Velveteen vs. The Junior Super Patriots Read online

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  VELVETEEN VS. THE JUNIOR SUPER PATRIOTS

  Copyright © 2012 Seanan McGuire. All Rights Reserved.

  Cover Art Copyright © 2012 Dave Dorman.

  “Velveteen vs. The Introduction” Copyright © 2012 Jim C. Hines

  “I ♥ Superheroes” Copyright © 2012 Carrie Vaughn

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written consent from both the authors and copyright holder, except by a reviewer who may want to quote brief passages in review.

  Published by ISFiC Press

  707 Sapling Lane

  Deerfield, Illinois 60015

  www.isficpress.com

  Series Editor: Steven H Silver

  ISFiC Press Logo Design:

  Todd Cameron Hamilton

  Book Design by Robert T. Garcia / Garcia Publishing Services

  919 Tappan Street, Woodstock, Illinois 60098

  www.gpsdesign.net

  First Edition

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  ISBNs: 0-9857989-1-2

  978-0-9857989-1-8

  e-book ISBN: 978-0-9857989-4-9

  mobi ISBN: 978-0-9857989-5-6

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  by Thomson-Shore, 7300 West Joy Road, Dexter, Michigan 48130-9701

  www.tshore.com

  For Emma, Amethyst, Illyana, Kitty, and Sue,

  who taught me that girls and comics were

  the perfect combination.

  TABLE oF CONTENTS

  Velveteen vs. The Introduction, by Jim C. Hines

  Velveteen vs. The Isley Crawfish Festival

  Velveteen vs. The Midnight Coffee Society

  Velveteen vs. The Flashback Sequence

  Velveteen vs. The Old Flame

  Velveteen vs. The Junior Super Patriots, West Coast Division

  Velveteen vs. The Eternal Halloween

  Velveteen vs. The Ordinary Day

  Velveteen vs. Patrol

  Velveteen vs. The Blind Date

  I ♥ Superheroes, by Carrie Vaughn

  Appendix A: Velveteen and Allies

  Appendix B: Team Rosters

  VELVETEEN

  vs.

  The Introduction

  by Jim C. Hines

  IF SEANAN MCGUIRE WERE A superhero, her power would be—

  Oh, who am I kidding? You and I both know Seanan would be a supervillain. She’d wear a sparkling tiara and a glittering orange and black costume (complete with machete and a builtin battery pack for the chainsaw attachment). She’d laugh from her secret virology laboratory as she manipulated a hundred strains of beautiful, microscopic, viral doom. Naturally, her home would be guarded by giant genetically enhanced mantis shrimp in a dazzling rainbow of colors. And also velociraptors. And maybe a zombie or two.

  On the bright side, when she destroys the Earth, you can bet it will be both exciting and so much more than you were expecting. Much like the Velveteen stories.

  The first time I started reading “Velveteen vs. The Isley Crawfish Festival,” I smiled and settled back for a fun, fluffy tale. I enjoy Seanan’s sense of humor, and she did not disappoint me. But Seanan is a devious one, and in the tradition of authors throughout history, she used that sense of fun and whimsy to do something far more powerful.

  She told the truth.

  Not about the existence of an ex-superhero who can bring stuffed animals to life and control them like her own unstoppable army, of course. But about the world around that superhero. About our world. About evil and villainy. Not just red-clawed supervillains, but the much more mundane and human variety.

  Enter The Super Patriots, Inc., the organization behind the heroes. If you think their marketing division is implausible, think about any pre-teen Hollywood star. Think about child labor laws, which have existed for less than a century in the United States. Think about the many places where such laws still don’t exist, or are ignored for the sake of convenience and profit.

  Seanan McGuire thought about those things. She thought about power and the people who manipulate that power from the shadows. She thought about what would happen to the youngest superheroes, so powerful and yet so vulnerable. And then she created Velma “Velveteen” Martinez, the girl who brought toys to life. The girl who saw the truth behind the glitz and the glamor. The girl who grew up and walked away, choosing a civilian life over the superhero lifestyle.

  The truth is that supervillains are easy. When Lex Luthor launches a nuke at the San Andreas Fault, planning to dump the California coast into the ocean, it’s pretty obvious who the bad guy is. And we all know the Boy Scout in red and blue tights will swoop out of the sky to save the day. In real life, evil is rarely so straightforward. Bad guys don’t come with their own minor-key soundtrack. It can come from those people you’ve been taught to trust. It can come from children too young to question what they’ve been told. It can come from an old boyfriend whose biggest flaw was that he wasn’t strong enough to follow you.

  And occasionally it comes from coffee-worshipping cultists. Because sometimes the world is just that ridiculous.

  Velveteen is a very human hero. She drives a crappy car. She struggles to cover her expenses and takes minimum wage jobs to get by. She struggles with her feelings for her ex. Her powers help her to fight a variety of super-nasties, but it’s her humanity that gives her power over her mundane foes. Her stubbornness, her determination, and her friendships.

  Somehow, Seanan takes all of this insight, all of this truth, and wraps it in a big old crinkly ball of pure, shiny fun. Much like her music, which is both delightful and powerful. Or her blog, which combines quirky humor and powerful emotion. Or her artwork, or her novels, or—

  You know, maybe that’s her real superpower. I’ve often envied Seanan for her ability to do so much, so well. I wondered if she had super-speed, or could create energy-based multiples of herself. Maybe she had her own personal TARDIS or a time-traveling DeLorean. But having read this collection, along with much of her other work, I think I’m finally starting to understand her true power: unreserved honesty.

  Seanan McGuire gives herself to every story, every song, every sketch she creates. Velveteen’s fears and pain are McGuire’s own. Genetically mutated lobster-hero? An out-of-work woman who can turn your stuffed Snoopy into a vicious attack beagle? Yeah, those are pure Seanan McGuire too. Whatever the words or the medium, the emotions she puts into her art are genuine and true.

  Like your favorite teddy bear, these stories are much more than mere fluff. Sure, they’re fun and comforting, but their snuggly surface masks their power. Read on to unmask that power as they come to life, show us some truths about our world, and punch evil right in the metaphorical giblets.

  For Justice!

  VELVETEEN

  vs.

  The Isley Crawfish Festival

  IT WAS A BEAUTIFUL SEPTEMBER afternoon in the sleepy little town
of Isley, California (population 840, on a good day, when no one had decided to drive up to Sacramento for some big city thrills). The sun was shining, the birds were singing, and best of all, the crawfish were practically crawling out of the river all by themselves

  All the fishermen had to do was scoop them up.

  Naturally, the locals were ecstatic. Islay’s one real claim to fame—a claim made often and loudly, since there wasn’t much else to talk about—was their annual Crawfish Festival. Four days of fun, frolic, festivities, and, of course, food. Any kind of food you could imagine. . . as long as your imagination was fond of putting crawfish in everything.

  Crawfish stew. Crawfish casserole. Pasta with sautéed crawfish and crawfish sauce. Deep-fried battered crawfish on a stick. Crawfish pie. Crawfish salad. Vegetarian crawfish sculpted from tofu and cunningly painted with food coloring to mimic the real thing. Crawfish ice cream (not for the weak of stomach or the faint of heart).

  And, of course, the festival’s crowning glory: the steam tables, where fat river crawfish were steamed to a bright, celebratory red, tossed into bushel-baskets full of steamed corn and potatoes and zucchini, and dished up by the pound, filling the bellies of every hungry tourist between Sacramento and San Francisco.

  The annual Crawfish Festival had been happening in the town of Isley for over a hundred and sixty years, ever since the day when one of their founding fathers realized they needed to do something if they wanted to keep themselves from becoming just another ghost town on the river road between Vallejo and Sacramento. Since they didn’t have a citrus crop and six other towns in the area already had artichoke celebrations of one stripe or another, they needed to find a gimmick no one else had thought of. Something new. Something different.

  And then Michael Donnelly, who was the closest thing they had to a village idiot, fell into the river and came up with half a dozen crawfish in his pockets. In that moment, and in the screaming of a half-witted man being pinched in the most sensitive of places, a tradition was born.

  It was a tradition that certain lurking figures had come to Isley intent on bringing to a fast and, most of all, final end.

  *

  The life of a professional superheroine (or, if you want to be politically correct, “super-powered member of the civil service”) involves a lot of complications that nobody outside the business ever really thinks about. Giving up carbs, for example, because the sexist assholes in Marketing continue to insist that the only properly heroic attire for a female protector of the people is based primarily on spandex. A sensible haircut that requires a minimum amount of maintenance and can still look good even after a hand-to-hand battle on the back of a moving Cessna. Lipstick that needs to be removed with turpentine and probably comes with an increased risk of cancer, but doesn’t smear and always looks good in the photos.

  All these reasons and more played heavily in Velma Martinez’s decision not to become a professional superheroine. Anyway, the dental plan was lousy, retirement was non-existent, and the paparazzi were flat-out diabolical. After spending seven years as part of The Super Patriots, Inc.’s stable of child heroes, Velma had been happy to walk away, quietly hanging up her tights and her rabbit-eared headband as she slipped into obscurity. The identities of child superheroes were protected under federal law, and she’d never been flashy enough, or wacky enough, or even—as honesty demanded she admit—pretty enough for anyone to bother tracking her down.

  When they wrote the inevitable history of The Junior Super Patriots, West Coast Division, she doubted that “Velveteen,” known in her civilian life as Velma Martinez, would rate so much as a footnote. That was a-okay with her. Been there, lived that life, worn that spandex, and moved on.

  All she had to do was keep telling herself that. Every morning, for the rest of her life.

  Not that “moved on” was looking all that much better than supervillains and spandex just at the moment. Velma pulled her car to a stop in the lot in front of the Isley General Store, unfolding her road map of Northern California and subjecting it to the latest in a succession of baleful glares. The map did not respond by helpfully restructuring itself. The map didn’t respond by doing anything of any use at all. Finally, with a deep and irritated sigh, she crumpled it into a ball, tossed it onto the passenger seat, and clambered out of the car.

  There was a painting of a cheerful cartoon crawfish in the store window, accompanied by a sign proclaiming “Isley Crawfish Festival—Fishin’, Food, and Family Fun!” In Velma’s admittedly limited experience, “family fun” usually meant “Mama cries herself to sleep after Daddy passes out drunk, and Velma and the teddy bears clean the whole place before morning.” Not exactly what you’d call “fabulously functional.” More like “fantastically fucked-up.” And then Velma got too tired to control her powers during a class field trip to the museum, and things got even worse, fucked-up times fifty.

  It turns out the management of The Super Patriots, Inc. will pay a lot for legal guardianship of budding superheroes, especially ones as easy to market and family-friendly as Velma. It also turned out that Velma’s family had never been as attached to her as she thought they were. One little accident and she’d suddenly found herself a ward of the company, wearing a costume designed by Marketing and standing on a stage in front of what seemed like millions of people, trying not to vomit.

  Fucked-up times five thousand.

  Velma shook herself, shrugging off the memories of those bitter, by-gone days, and stepped into the Arctic, air-conditioned chill of the Isley General Store.

  *

  “Well? Have you seen The Great Injustice?”

  Clattering, clacking, and the sound of hundreds upon hundreds of tiny, hard-shelled legs tapping against the riverbank gravel.

  “Have you seen The Terrible Mockery?”

  More clacking, angry now, as if hundreds of serrated claws were snapping open and closed in mute and passionate fury.

  “Have you seen The Horrific Preparations?”

  The clacking rose in volume, seeming almost to echo off the peaceful shores of the Sacramento River. Any innocent river-rat who’d happened to wander along at that moment would almost certainly have sworn off all controlled substances, from marijuana to caffeine, just to make sure they’d never see a scene like that again. The normally pebble-gray banks of the river were red and brown with the bodies of hundreds of crawfish, all waving their claws in obvious rage. If they’d had tiny pitchforks and tiny torches, they would have looked prepared to storm a tiny castle.

  At the center of their crustacean congress stood a tall, almost regal figure with his hands folded out of sight behind his back, his pointed chin jutting forward to present his finely-pointed black goatee to his appreciative audience. He cut a striking figure. Almost striking enough to overcome the fact that nobody really looks all that menacing when they’re wearing a giant lobster suit.

  Almost. Not quite.

  “My brethren and. . . sistren. . . tonight we bring the horror that is the Isley Crawfish Festival to an end! Tonight we march upon the biped bastards, and we teach them the true might of the crustacean empire! Tonight, we strike with all the speed and fury of a claw closing around its intended prey!” The clacking and clattering of the crawfish was becoming deafening. A manic grin splitting his face, the man in the lobster suit raised the enormous claws that had replaced his hands, and shouted, “TONIGHT WE TEACH THEM THE TERRIBLE PRICE OF BUTTER SAUCE! TONIGHT, MY BRETHREN AND SISTREN, TONIGHT THEY FACE—THE CLAW!!!”

  Evil laughter and the clacking of crawfish claws echoed out across the Sacramento River, scaring several ducks, a stray cat, and a large bullfrog that had just been minding its own business.

  The hour for crustacean vengeance was drawing nigh.

  *

  “Look,” said Velma for what felt like the ninety-first time, schooling her tone to one of calm friendliness. No, sir, no anger management issues here. No irrational desire to take unhelpful clerks and pitch them into the river here. No-si
ree-Bob. “I just need to know how to get from here to Portland. I’m supposed to be at a job interview tomorrow, and if I don’t get back on the road soon, I’m not going to have time to get a good night’s sleep.” With the state of her résumé, she needed all the help that she could get.

  “Well, missy, I don’t rightly know how you ended up in Isley—”

  Neither do I, Velma thought spitefully.

  “—but you’ve picked the right night to fetch up! Why, this is the opening night of our world-famous Crawfish Festival, and you wouldn’t want to miss a party like that one, would you? Pretty little thing like you, you’d be the belle of our ball!”

  “Heh,” said Velma, fighting back the urge to punch the old geezer square in the dentures. “It’s tempting, but—”

  “An’ of course, if you come to the Festival, you can talk to the Chief of Police about getting your car back. Why, he’d probably be happy to. . .”

  Velma was already accelerating toward the door at a speed that would have seriously impressed the speedsters back in The Junior Super Patriots, West Coast Division, most of whom had never seen her move at anything faster than an irritated trot. The clerk shook his head as the door slammed shut behind her, setting the bell jingling madly.

  “Now there’s a girl in painful need of some crawfish fritters,” he opined, to his empty store.

  *

  Despite arriving on the scene while her car was still in the process of being hooked to the tow truck, Velma had had no luck whatsoever in convincing the Chief of Police that he should just give it back to her. Finally—and disturbingly—he’d agreed to let her off without a ticket and return her car without impound fees . . . if she was willing to wait until after the Crawfish Festival. The town’s passion for their little party bordered on pathological, and would have been starting to unnerve her even if it hadn’t taken away her car. Still, no car, no Portland; no Portland, no job interview; no job interview, no gainful employment, and another damn year of temp jobs and excuses. She was tired of temp jobs and excuses, especially since failure to pay her annual bribes to the parents was way too likely to result in the “accidental” revelation of her former line of work to six or seven of the finest reporters the tabloids had to offer.