SG: Rad #93 (2/3): Wants

[Gary]

(continued from part one, preceding...)

     As soon as Rumi and Cendra got into Cendra's room, Cendra
whispered in her ear.  "I know exactly where the pictures are.  I just
had to get out of there."
     Cendra grinned, and Rumi felt a grin break across her face.  She
thought it might have been her first genuine smile of the day.
     Cendra drew several boxes out from beneath her bed, and they took
turns noisily opening them.  Cendra set the album she had been sent to
search for on the bed, and she and Rumi rattled around in the boxes
for a bit.
     "Let me guess," Cendra murmured.  "They haven't let you alone
since you got to Earth."
     "Not a moment," Rumi replied.  "Well, once this morning.  They're
regretting that now."
     "What did you do?"
     Rumi gave her a quick summary of her and Johnny Clark's plane-
buzzing incident.  She had not thought that a woman with Cendra's skin
color could turn red, but Cendra's efforts at containing her laughter
produced that very effect in her cheeks and forehead.
     "We have got to talk sometime," said Cendra.  "I mean *really*
talk, like we used to."
     Rumi wanted that a lot.  If there was one person on Earth in
front of whom she felt comfortable venting, it was Cendra, and the
upheaval in her life had given Rumi much she wanted to vent.  Of all
people, she thought, Cendra would understand the outsider's
frustrations.
     She looked down at the box she had been blindly rummaging through
to produce rummaging sounds, and the thought she had been about to
express went out of her head.  In the box was what appeared to be a
random collection of things.  A few red silk scarves, a few bottles of
massage oil, several well-chewed squeak toys, a large dog collar and
leash, an assortment of feathers, a box of dog treats... and a
Polaroid photo.
     The woman in the picture was Cendra, though the way her skin had
been painted gave her an almost feral look.  Speaking of feral, Miguel
was in the picture too--at least, she assumed the black-furred
werewolf next to her was him.  They were both cradled in a giant,
hairy-knuckled hand that had hoist them into the air.  Miguel and
Cendra were both howling, and behind them was the night sky... and
what appeared to be an enormous burning pyramid.  A pyramid with
antlers.
     "You went to Burning M00se?" Rumi half-whispered, half-shouted.
"When *was* this?"
     "Last year," Cendra whispered back.  "My first, his second."
     "I wanted to go last year," Rumi replied.  "And the year before,
when my mom and dad went.  They said they wanted to check it out
before they brought me, even though only parts of it have an age
limit."
     "And what'd they say about it when they got back?"
     Rumi shrugged.  "That it was like the parties on Planet
California.  Only a lot more intense, because the people who go know
it only lasts five days."
     "You going this year?"
     "Dunno," Rumi replied.  In truth, since she had arrived on Earth,
she had thought most about how life would be better once a year had
passed and she could return to Planet California and the life she
knew.  She had thought little about how to fill the interregnum.  "You
got any other pictures?"
     "Yeah," said Cendra, "but we'll have to... um... save those for
another time."
     "Who's the big hand belong to?"
     "Oh, that's just Mike," Cendra answered.  "Bit scary-looking, but
a total sweetie."
     Rumi tapped Miguel's part of the photo.  "No one minds that he
runs around like this there?"
     Cendra snorted.  "You kidding?  He's just another sight."
     Some shouted words from the living room drew their attention.
Rumi could only make out 'Ralph,' 'ego,' 'Obama,' and 'lemurs.'  They
did not seem like harbingers of civil, or even sensible, conversation.
     "And off to the races we go," said Cendra, as she and Rumi stood.
"Look, I'm going to be stuck with cooling that mess down, but you go
save yourself.  See what Esteban is up to."
     Rumi had only been mildly curious as to what the mysterious
'Esteban' was up to, but going to his room sounded better than
listening to and trying to make sense of an argument involving Earth
politics.
     As she slipped past Cendra and headed for the door previously
indicated as leading to Esteban's bedroom, she glanced at her mother.
Glum gave her a quick wink, and then returned her attention to the
burgeoning argument.  Rumi wondered if she had really been interested
in the photo album at all.

                                 ***

     "...and a dozen glazed," said Templar.  "Read that back to me,
would you, Sam?"
     "That's six powdered-sugars," a voice, presumably Sam's, came
from the conference call speaker on Templar's desk.  "Six cinnamon,
six sprinkles, six lemon bombs, six artery cloggers, and six glazed."
     "Dozen glazed."
     "Plus a dozen glazed."
     Templar looked to Rad as though he was thinking of arguing, but
then just shrugged.  "Right.  Fifteen minutes?"
     "You got it, boss," said Sam.  Templar stabbed the 'hang-up'
button on his phone.
     "Sorry they didn't have any 'cherry bombs' today," he said.
"Must be out of the red dye again."
     "It's okay, dude," Rad replied.  He had been hoping for some
tofu-filled donuts, but that delicacy, widely appreciated on Planet
California and elsewhere in the Ottsamaddawidu Confederation, had
still not caught on with his home planet.  He stuck his hand in his
pocket and touched the photo sent to him by 'Miranda Satori.'
     'Miranda Satori' was his sister, Akane Moroboshi, whom the world
at large had known as Radian, and believed to be dead and good
riddance.  Following the bizarre circumstances that led to her
apparent (though not actual) demise, she had chosen the 'Miranda' name
and established a mail drop so that certain people could keep in touch
with her.  Through it, Akane had gotten the picture of The Programmer
to him, and had written on the back that he should find the ex-villain.
Rad had no problem with this--she no doubt had a good reason for her
request, and with luck he might someday know what it was.  What he had
a problem with was her other manipulation--getting his daughter Rumiko
up to the skylight just in time to overhear the conversation between
him and Manny.
     How Akane managed to arrange for her note to get into the brat
served to Rumi that afternoon, or how she even knew which brat to use,
was not Rad's concern, though he did think it was a bit show-offy.
What concerned him was that she was manipulating his daughter into a
potentially dangerous adventure, one he was not sure Rumi was ready
for, and one Rad knew he was not ready for Rumi to be ready for.
     For all their sakes, he hoped Akane would drop her intrigues and
just let him know what was up... soon.
    "Guillermo, dude," he said.  "Like, anything yet on, like, this
Programmer dude?"
     Guillermo was wearing a headset that was plugged into his cell
phone.  Rad wondered where he had found one for his head shape on
Earth.  The one-time 'Badass' lifted a finger in the near-universal
'I'm on the phone' gesture.
     "No, Sal," said Guillermo.  "There's got to be something on this
slimeball.  What's Dicey Ned got on him?"
     Rad watched his friend pace as he talked.  Manny, seated in a
chair on the other side of the desk from where Templar sat, was
turning over in his hands a scale model of what Templar had identified
as a Lickmi HAG.  It came as news to Rad that Lickmi Heavy Assault
Gear units looked like glued-together gunmetal-gray tupperware, or
that they had thunderbolts and flames painted on their hulls.  Templar
had explained that his next film was to be a dramatization of the
Lickmi invasion of Boston and the heretofore untold episode in which
the tide of battle was turned at a critical juncture by a secret
underground team of technologically advanced goats from another
dimension.  (The sheep, Templar explained, were on strike.  Long, sad
story.)  Rad was not versed on all the historical particulars of the
actual Lickmi invasion, or the simmering state of affairs in the
barricaded and divided city of Boston, but felt that Templar was
perhaps taking certain liberties with the historical truth.  Much in
the same manner that Sherman took certain liberties with Atlanta.
     Rad returned his attention to the window, and the suggestive
billboard featuring Yury Mitsuke.  It was for a movie called
'HotForce: Third Degree.'  Rad was unsure as to exactly what it was
about, but guessed it was not a documentary on a third-world trouble
spot or an insightful contemplation of governmental abuses of power.
He had known Yury well, a decade-and-a-half back, when he had been a
hero on Earth and she had been a bikini-wearing, flame-shooting
superguy who went by the name HotFlash.  The chief change he observed,
if the poster was in any way accurate, was that she had lost the
bikini.
     "Like, dude," he said, speaking now to Templar.  "I don't think,
like, she was, like, trying to get your, like, goat.  That billboard,
like, has movie ads, like, all the time, y'know?"
     "That's what she said," Templar answered.  "She has no control
over the marketing.  Riiight."
     Rad remembered something he had heard that morning.  "Isn't she
getting divorced again?"
     "Yeah," said Manny, who did not look up from the supposed Lickmi
HAG model, with which he was making various flying motions.  "From
Prince Rudyard, or whatever his name is.  Never liked him.  He's in a
bunch of those arty movies that Chal likes."
     "Prinz Rudman," Templar corrected.  "I think he was just for the
status boost.  She got her Oscar nom from that film he wrote and
directed.  'The Insufferable Loginess of Senses Disconcerted.'"
     "Like, I think I missed that one, dude," Rad said.
     "Something about a bunch of people in L.A. who run into one
another, and accuse each other of being elves and dwarves and orcs and
whatnot.  Then Jack Nicholson comes around and has them all whacked.
She played the coke-abusing mistress of the misunderstood English
serial killer."
     "Like, ah."
     Rad saw Tom on the other side of the room, nearly lost in the
shadows, apparently checking some nonfunctional equipment he had
dropped off a couple days before.  He had a cell phone pressed to one
ear, and was looking at the screen of a portable device held in his
other hand.  Rad wondered if Tom used a SpoonBerry, too, but thought
it unlikely.
     "Okay, Sal," Guillermo said, his first words in nearly two
minutes.  "I'll tell 'em.  Put the bill on my tab.  And say 'hi' to
Kayla and the kids for me, alright?"  He removed his headset and
unplugged it from the phone clipped to his belt.
     "Well?" Manny asked.  "We're dyin' of suspense over here."
     "So far as all my sources can tell," said Guillermo, "he's clean.
Not 'squeaky,' mind you, but nothin' that says 'I'm a former super-
powered villain returning to my old ways.'  Ever since his shirt had
that Y2K meltdown, he's been working for an insurance company.  No
investments in suspicious tech, no secret lairs, nothin'."
     "Like, Sal would know that?" asked Rad.
     "You'd be surprised what Sal knows," Guillermo replied.  "He knew
you were comin' back to Earth before you even got here.  I know you
tried to keep your repurchase of your old beach house secret, but he's
got his ways."
     "Is this the same Sal that owns the 'Snakeskin Sal's' chain of
drinking establishments all along the coast?" Manny asked.
     "Yep," said Guillermo.  "Sold out to some big Eastern company
just last year.  Now it's all slummin' intellectuals and beat poets.
Sad, really.  Marta 'n me go to Dicey Ned's when we want a drink these
days."
     "Speaking of Marta," said Manny, "is she making her presentation
to Chal tonight?"
     Guillermo nodded.  "Don't know how it'll go.  Chal's got a lot on
her plate running Harxxon, and she's never been that hot on the idea
of funding a private army."  He looked as though he would say more,
then just shrugged and turned to the shadowy end of the room.  "Hey,
Tom, got anything yet?"
     "As a matter of fact," came Tom's voice.  "Yeah.  Got something
kinda weird here."
     "Don't mind that," Templar called.  "The goats got into the
greasepaint last night.  I'm gonna have the janitor---"
     "I meant about where The Programmer works," said Tom.  He was
walking toward them now, still looking at his handheld electronics.
"This 'Blue Pound Sign of California.'  It used to be held by our old
friends in the Mega-Intelligence Bureau, until they got publicly
embarrassed and had to make a few moves to make it look like they were
disbanding."
     "So they're an M.I.B. front?" Manny asked.
     Tom shook his head.  "That's where it gets weird.  They *were*
legitimately spun off, and immediately bought out... by Harxxon."
     "Dude," said Rad.  "What--?"
     "Harxxon mandated some restructuring," Tom went on.  "Karina
probably wanted to make sure they were really cleaned out.  Then they
got spun off again.  They own themselves now."
     "How is this relevant?" Templar asked.
     "I'm still getting a *lot* of data traffic between BPSC's
headquarters and Harxxon headquarters," said Tom.  "I've done contract
work for Karina and China in the past, cleaning up places like this,
and I know that, even with the monitors and trapdoors they leave
behind to make sure these companies stay relatively clean, or at least
M.I.B.-free, we shouldn't be seeing this much two-way."
     "Like, can you tell," said Rad, "y'know, between where in the
buildings, like, y'know?"
     "Not sure about Harxxon HQ," Tom answered.  "But I've got the
network ID for the BPSC end.  It's The Programmer's computer, all
right."
     "Can you tell what he's doing?" asked Manny.  There was a
slightly stunned note in his voice.
     "Not really," said Tom.  "Not from here, anyway.  I've broken the
superficial layers of security, but the data I'm finding looks to be
made up of geometric pictographs.  I'm not having any luck translating
it."
     "Well, then," said Manny, after a few moments.  "Well, then.
Well then well then well then."  He steepled his fingers and pressed
the tips against his chin.  "Well.  Then."
     "We should go to Harxxon," said Guillermo.  "I appreciate you
wanted to keep this on the Q.T., even though you didn't say why, but
we're gonna need better resources than I got to track---"
     A series of loud knocks at the door interrupted Guillermo's
suggestion.
     "Donuts," said Templar.  "Right, look, I don't mind calling it an
early night, but I'm not going up to Los Requemados just to stare at
some computer screens until the truth dawns."  He reached the door
just as the knocking sounds repeated.  "Just a *second,*" he called.
"We---"
     Whatever he had been about to say next was lost in a hail of
powdered-sugar confections.  Templar, surprised, fell backward as five
people in ill-fitting black robes and head-wrappings entered the room,
brandishing donuts and throwing stars as if they could not discern the
difference.
     "We are ninjas!" one of them shouted.  "We are saying 'hai-kiba'
at you!  We use our smoke-bombs and zoom-zoom ninja powers to stun and
delight you!"
     "Ninjas!" the other four agreed.  One bit a throwing star and
added an "ow."
     "You aren't real ninjas," Templar said as he sat up.  "Not that I
know much about real ninjas, but as the star of 'Shaolin Sheep of
Death,' I *do* know not-real ninjas."
     "Taste our ninja steel, I am saying!" the lead 'ninja' replied.
He withdrew a glazed 'lemon-bomb' donut and brandished it at Templar.
Templar stared at the donut, and Rad could tell he was using
extraordinary self-control to keep from licking his lips.
     "Hey," said Manny, who had risen from his chair.  "Is this how
the guys at the bank robbery this morning were acting?"
     "Like, yah, generally," Rad replied.  "Only, like, they were
saying they, like, were bank robbers, instead of, like, ninjas."
     "But they were just as fakey," said Manny.  Rad nodded.
     "Not to interrupt," said Tom, "but shouldn't your Secret Service
detail have done something by now?"
     They looked around for the agents, and soon found them.  The
agents' guns were on the floor, and blood trickled from behind their
right ears.  Eight more 'ninjas' stood around them.
     "We are being ninjas at you!" they--including the Secret Service
guys--declared.  "We seek the Tom!"
     "What?" Tom asked.  "Me?"
     "Yes!"
     They brandished weaponry and more donuts.  Rad noticed that one
of them wore a uniform from a popular donut-making chain, and guessed
he was the delivery guy they had originally expected.
     "Right," said Guillermo.  "This is starting to get stupid.
You're not real ninjas and you can't have Tom.  But we are going to
have to kick your asses all around the room until you tell us what
this is about."
     "Ha!" the 'ninjas' shouted.  "Ha!  Ha ha!  Ha!  We say 'ha' at
you!"
     "Try not to hurt 'em too much," said Guillermo, over his shoulder
to Manny, Rad, and Tom.  Templar, who had scrambled to his feet and
was backing away from the 'ninjas' at the door, was too far away to
hear.  "I got the feeling something funky and conspiratorial is going
on."
     "There's just... um... thirteen," said Tom.  "But they're not
real ninjas, and have no powers.  What could they hope to accomp---"
     The sentence was cut off by numerous crashing sounds, as twenty
or so more pseudo-ninjas broke through the windows and landed in the
room.  The 'ninjas' in the room took this as their cue to start
throwing stuff.  The battle, such as it was, was on.

(continued in part three, following...)
--
Gary W. Olson
swede at novitious dot com
Superguy Community Discussion LJ:
http://community.livejournal.com/superguy_list