Page 27 of Velveteen vs. The Consequences of Her Actions

There was a moment of silence, broken only by the disinterested hissing of Geb’s geese. Then, with no preamble or warning, Persephone opened her eyes and smiled.

* * *

The flowers making up Velveteen’s dress had died when she channeled most of the power of Spring through herself. Lady Moon was a master costumer; she could whip up a ball gown with a wave of her hand, suitable for any occasion. Conjuring a simple superheroine’s unitard and tights was almost an insult to her skills.

“I’m just saying, don’t you think the girl would like to wake up and find herself wearing something that was a little less, I don’t know, common?” Lady Moon looked at the uniform and sniffed. “It’s so bland. And already damaged. How is it already damaged? I made the damn thing, I should at least be allowed to decide whether it goes out into the world looking like crap.”

“It’s her uniform,” said Persephone gently. There was no weakness in her voice, no sign that she had suffered any trauma from her near-death. “It’s going to appear the way she believes it should. The poor girl’s been through hell and back again. Of course she’s going to show a few bruises.”

“Yeah, about that,” drawled the girl who was sitting, impatiently, on the other side of the room. She rose as fluidly as a cat and slunk over to Velveteen’s side. “Did you break her? Because you weren’t supposed to break her. We’re supposed to get the same shake as everybody else.”

“We didn’t break her,” said Persephone. She looked calmly at Hailey Ween until the girl—the spirit of Halloween incarnate, if her words were to be believed, and a low-grade magical heroine who would have been a matter manipulator if a holiday hadn’t decided to put its strength behind her and push—looked away. “We showed her that there were other options. We opened our doors to her. Isn’t that what we’re all supposed to be doing?”

And if she had tried to give Velveteen the tools to understand what had really happened in Winter, if she had tried to frighten the girl into limiting her own power, could she be blamed for that? She had kept to the bargain that the seasons had made. Each of them was allowed to push their claim, however they saw fit.

“Well, you had your chance,” said Hailey. Her smile was cold. “Now it’s Halloween’s turn.”

Persephone looked at Velveteen for a moment before she turned away. She had done everything that she could. Velveteen might not remember Spring as the kindest season, but it had been. Oh, yes; it had been.

“I suppose it is,” she said, and there was nothing else to say. Hailey lifted the sleeping girl as effortlessly as if she were a feather, and tucked her into the voluminous pillowcase that was slung over the Halloween girl’s shoulder. Then they were both gone, leaving the smell of autumn leaves and sticky toffee hanging in the air.

Persephone put her hands over her face. No one saw her weeping but the geese.

VELVETEEN PRESENTS POLYCHROME vs. The Court of Public Opinion and Not Punching Anyone

Victory Anna’s whoops of joy echoed over the rooftops. Someone on the ground below might have mistaken them for screams, but Polychrome was close enough to see the sheer glee in the other woman’s face as she pursued the giant clockwork bats across the sky.

Victory Anna had been tinkering with a new model of jetpack recently, and this was its maiden outing. She looked something like a bat herself as she bobbed and weaved through the air. A very large bat, inexplicably dressed in Victorian finery, and carrying an extremely large gun.

She looked nothing like a bat at all. She looked like a profoundly self-satisfied time-displaced mad scientist who enjoyed the challenge of blasting someone else’s automatons out of the sky. Polychrome smirked as another bat fell. Sometimes dating was really all about knowing where to take your significant other. For some girls, dinner and a show might have been the answer. For Torrey, “want to go see if the people who’ve been reporting giant bats near the site of recent robberies were high or onto something?” was the perfect outing.

Normally, Polychrome would have been right there in the thick of it, zapping bats with beams of coherent light and sending them, smoking, to the alley below. Not tonight. Tonight, she was on the lookout, hovering above the battle on a platform of glitter and bad physics, watching to see if any of the bats broke formation. According to Torrey, either the swarm was pre-programmed for a variety of situations, which didn’t mesh up with their relatively limited processor power, or there was a “control bat” being used by the scientist who’d created them. If they could follow the control bat back to its belfry, they might be able to cut this crime spree short.

“Look alive!” shouted Victory Anna, before blasting another bat. Polychrome spun in mid-air, scanning the edges of the fight. There: a bat, slightly smaller than the others around it, was breaking from the flock and flapping frantically down an alleyway.

“On it!” called Polychrome, and dove, adjusting the angle and power of her light beams instinctively as she bled height and gathered speed, turning herself into a shooting star. There had been a time when flight was difficult for her, something she needed to think about. Her early training runs had been made while wearing heavy padding, to save her from bruises. Now flight was as natural as breathing. She only had to know where she was going.

The sound of Victory Anna’s joyful destruction faded behind her as she followed the bat through the night. It would have been difficult for anyone else to see, but her eyes were adapted for everything from blinding light to absolute darkness. Her own bioluminescence provided more than enough light to make chasing one little robot easy.

She spared a brief pang of concern for Torrey, who was going to have to finish the cleanup on her own, and gave chase through the night.

* * *

The weakening of The Super Patriots, Inc.’s hold on the superhuman community of the world was immediately and keenly felt, although nowhere as immediately as in North America, where the corporation had always been at its strongest. Splinter groups sprung up essentially overnight, with formerly retired heroes putting their spandex and masks back on, while minor supervillains whose wickedness had always been more informed than actual suddenly announced themselves as heroes. Super teams with no corporate sponsorship sprung up across the continent.

(While the foundation and funding of the majority of these teams does not reflect on the scope of this project, it is important to note that of the “sponsorless” super teams, a full eighty percent were backed by one or more independently wealthy members, and more, that all but one of the documented private backers were white males. Most had inherited their wealth from previous generations, and were uniquely well-situated to serve the public good without worrying about where their next meal would come from. The remaining twenty percent of super teams were dedicated to protecting one neighborhood or community, were active less than fifty percent of the time due to other commitments, and often received financial and material support from the people they were sworn to serve. Even superpowers do not guarantee a level playing field.)

More common than independent super teams were the independent heroes, vigilantes working either above or alongside the law. Many of them worked solo, at least at the start of their careers, before later settling into duos and trios—groups small enough to avoid the funding issues that plagued the super teams, but large enough that no one had to fight the forces of evil without backup. Going into danger completely unsupported was often fatal, especially for those heroes who had been working with The Super Patriots, Inc. for the majority of their careers. The collective noun “funeral” entered common use to describe solo heroes during this time period. “Enough of them showed up for the mugging that it was like a funeral.”

Most people viewed the reduction of The Super Patriots, Inc.’s control over the superhuman community as a bad thing. After all, most people did not know a superhuman personally: with a distinct minority among the human population, those who had close family or social ties to a superhuman were equally rare. From the perspective of the common man on the street, taking away the careful controls on superhuman movement and behavior was akin to taking away all gun legislation in an instant. The new age of superheroic freedom was more like the pause between “bad” and “worse.”

Within a year of Supermodel’s death, superhumans around the world were mourning for the “glory days” of absolute control by The Super Patriots, Inc. Sure, the corporation had been draconian, cruel, and dedicated to complete ownership of the heroes in their employ, but at least then, there had been someone to answer to. Most superhumans had never known a world in which they were expected to make their own decisions or choose their own paths. Like show dogs suddenly released back into the wild, they reeled.

It was perhaps only natural that the governments of the world would begin stepping in, proposing legislation to protect “the common man” by controlling and commanding the uncommon one. By the time the superhuman community realized that their freedoms were once more being eroded, this time by people whose interests were less commercial, and more military, it was too late for any organized resistance.

Perhaps it was ironic that within a very short period of time, the superhuman community would look back on their days under the control of The Super Patriots, Inc. as a time of peace, prosperity, and decent dental care. But then, they were always only human, and it is human nature to mourn the past.

* * *