Page 88 of Velveteen vs. The Consequences of Her Actions

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Yelena soared across the neighborhood, pressing a button on the side of her “watch” as she flew. Had anyone looked up at that moment, they would have been treated to the sight of her clothes dissolving, leaving her naked as a jaybird for a count of five before her costume unfurled from the micro-containment unit, slithering over her in a wash of oilslick blackness. The last thing to appear was the rainbow sash around her waist, and Yelena was no longer in the sky: Polychrome had taken her place.

“I lose more underwear that way,” muttered Polychrome, and flew on, following the faint, glittering trail of some unseen machine’s exhaust. She had to act quickly when she was tracking like this: her power set was all about light, after all, and didn’t give her any sort of supersmell or hearing that she could use to narrow in on her quarry. But if there was light, even the smallest particle, she could find it, and if she could find it, she could follow it.

In the distance, she heard the distinctive roar of a diesel engine turning over, followed by the triumphant yodel of her girlfriend. Victory Anna had never encountered a problem that she didn’t think could be solved by the blatant abuse of super science. What she cost them in stealth she generally repaid in massive quantities of property damage. She also had a tendency to hoist trunks of “extra goodies” onto the back of her latest flying machine. Last time Polychrome had looked, she’d been experimenting with grenades.

Whoever had decided to sneak in and snatch Velma while she was sleeping was going to be very, very sorry. And that assumed Polychrome and Victory Anna could crash the party before Vel woke up and summoned an army of theme park mascots to kick her erstwhile kidnapper’s ass. Vel might be a superhero, but she’d never finished the adult ethics classes, and unlike Polychrome—and by extension, Victory Anna—she lacked a code against killing.

The diesel roar grew closer, and there was Victory Anna, steering what looked like a heavily modified sleigh through the air with a set of wire-wrapped reins. Polychrome decided mentioning how much this made her look like she was planning to unseat Santa Claus would be a bad idea.

“According to my tracker, our dear Miss Vel is about a mile ahead of us,” called Victory Anna cheerfully. As usual, her “costume” was nothing more than a dialed-up version of her daily wear: she had added an exterior corset dripping with unnecessary gears, a top-hat that probably concealed some sort of laser, and a pair of thick goggles that didn’t have lasers, but did provide excellent eye protection. “Would you care for a ride?”

“Do you have trackers on all of us?” asked Polychrome, gladly abandoning her efforts to follow the fading light.

Victory Anna shrugged broadly. “Only the important ones. Yourself, of course. Jory, as her continued well-being is vital to the governor’s acceptance of our presence in her state. Vel, as essential to your well-being. And Jack, although my tracker has been unusually buggy of late. I shall have to invite her for tea and perform a diagnostic.”

“Not the Princess?” asked Polychrome, out of morbid curiosity.

“I’ve tried, twice,” said Victory Anna. “Both times, she returned the tracker to me via songbird post. The second time, it came with a large basket of apples. I think she was sending a message.”

“What message do you think that was, exactly?”

“My world has different fairy tales, so I’m sure I don’t know. But the apple fritters I made were delicious.”

Polychrome was silent for a long moment before she said, “I am buying you some Disney movies.”

Victory Anna’s laughter trailed behind them as they raced across the sky, following an unknown foe.

* * *

Velma woke up in full costume, which meant Velma didn’t wake up at all: Velveteen did. She blinked twice, adjusting to the shift in her reality, and tried to sit up. The straps that were holding her to the table kept that from happening. She blinked again before closing her eyes and reaching silently out, looking for anything that might answer her call. Nothing responded. No toys, no statues, no robots with conveniently humanoid faces. She was alone.

“Ah, my dear. Awake at last, I see.”

Or maybe not quite alone. Velveteen opened her eyes again, wishing she had a view of something other than the ceiling, and said, “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll let me go right now.”

“I realize you’ve always been on the heroic side of the equation, but releasing captive superheroes is rarely a way to get what one wants in this world, unless what one wants is a concussion.”

The voice was smooth, educated, urbane: the voice of a children’s science presenter, or a career lobbyist for the oil industry. Velveteen tried once more to sit up. Not because she wanted to know who was holding her captive—she knew that, had known from the moment he started speaking—but because she wanted to see him. To know what kind of horrible mad science construct he was about to use to peel her apart.

As threats went, Doctor Darwin had never been able to rank above a five on the one to ten Supervillain Assessment Scale. He was a remarkably skilled gadgeteer, capable of violating the laws of man and nature in the same breath. Mechanimation was better with robots, and Imagineer was better with microtech and medical work, but their power sets, though related, were not quite the same. Victory Anna came closest to matching him, although she generally preferred to focus her talents on building a bigger gun. (Bigger than what, exactly, had never been quite clarified.)

Doctor Darwin believed “survival of the fittest” was both a commandment and a clue to where humanity had gone wrong. If he could just reverse the course of evolution, he argued, he could remake the world in his own, better image. No more evolutionary dead ends. No more incomprehensible biology. No more Pittsburgh.

(The reason for his oft-repeated dislike of Pittsburgh was likewise unknown. He lived on the West Coast. It would have made more sense for him to have a grudge against, say, Vancouver. Logic and supervillainy had never been the very best of friends.)

“I was asleep,” said Velveteen peevishly. “I was asleep in civilian clothes. Did you dress me? I swear to God, if you were looking at me while I was naked and touching me with your creepy technomancer hands⁠—”

“I am not a technomancer,” objected Doctor Darwin. “I am a man of science.”

“I sort of feel like, if anyone’s going to be offended here, it should probably be me, since again, I was wearing one thing and now I’m wearing something else and kidnapping people and changing their clothes is deeply creepy and totally inappropriate.” Velveteen strained against her bonds. “Let me go and I’ll just punch you a little before I call the authorities. No broken bones or anything.”

“Delightful an offer as that is, I’m afraid I must decline. You see, my dear, you represent a unique resource, and if I’m to take proper advantage of it, I need more time with you than a simple brawl would allow. We’re going to be good friends, you and I.”

Velveteen wrinkled her nose. “You are really not making this less creepy. You know that, right? If there’s a supervillain seminar on how to talk to female heroes without making us want to shower, you might want to go ahead and sign up.”

“Your poor opinion of me stings, but it will not matter in the better world to come. If a version of you exists there, she will be more understanding of the needs of the scientific mind.”