Page 108 of Velveteen vs. The Consequences of Her Actions

Vel shuddered and bumped her shoulder against his. “No graves for you,” she said. “Only heroics, and fighting the good fight for all saurian peoples, everywhere.”

“Yeah,” said Tag, sounding deflated. “But the point stands, Vel. Supermodel found out there were animus in the world again, and she went hunting, and when she found you, you managed to beat her. You overcame the greatest hero of her generation, turned greatest villain of ours, and you made the world safe for people with our powers. Every animus yet to come owes you their life.”

“I don’t like to think of it that way,” said Vel uncomfortably.

“Maybe not, but everybody else does,” said Tag. “Doctor Darwin wants to meet with you because you’re a hero. You make him look even cooler than he already is. C’mon, Vel. He wants some reflected glory, and he’s willing to swap you some reflected fame. Go get the attention you deserve.”

“I’m really not comfortable with all of this,” she admitted. “And I don’t like that Vic and Sparks have to patrol without us while we’re dealing with this frog and compy show.”

“But you’ll like the increase in our operating budget.” The halls were getting noisier as they approached the soundstage where Doctor Darwin’s people were waiting. Tag leaned over and quickly ran his teeth along the feathers in her crest, grooming them back into a neutral position. “I love you. Now go get us a future.”

Velveteen sighed and stepped into the light.

* * *

Sparkler dropped out of the sky like a comet, slamming into the neck of the bank robber she’d been pursuing for blocks. Behind her, the smoothly repeating discharge of a ray gun told her that Victory Anna was having her fun. She’d need to deal with this robber quickly and get back to Torrey before the fun turned into manslaughter, and they had to sit through another lecture on the avoidance of excessive force.

Victory Anna’s insistence that she was using a precisely correct amount of force for her time period and culture was starting to fall on hostile ears. As a citizen of the modern world, she was expected to live by modern standards, and she’d damaged more criminals alone than the rest of the city’s heroes combined. Sparkler didn’t want to see her fined or censured for following her instincts—even if those instincts were admittedly more primal than was socially acceptable.

Of all the issues she’d expected to encounter when she’d started dating a time traveler, “will occasionally be compelled to eat fallen opponents, whether or not they’re actually dead” had not been at the top of the list.

The robber she had dropped on groaned. She balled up one claw and punched him several times in the back of the head, until he was limp and motionless. With a triumphant shriek, Sparkler jumped off him and back into the air, wings beating hard as she turned herself back toward Victory Anna.

When she got there, the red-feathered vectiraptor was standing perfectly still in a circle of fallen robbers, her ray gun drooping by her side and her crest askew in apparent confusion. She squawked as Sparkler landed in front of her, starting to bring up her ray gun.

“Hey, whoa!” yelped Sparkler, putting up her claws. “It’s me. Torrey, it’s me.”

“I don’t believe this revisionist history was designed to fully account for outliers such as myself,” said Victory Anna, voice hollow and disconnected. But she didn’t make any more motions to raise her ray gun, which was good enough for the moment. A gadgeteer who wasn’t opening fire was a gadgeteer who could still be negotiated with.

“What do you mean?” asked Sparkler.

“I was sworn to the Church of my Lady Epona when I was eight years old,” said Victory Anna. “I stood before the altar and I traded vows with the priestess, to serve her as well as I might, to never give her cause to weep for me. And I have kept those vows all my life, through the deaths of two worlds and the survival of the third. I have brought those vows to our bower.”

“And I’ve always said that was fine by me, honey. I don’t have a problem with your religion. How about you put down the gun, hmm?”

“I know, as a scientist, that the Mammalian Plague wiped out eighty percent of the world’s mammals long before my empire rose, before I was born or my father’s time machine set the current course of my life in shale. I know these things. But in my heart, as a faithful devotee to Epona, the Lady of the Horses, I know that the mammals must have existed long past that point. As a woman, I know the world makes no sense, even as I try to reconcile it for myself. How can you explain the contradiction?”

“I can’t, Torrey, you know I can’t. But I also can’t stop in the middle of apprehending a bunch of criminals to debate the nature of reality with you. I’m sorry. I wish I could, but this really isn’t the time.”

Victory Anna looked at her miserably. “The world doesn’t make sense anymore, Sparkler, and we need to figure out how to set it right before it drives me mad.”

“All right,” said Sparkler, soothingly. “All right. Velveteen is meeting with Doctor Darwin soon, and we’re invited to the mixer afterward. Maybe we can get a few minutes with the man. I’m sure he’ll be able to make this all make sense.”

“Yes,” said Victory Anna, with breathless certainty. “Yes, he’ll have the answers. Doctor Darwin always does.”

The two superheroines moved to stand back to back, watching for more criminals, and while everything wasn’t all right, it was going to be. It just needed a little more time.

* * *

“Dammit, Mother, you owe me!” shouted Jacqueline Claus, adopted daughter of Santa, heir to the North Pole and all its wonders, as she glared at the Snow Queen. Her hands were balled so tightly into fists that her nails were biting into the skin of her palms, deep enough to make her bleed. Her hair, normally perfect, was a tangled mess, studded with snowflakes.

They weren’t melting. She didn’t seem to have noticed.

“You had me because you were selfish enough to want a child, and then when I wasn’t perfectly what you expected you gave me away like I was a Christmas present!” she shouted. “How does that define how I’m supposed to serve the season? Because I was given freely once, I have to give freely forever? Well, I refuse! I want my world, and my friends, and if I can’t have those things, I want her world, not some sort of ridiculous dinosaur storybook. You need to let me into the Hall of Mirrors right now. I know you can hear me!”

“But she can’t,” said a new voice, half-familiar, half-strange. A woman came walking out of the swirling snow, wearing a long white dress like a winding sheet, with hair that fell past her knees in a constantly shifting mix of blue, green, purple, and pink, all the northern lights forced into a single impossible dye job. Jack couldn’t have described her face if she’d tried. This woman was beyond such petty things as faces.

“I don’t want the Winter to change to fit the beliefs of a new world, so I’ve stopped it, for now,” said Aurora. “There’s no one awake but us. You want to make your case to me?”