The women urged each other on as sweat gave a glistening sheen to their skin, pausing to look in full-length mirrors strategically places against the painted cinderblock walls.
“We are looking good, Sissy James,” said Avie, calling out above the sound.
“Never better, Avie James,” said Avie. “I feel like the rust of the last school year is finally off.”
She lowered the weights down on their stack.
“Is the doorbell ringing upstairs?” she asked.
Avie gave a shrug.
Clarissa got up from the bench and turned down the boom box. She walked over and peered up the steps. A man’s head on an elongated neck peer down at her; an ochre cat wearing goggles appeared at the top of the steps.
“Don’t shoot, Ms. Megaton Man,” said Jasper Johnson. “We let ourselves in—Koz still has a key to your back door.”
“We had to get out of Manhattan,” said Koz. “The smell of the garbage in July is overwhelming. That’s saying a lot about Detroit right there.”
Clarissa let out a scream of joy as she ran up the steps. “Kozmik Kat! Rubber Brother! You’re back in Detroit!” In the upstairs hallway, Clarissa gave each a big hug. “Sorry I’m all sweaty—I’m so happy to see you!” She called down the steps. “Avie, it’s—”
“I heard you!” Avie called back. “Give me a second to set down my barbell, won’cha?”
Toweled off, the girls entertained their visitors in the living room with a quickly-mixed pitcher of lemonade, a rattling box fan in the window barely alleviating the sweltering evening humidity.
“I can’t believe this is your escape from New York,” said Avie.
“I expected you to stick around for a while when you came back to Troy with Donna last winter,” said Clarissa. “What happened?”
“You know me,” said Jasper. “I can’t stay in one place for long. I had rescue Koz and Bing, who were outnumbered on the Devengers.”
“We had many colorful adventures,” said Koz. “And if you recount them all right now I’m going to gouge my eyes out.”
“Are you going back to the Troy+Thems?” asked Avie. “I’m sure they can use the help.”
“No plans to,” said Jasper. “Those young kids don’t need an old-timer like me to run things.” Changing the subject, he said, “You gals are looking good—if you don’t mind hearing a compliment from an old man.”
“We’ve been working out,” said Avie, beaming, as she patted her bare stomach between her workout top and pants. “I’ve lost twenty pounds since the spring, but stayed just as curvaceous in all the right places.”
“And I managed to shake off the rust of my first grueling year of grad school,” said Clarissa. “I’ve never felt more fit.”
“That’s good,” said Jasper. “Donna mentioned there’s some big case you all are working on.”
“I don’t know how big it is,” said Clarissa. “We seem to have some extraterrestrial visitors, but nobody can figure out what they’re up to.”
“What does Donna think?” asked Jasper.
“The Phantom Jungle Girl is just as mystified,” said Clarissa. “Here, let me show you what we’ve got.”
Clarissa went into her bedroom and returned with the red cape, buttons, and visor. The cape fluttered in midair as she placed the visor over her eyes. She dimmed the lights in the living room as she tapped her visor. A beam projected a three-dimensional hologram over the coffee table.
“This is what my cape picked up, snooping around several days ago. As you can see, two white people, a brother and a sister, in an apartment with a third man of mixed race.”
“Where is this? Someplace in Detroit?” asked Jasper. “That is awfully suspicious.”
“Okay, so the cape didn’t pick up much that was incriminating,” said Clarissa. “But listen to them talking.”
The hologram showed a bird’s-eye of two blond-haired people, the brother and sister, and a darker man sitting around a kitchen table. They were conversing as the woman made a list on a notepad.
“Listen to their language,” said Clarissa. “It sounds like English, but it’s heavily accented. I can’t make it out.”
“Sounds like they’re talking about finding jobs and drawing a list of groceries they need,” said Jasper. “Maybe they just flew in from Europe or somewhere.”
“The woman works at a food co-op,” said Clarissa. “I’m not sure where the men work.”
“Those food co-ops are up to no good,” said Koz.
“Show them the hotrod, Clarissa,” said Avie.
“I’m getting to that.” Clarissa tapped the temple of her visor; the image changed, showing a ghostly image of a black flying craft. “This is a vehicle Donna and I saw flying low over the western suburbs, and now it’s parked on the roof of that apartment building you just saw. You see how it’s transparent; only my visor could pick it up at all. To the naked eye, there’s nothing there.”
“It’s cloaked in invisibility,” said Avie.
“I can see that,” said Jasper. “What does that mean? That it’s actually parked in another dimension only a vibration away from this reality?”
Clarissa nodded. “My cape’s buttons and my visor can peer into other dimensions when the technology is tuned properly. This trio obviously flew here in that vehicle then stashed it in another dimension in case they needed to make a clean getaway.”
Koz stroked his whiskers wryly. “You mean to tell me, Ms. Megaton Man, that you detached your cape and set it into this apartment to eavesdrop on these people—and they didn’t notice a bright red cape fluttering overhead?”
Everyone looked up at the cape, which proceeded to hover near the ceiling. Suddenly, the bright red cape shriveled up behind the two brass buttons, which attached themselves to the wall just below the ceiling.
“Oowee,” said Clarissa. “I’ve never seen my cape make that move before. Ingenious!”
“Okay, so you have some spy footage on some suspicious people,” said Koz. “But what do you suspect them of, except flying in from outer space in a really cool vehicle?”
“Did you try running the speech through the language translator?” asked Jasper.
“The what?” said Clarissa. “I didn’t know I had one of those.”
She tapped the temple of her visor a few times. Within moments, the computer issued a list of word occurrence, projected in green letters.
“Well, look at that. My visor can decode almost eighty percent of what they’re saying,” said Clarissa. “There are seventeen references to hiding, not being discovered, laying low in just a few minutes of chatting. The darker-skinned man is referencing a friend who may help them.”
“At least they’re not planning an invasion,” said Jasper. “They’re lying low, on the lam. But somebody’s after them. The question is who, and why. Did you upload this to the Blow Dryer?”
“I can’t do that anymore,” said Clarissa. “Not since you cut off my visor from the network grid. I haven’t talked to Preston Percy in months.”
“Hmm,” said Jasper. “Maybe I can restore that function. ICHHL’s computers could probably decode all of their conversation, although I’m not sure how much it will tell us. Maybe Troy’s computers could, too. Has there been anybody following them around? Another space craft in the vicinity?”
“Not that I know of,” said Clarissa. “But we haven’t been looking for one.”
“That darker man,” said Jasper. “Did your cape get a better view of his face?”
Clarissa tapped her visor. “There.”
The hologram showed a dashing mixed-race man, his hair slicked back, with a dashing, trim goatee.
“No,” said Jasper. “I’d like to run it through the databases I know they have in Troy. Cape?”
The buttons detached themselves from the wall and unfurled the red cape. Fluttering down, the landed in Rubber Brother’s hands.
“Just as I thought,” he said, examining the back of the buttons. “I detached the antennae to give you some privacy, Ms. Megaton Man. I’ll either need to reattach it or remove the memory chip to copy it to a main frame.”
The cape fluttered violently back from Jasper.
“I don’t have the tools with me right now,” said Jasper. “I’d have to perform the Troy+Thems headquarters. It’s an easy fix. Don’t worry, Cape, it will be just as painless as it was before.”
“Or, we could just drive over to their apartment and ask these people if they need our help,” said Avie. “If they’re in trouble, we can be their friends.”
“We can stop by the food co-op and get some organic cat food,” said Koz. “I checked your cupboard, and as usual, it’s bare. C’mon—they have to be open at least another hour, and I’m hungry.”
Next: One of Our Spitfires is Missing
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| The first concept drawing of Ms. Megaton Man’s detachable cape, 2013. |
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