Hexomancy (8 page)

“She’d know,” Eastwood said. He rustled around through a couple of boxes, then said, “Ha! Canceled order. Never shipped, then I forgot to put it back in the right place.”

“If you would let me handle all of the mail orders . . .” Ree said.

“Later,” Eastwood said. “Here, catch!” Eastwood tossed the shield like a Frisbee. Ree caught it with both hands. It was a cheaper prop, less than two feet across, and made of plastic.

“This is a kid’s toy.”

“It’s what I’ve got.”

“I’ll give it a shot.” Ree turned back to the screen and cued up the film, letting the massive wall-mounted speakers go to work.

The film popped up on nine synced flat-screen TVs, the standard media consumption mode in the Dorkcave. They’d tried playing films on the full five-by-five, but you had to sit so far back to get the full effect that the stacks cut off a third of the screen on either side.

Ree wheeled the gaming chair back into her preferred spot and dialed into the film, focusing on Steve Rogers’s earnest compassion and selfless bravery, his devotion to his friend, and his desire to be more than just a curiosity, and hoping the magical power-up would sweep the rest of her inebriation and exhaustion off the table.

Ree watched the set of scenes twice through, and by the end of the montage, had the film’s Captain America theme buzzing in her ears, all bright brass and retro enthusiasm. She wasn’t a huge American Exceptionalism fan, but this Cap, at least, came off like America Doing Right. Nazis were a slam-dunk of a bad guy, and so Hydra, as super-Nazis, were all the better. You couldn’t go wrong in fighting bad guys that disintegrated people at the drop of a hat. Worked for Leia and Han; it’d work for Cap and Ree.

Wishing she’d started working with Priya to get some cosplay action going so she could have the corresponding outfit, Ree strapped on the shield, which felt not much heavier, but far sturdier in her grip. It might not last too long, being a low-grade prop, but it’d have to do. Plus, she had her own crossover action going on with the Wonder Woman bracers.

They wouldn’t cancel each other out, right? She’d crossed the copyright streams before, and it had been fine. But Geekomancy wasn’t anything resembling an exact science. Like the films, comics, and games they came from, the rules of Geekomancy seemed to be relative, based on more factors than remotely made sense. It was as if a set of rules lawyers occasionally broke down the GM of the universe to institute house rules, or got the GM to update to a new rules set.

But the music was strong, the Super-Soldier Serum was with her, and she had double defense action between the shield and the bracers, a good match for the Strega’s blades, especially when paired with her standard melee and ranged weapons.

She did, however, look kind of ridiculous, walking around with a kid’s plastic prop. But she’d survived middle school; she could survive some odd stares from the people of Pearson.

“Ready, Sergeant?” she asked, her voice coming out broad and earnest. She laughed at herself, wondering how much she must be sticking out her chest, both metaphorically and literally. As long as she didn’t look like Rob Liefeld’s Cap, she’d be fine.

“Sergeant?” Eastwood said, eyebrow raised. He had his trusty
Star Wars
blaster, his own lightsaber (green to Ree’s blue), and a set of bagged-and-boarded comics stuffed into the outer pocket of his well-worn (and bloodied, and muddied, and so on) trench coat. He wasn’t Hollywood’s vision of a hero, but he’d proven his grit more than often enough.

“Onward!” Ree pointed toward the door, reveling in the cheesiness of it all. Usually her Snarky Good inclinations ran counter to such uncomplicatedly earnest goody-two-shoes-ness, but it was fun to play the part, live a little while in a world that wasn’t so many shades of gray all the time.

Eastwood opened the door, and they went on the hunt.

Chapter Eight

Sk8er Girl vs. G33k Girl

The pair started with a quick whiz around the neighborhood but expanded their search, Ree very much aware of the ticking clock on her Geekomantic charge. If she didn’t use any power, it’d stay for a while, but if they were stomping around for thirty minutes with no contact, she’d need a re-up, which would leave them vulnerable.

“Any ideas of where to search next?” Ree asked.

“Skate park?”

“Good call.”

The Sandusky Park had been assembled between several skater clubs, teaming up with an Indiegogo to buy the abandoned lot and turn it into a skate park.

Some local grumpy gray-hairs and yuppie parents complained but seemingly only out of a sense of propriety. Several of the skater kids’ grandparents would hang out in the park, playing checkers on the tables at the edge.

The park had a half-dozen skaters spread around, rolling up, jumping off, and standing around on the various apparati. Most looked under twenty, with an older cluster in one corner, rotating through being filmed as they tried (and often failed at) complex tricks, earning scrapes and bruises at a rapid pace.

“Any sign?” Ree asked, scanning the park.

“Nope. Not that easy.”

Feeling bold and a half, she started toward the nearest group of skaters. “Let’s ask the locals. Maybe one of them has seen her.”

“Nice shield. You steal it from a kindergartner?” one of the skater kids asked, an African American girl with a Blink-182 shirt and red athletic shorts.

Ree’s natural inclination was to bite back with something like, “Yeah, I stole it from your room. No dust on it, though. Weird.” But what came out was “Very funny.”

Being square-jawed and forthright is kind of boring.

Eastwood stepped in, drawing attention. “Any of you seen a derby girl, around yay tall, muscled, wears metal elbow and knee gear?”

Half of the park was watching them now, the sounds of rubber wheels on concrete faded to just the far trio with their flip camera.

“Pretty simple question, folks,” Ree said.

“Take a hike, Comic-Con,” said another skater, a lanky kid with a splash of acne across his face as bad as Ree’d ever had as a teen. He was tall already but looked like he had more to grow, his hands and feet still a size too big for his body, like a puppy.

“Well, actually, I have seen someone who fits that description,” said a female voice from behind them.

Ree pivoted in place, her shoes scrunching on the concrete.

Behind them, ten paces back, a redhead in a coat. As she ditched the raincoat, her whole image shifted from a bland middle-aged white redhead to a thickly-muscled Middle Eastern woman, six feet tall with skates, and shimmering metallic armor in the form of skating gear, elbows and knees, a polished metal helmet with the blocker stretch-cap on the top.

Also, blades on the gloves and skates. Don’t forget the blades.

“That her?” Ree asked.

Eastwood sighed, reaching for his weapons.

“No ambush this time?” he asked.

“What do you think this is?” the Strega responded, hands open.

I really, really don’t want to look behind me, do I?
Ree asked herself, but she did anyway, not one to invite a sucker punch.

Back at the skate park, illusions wavered and dropped, revealing a ten-woman derby squad, from petite, lithe women to larger bruisers like the Strega, with a half-dozen between them, muscled women in their twenties through their fifties. Their aggregate stocking display could make a strip-mall witch blush, but all wore the black and red jerseys.

“You brought your team,” Ree said, embarrassed at how obvious her dialogue was coming out. Ol’ stars-and-stripes had a knack for stating the obvious. Next time, she was going with Brubaker Cap. He was subtler.

The Derby Strega grinned, showing a cracked incisor. “Yep. Name’s Connie Clothos-Line, and these are the Fighting Fates.”

“We seem to have forgotten the rest of our team back at home. Can I interest you in a rain check on the bout?” Eastwood asked.

“No chance. My sister should have punched your ticket months back, and I’m here to do what she couldn’t.” Connie pulled up a whistle and blew.

And we
’re off.

Ree had seen only a handful of derby matches, unless you counted
Whip It
. (She didn’t. Maybe if she were a Cinemancer.) But these women were all athletic and ranged from tiny and fast to three nearly as big as Connie—powerful women crackling knuckles as they took formation.

First things first—spool up her props. Ree focused on the shield, which became heavier, more solid, in her grip. She wound up and hurled the shield softball-style at Connie’s knee level, hoping to take the Strega off her feet. She bet that the prop would do what the real shield was supposed to do, as long as she hurled it right. She’d heard through the Geekomantic grapevine that Cap shields were useless, otherwise.

She hoped.

Jack and Joe were with her this time, and the shield hurled forward in proper fashion. Connie pushed off, skating to one side. Her hands contorted in a Ditko-fingers fashion reminiscent of Lucretia’s Hexomancy. In addition, the woman shouted, “Foul!”

The shield wobbled, glowing with energy the same green as Connie’s helmet, and then the prop went wide—way wide, bouncing off the ramp behind the Strega.

Hexomancy. Her least favorite thing. As long as the Strega could do the gestures and speak the curses, Hexomancers were nearly untouchable. You’d slip, fall, get a Charlie horse, or any of a hundred bits of bad luck, all adding up to a one-way ride on the failboat.

Ree ran forward at a diagonal, building up a buffer between her and the Strega. First step would be getting her shield back, second was to down Connie’s backup. Then she and Eastwood could double-team Connie. But where Lucretia was weak sauce in hand-to-hand combat, Connie looked like she could tank with the best of them.

Dozens of wheels made a solid droning on the concrete as the women moved forward in formations. At least it looked like the other Derby girls weren’t Hexomancers, too. Then they’d be properly fucked. Eastwood had his blaster out and was stunning the skaters left and right, until Connie called another foul, gesturing like a derby judge. Eastwood’s blaster slipped from his hands, dropping to the floor with a lifeless clunk.

“Go-se!”
Eastwood shouted, diving for the prop as the skaters closed in on him, throwing elbows.

A pair of derby girls closed in on Ree, but what they didn’t know was that she was filled with righteousness and the resulting super-strength. With Connie’s attention on Eastwood, Ree threw a roundhouse that picked one woman up off the ground, then punched the other one in the sternum, sending her sputtering to the ground. She’d automatically calibrated her super-strength for KO and not kill, which was a blessing.

Those two down, Ree dropped and slid down the skate park ramp, letting the buff coat take the abrasion. She came out running and bent down to pick up the shield when she heard another foul called, and instead of snatching the prop up with a slick smooth motion, her gait changed last second and she kicked the shield, sending it skipping across the concrete and slamming into the wrong side of a ramp.

Ree opened her mouth to say, “Screw you!” but all that came out was “Dangit!”

It took her another seemingly interminable thirty seconds or so to retrieve the shield. She was finally far enough out that Connie ignored her, leaving her to the four skaters bearing down on her, using ramps to gather speed.

Ree picked up the shield just as a thickset blocker leaned into a shoulder check. Ree planted a foot on the rear ramp out of the park and pushed on the shield.

Magic and body mechanics met mass and momentum, a not-quite-as-momentous immovable object versus irresistible force. The end result? A massive clang as the skater deflected off the shield. The derby blocker went out of control, taking a header into the ramp and cracking her helmet. Ree suppressed the sympathetic wince and took the initiative to drop into a crouch to trip the next skater behind the knees. The skater fell defensively, landing on her pads, but hard, thanks to the head of steam she’d built up.

Ree copied the skaters and built up speed, running up a ramp and jump-slamming into the next two, leading with the shield. She landed on the shield, which ate up the impact, Vibranium proving its awesomeness once again. But the shield wasn’t a high-end prop, and it would only be good for another couple of hits in all likelihood.

Looking back, she saw that none of the skaters were getting up, but all were still breathing. Just how she liked it.

Back around Connie, Eastwood was getting the full cartoon mob treatment, pinballing between beatings as he scrambled to recover a weapon, any weapon.

Skaters took turns buzzing him, throwing elbows as they passed by. And behind them, the other team members kicked the weapons away, separating the Geekomancer from his tools—blasters, lightsabers, playing cards, dice. The floor of the skate park was as messy as Grognard’s had been when Connie’s “sister” had trashed the place.

Eastwood wasn’t taking it lying down, for sure. He threw elbows and knees, getting in good shots here and there. But with Connie bearing down on him and being outnumbered six to one, he couldn’t hold his own without weapons.

“Get out of the park!” she shouted to Eastwood, who had gotten to his feet, a trio of smaller women closing in on him, probably regular jammers. Connie had her focus trained on Eastwood, so Ree had the time to get off a throw. Probably.

Ree chucked the shield at the trio, aiming high and hoping for one of Cap’s patented ricochet shots. Connie called out a warning, but it was too late.

The shield bounced off of one, two, and then three helmets, cracking the first two with Vibranium might.

But between the second and third helmet, the shield reverted to a plastic disk, and clattered off the third woman’s helmet with no effect.

Which meant it was time for another tool. The lightsaber was out, since she wasn’t going to turn the skate park into a bloody soup if she could avoid it. Eastwood’s lightsaber could do this weird thing where it only stunned, but hers was all or nothing.

The Captain America power would fade soon, but Ree’d earned black belts in Taekwondo and Hapkido before she thought of her Force FX lightsaber as anything other than a cool way to signal her geekdom and something to have fun waving around in the dark privacy of her own room.

Ree proceeded to jump-kick, roundhouse, and shoulder-toss her way through the derby team, stronger and faster than any of them, thanks to the magic. Or that was the plan.

But the plan didn’t account for Connie. The Strega’s Hexomantic curses thwarted Ree at nearly every step. Her jumps were too big or too small, her footing was terrible, and her shoelaces came undone.

And every time Ree went for Connie directly, she would trip, slip, or just end up running the other direction—she was like a super-magnet with the same charge as Ree, or they were like a lead pair of detectives in a buddy show who were not going to get together anytime soon.

Several of the women clearly had martial arts skills in addition to their derby chops, though a few got in lucky shots.

Too lucky. Strega cheater lucky.

Ree launched herself into a sliding sidekick that should have folded the woman in two, but she slipped on the concrete, catching herself in a safe fall that still burned all along her thigh, side, and forearm.

The Cap magic kept the impact from opening her leg or arm, but the theme music was dwindling fast.

Ree decided to expedite things, pulling out her phaser (which was set to stun by default). She’d been hoping to save it for Connie, but Eastwood didn’t have much more time. He was about as tenderized as hamburger meat, definitely the same shade of red-pink.

Dropping the closest two skaters, Ree rolled under the clothesline thrown by another of the thick blockers. She zapped the woman as she tried to turn, then jumped into a back-kick to clothesline a woman who’d come up behind Ree.

“Your team isn’t doing so hot, Connie,” Ree called out to the Strega, who was going one-on-one with Eastwood.

Four on one, really, as a trio of skaters kicked and punched at Eastwood’s flanks.

As Eastwood swung his holdout knife, trying to keep the other women off him, Connie caught him across the jaw with a shredder-claw-enhanced cross.

“Shnikes!” Ree said, getting a bit tired of Cap’s filter. But the power was fading, the patriotic brass distant in her mind.

Ree unloaded a burst of stunning phaserocity into Connie, who turned the ray aside on her reflective armor, sending the beam up and into the clouds.

Nice armor
, Ree said to herself. Chances were, that’d apply to the lightsaber as well. So instead, she pulled out her butterfly knife. She could do a lot of damage with a knife without killing, though she wouldn’t get nearly the reach advantage.

Connie made another Ditko-as-referee gesture and called, “Foreign object!” and Ree’s knife slipped right out of her hands in the middle of her figure-eight opening.

Well, that’s that.
It was time for some good old-fashioned infighting.

And that meant infighting. And clearing out the rest of the team. Two more derby girls advanced on Ree, and she used up the last of her Captain America mojo to thump one on the head and crescent-kick the other across the jaw, putting them both down. The music was gone, leaving Ree as only herself.

“If you swear off this hunt and GTFO now, with your team, this can all be over,” Ree said, hands open but ready.

“No can do, twiggy. Sacred duty and all. My sister calls, and I answer. Scruffy here isn’t part of the Plan anymore,” Connie said, rancor capitalizing the
P
quite effectively. While the Strega talked, Eastwood circled around, so that he and Ree were flanking the woman.

“You sure?” she asked. “Your team looks like they could stand a week of recovery time, so now it’s two on one, with no refs to save your bacon. Discretion, valor, all that crap.”