the floodlights for a couple of seconds, which is all Greyghost needed to dissolve into the resulting shadows.

By the time the lights were clear again, Greyghost was on the Icycle. He grabbed Icecap by the scruff of his neck and pitched him into his own icewall, and then rammed Fantastic Man with the Icycle. And was gone.

The rest of the footage was of the three of them picking themselves up and wondering what happened. It took them three minutes to extract Icecap's head from the icewall.

I wonder who was running the camera.

2005-03-05T23:57:00.000-05:00

I eventually remembered that the star-in-hexagon symbol from my silent conversation with a parallel-universe version of myself. 'I' seemed to think it was important enough to point out to me, and maybe I'll find out why now.

The tough part was figuring out how to tell Greyghost. I wasn't at all prepared to say, "Oh, by the way, I was tampering with your interdimensional teleconferencing machine a few months ago..." but on the other hand I certainly wasn't going to lie to him. Fortunately, the stonewall is always an option.

Next time Greyghost checked in, I showed him the picture of the guy with the pin. "Remember I said there was one detail I was trying to remember? This is it. This guy's pin, here."

"How is it significant?"

"I don't know."

"Then how do you know it's significant at all?"

"Rather not say."

"Mm."

Pause.

"How sure are you?"

"Pretty sure."

"Do you think this man is her murderer?"

"No idea."

"But there's something important about that pin. And you can't tell me why."

"Right."

He looked at the picture again, for a long time.

"Mm," he said. "Don't do any more work on this until I tell you to."

"How come? Do you know what that symbol is?"

"I'd rather not say."

The bastard. I'm getting sick of camping out in this office, too.

2005-03-04T00:10:00.000-05:00

It's been an eventful couple of days. First I got shadowed all over the city by some misguided superheroes. Then I had to get extracted from the back room of a wig shop by Greyghost. Then I went over the Calhoun file again.

It didn't take me quite as long this time. Now that I knew I was looking for something in one of the pictures, I zeroed in on it pretty fast.

Somebody took a picture of Claudia Calhoun and some guy having an animated conversation in a restaurant. There are a mess of papers on their table, and the guy is shaking a piece of paper in her face. But here's the thing. The guy was wearing a lapel pin that's clearly shaped like a hexagon with a star in it.

So then I had to remember where I had seen that before.

2005-03-01T23:38:00.000-05:00

Found it!

Now the hard parts.

1. Figuring out what the damn thing means.
2. Convincing Greyghost I know what I'm talking about.

2005-02-28T23:19:00.000-05:00

I'm typing this from a 24-hour internet cafe. I'd use my super-PDA but I think Fantastic Man is jamming it or something, along with the penphone and cellphone and everything else I've got. It's a security flaw that I'm going to be bringing up with Greyghost and Itzhak; apparently Itzhak uses the same broadcasting techniques in all our equipment.

Anyway. I woke up at about three this afternoon and knew, knew, what it was I've been trying to think of for the past few days. Well, almost. See, when I went back and looked through the files again and again, I just read the words. I didn't look in the pictures. But I now remember it was something in one of the pictures that I saw.

So I threw on my coat and boots and booked for the office. I was almost running out the front door of the apartment, and almost bumped into Carlos from downstairs coming the other way. I flung myself to the side to avoid him, and fell into the bushes.

Where there was a cat, staring at me.

"You're wasting your time," I said to her, and scrambled to my feet. And ran.

Running is conspicuous, so I ducked down the first subway entrance I came to. Not a moment too soon, either, because I could hear the whirring of Icecap's Icycle as he buzzed overhead.

Obvious, of course. Icecap and his gang have sworn to catch Claudia Calhoun's murderer, and they've found out I was getting ready to take her on. Therefore I'm either the murderer or an important witness. But I don't trust them at the moment. Some of them I don't trust anytime.

They've been after me all day. I don't dare show up at work, because I don't know for sure if they've caught up to me or not. I called Greyghost's relay number from a pay phone and let him know what was going on. With any luck he'll find a reason to punch Icecap in the head. Since when is Prowl working with these dorks anyway?

The one good thing was when I was running down an alley toward Ogilvy Street and Shadow-Falcon low-bridged himself on a jeweler's awning. Don't quit the paper route!

2005-02-27T23:26:00.000-05:00

KInd of tired. I've been at this all weekend. Iknow there's something and it's driving me nuts. I've been going through all my notes on Claudia Calhoun and what she was up to with Surefire and Greyghost and everything. I know there's some detail in there I should be paying atttention to but I can't figure out what it is.

This morning, Greyghost said, "Go home. You're too tired to be doing anything useful."

"No. I waant to keep at it."

"Dennis. Her death wasn't your fault."

"It's not that. It's that there's something I'm trying to think of and it's bugging me."

The great thing about Greyghost is that when you tell him the truth about something like that, he believes you.

2005-02-24T22:47:00.000-05:00

In one way, things are back to normal now; obviously, there's no need for me to defend Greyghost's identity against Claudia Calhoun. So I can settle comfortably back into my rut, and Greyghost can go investigate a murder, and all is right with the world.

In another way, things are super-tense. We're all looking at each other a little suspiciously--Cruickshank, Greyghost, Cassie, Ingrid and me. We're all pretty sure that none of the rest of us were involved in the Calhoun murder, but I don't think we're completely sure. And that's not the worst of it.

The worst of it was this morning's copy of the Moon. Front page: Icecap has released a statement to the press about how he and his cadre of fratboys and suckups are going to bring Claudia Calhoun's killer to justice. That has the potential to get really annoying really fast.

It's weird, though. I woke up this morning with the feeling that I had just solved the murder. But whatever I had been dreaming, I forgot almost instantly. Either I'm having bad deja vu or there's some detail somewhere that I should be paying more attention to.

2005-02-23T23:34:00.000-05:00

Last night as I was riding the elevator back up to the apartment, it stopped between floors, and the lights went out.

Then the doors were wrenched open, and someone hauled me out onto the seventh floor and into a nearby maintenance closet.

Whoever it was put his mouth right next to my ear and said, "What have you been up to?"

"I'm not saying anything like this," I said. "Who are you?"

A light came on. It was One-Eyed Jack. "Claudia Calhoun was investigating Greyghost. Now she's dead. Tell me everything you know."

"Like hell. What is the matter with you? Ask Greyghost yourself." I tried to elbow him away from me.

"I'm investigating Greyghost."

For God's sake. "Well, knock it off. Do you really think he did it?"

He didn't answer.

"Then you're an idiot. He's not a killer, and you should know that as well as I do."

"He's not like us, Dennis," One-Eyed Jack said. "He has super-powers. You can't trust him, not completely. The powers change them."

"Oh, whatever," I said. "I thought you were his friend."

"I am. Up to a point. But I have to find out if he killed that woman and you have to help me."

"Okay. He didn't do it. How's that for help?"

He let go of me. "You know, Dennis, it's better to be smart than it is to be loyal."

I hear that. "If anything starts to bug me about this, I'll tell you. All right?"

"Just don't hesitate. Because if Greyghost is worried about protecting his secrets, you're in danger too."

I waved him off. But then I couldn't get to sleep last night.

2005-02-22T23:13:00.000-05:00

Disaster, disaster, disaster. Claudia Calhoun's body was found in a dumpster way downtown this morning.

Greyghost and I started circling each other like sharks when we heard.

"Do you--"

"Don't ask me anything you wouldn't like me asking you."

"Mm."

Of course I don't know a damn thing about it. I hadn't gotten as far as making any kind of contact with Calhoun yet. But that's not the point. The point is he shouldn't be asking me, because he's got that lie-detector thing going. And he shouldn't need to use that on me. If I knew anything useful, I'd tell him, and he knows that, or should.

On the other hand, I'm not convinced he knows nothing about it. I know he's not a murderer, and I know he wouldn't have her rubbed out, or let anyone else do it. But I think he might know something about something.

But if her death has something to do with her trying to find out Greyghost's identity... what does that mean?

2005-02-21T23:16:00.000-05:00

Spent all of today occupied with forgery. Funny how working with a superhero has made me an expert in crime. I can now break-and-enter with the best of them. I can forge driver's licences and deeds. I can hotwire cars.

I guess the abyss is staring back at me. Hi!

2005-02-20T21:11:00.000-05:00

Here's my pigeon.

Guy named Derek Atherton, called himself 'Rainshadow'. His powers included turning into clouds of steam and lurking around mysteriously in the dark, that whole motif. Cleaned out a few banks in Chicago in the late '80s, and disappeared. Greyghost's files on this guy suggest that he got killed in some gangland thing.

Perfect.

2005-02-19T23:25:00.000-05:00

What really annoys me is salsa. Occasionally I want chips and salsa for a snack, but when I go to the store, what do I find? They have mild salsa. I don't want that. They have extra hot salsa. I don't want that. I just want regular freaking salsa. But do they have it? Actually, they do.

But it's extra chunky. I don't want that.

Regular. Regular medium average normal goddamn salsa. Is it so much to ask? I don't want it to be extra hot or extra mild or extra chunky or with capers in it or anything. I want plain salsa. They don't have it. It's like an ice cream store not having vanilla. It's like a paint store not having white. It's like--I don't know--a drugstore not having Pringles.

And the other thing that really annoys me is the whole peanut thing. Everything you pick up, it has a label that says "May contain traces of nuts." Well, let me just say this. When I buy a jar of peanut butter or a container of Rocky Road, I don't want it to say, "May contain traces of nuts." I want it to say, "Guaranteed to contain a giant assload of nuts." Why the hell else am I buying it?

2005-02-18T22:12:00.000-05:00

At some point, the search for Plan B became fun. I don't know what that says about me, that I can really get into the effort to totally screw over a fellow human being like this. But for the past couple of days I haven't been worrying about it. I'm worrying about it now, now that I'm writing this, but not too much. She'll get over it. At least, she will if she ever figures out that anything happened.

Which all makes it sound like I've got a real nasty plan all cooked up. I don't. But I do have a couple of things I know I'll need for one.

Mostly what I've been doing is crouching in front of the computer and digging like a fiend through Greyghost's database and various other sources of information. I've also gone out and talked to some people, and talked to some other people about talking to some people.

First, I was trying to find out exactly how Claudia Calhoun figured out Surefire's secret identity, and how she was going about trying to find out Greyghost's. The reasons for this are obvious and need no elaboration.

Second, I needed a very special supervillain.

2005-02-17T23:14:00.000-05:00

Well. Apparently Claudia Calhoun has some kind of issue, and that means I have to come up with a Plan B.