Velveteen vs. The Multiverse Read online

  The unit she’d taken on Alternate Reality Survival so damn many years ago told her that every alternate reality was like this; they all wanted to be treated as the real timeline, the real universe. Velma looked into Aaron’s eyes, and realized there was one thing the unit hadn’t done anything to prepare her for, not really:

  She didn’t give a damn whether this was the real timeline or not. “I guess it’s a good thing that all my lives involve you, huh?” she asked, and got onto her knees so that she could crawl over to his side of the bed. Aaron grinned up at her, relief evident in his expression. And for the first time in so long that it hurt, Vel leaned down and kissed him.

  “How’s that sense of reality?” asked Action Dude as they walked down to the hall toward the briefing room for morning call. He was wearing his standard field uniform, and this early in the morning, it was almost bright enough to hurt her eyes.

  Not that her own costume was all that much better. It was still burgundy and brown—thank God; she didn’t know how she would have handled finding out that she was now the kind of heroine who ran around dressed in neon, or worse, pink—but it was a lot skimpier than she remembered, with a high-cut leotard over tights replacing her old unitard and an inexplicable oval cutout running down the length of her back. At least her headband and domino mask were the same as always. She wasn’t sure what she would have done if they’d changed.

  “Shaky, but I can fake it,” she said. “I don’t want to go to Medical.”

  “Good. With as much time as you’ve spent with them since you got shot, I’m not sure my heart could take it.” Action Dude gave her hand a squeeze. “We’ll go over things once we finish checking in. In the meanwhile, just smile and nod.”

  More and more, it was starting to feel like she’d never left The Super Patriots, Inc. “I’m good at smiling and nodding,” she said.

  Aaron smiled. “I know you are,” he said, and led her inside.

  The rest of The Super Patriots, West Coast Division were already seated, waiting to begin. Uncertainty was looking up at the ceiling, his eyes mostly focused, for values of “focused” that included “clearly looking at something that wasn’t in the room.” Imagineer was gazing moonily at Mechamation, who was gazing with equal mooniness at the conference phone. Jack O’Lope was cleaning one of his guns, while Firefly played tic-tac-toe with herself in a grid of light that she’d drawn in the air.

  “Where’s—” Velveteen began, and caught herself before she could finish the sentence, changing it in the middle to, “—Marketing? I thought we were supposed to be getting started.” Inwardly, she finished her original question: Where’s Sparkle Bright? She should be here. This is morning call. She’s never missed a morning call. Oh, God. What if her still being part of the team somehow meant that Yelena was dead? Stranger things have happened in the multiverse. Velveteen realized that she was shaking. She tightened her grip on Action Dude’s hand.

  “I was waiting for you to assemble,” said a voice behind her. Action Dude all but dragged her to the table. As they turned to sit she saw the man from Marketing, impeccably groomed (they always were) and looking far too awake for this hour of the morning, standing in the doorway. “Welcome, Super Patriots. What is your goal today?”

  “To preserve and protect the American Way,” chorused the gathering heroes, even Uncertainty, who was still staring at nothing. Old habits died hard: Velveteen answered with the rest of them.

  “How will you do that?”

  “By using our powers to their full potential to defend the citizens of the planet Earth against all threats that might rise to harm them.” It was actually a little comforting to recite the old mantra with so many other voices. Like coming home.

  The call-and-response went on for quite a while. Velveteen couldn’t shake the feeling that the man from Marketing was watching her with a special degree of intensity, like he was waiting for her to slip up. She didn’t. Not once. Her timeline had used the same series of questions and answers to open their meetings, and there were some things you never forgot, no matter how hard you tried. Some things sank all the way down to the bone.

  Once the preliminaries were over, the man from Marketing got straight to business, presenting a rapid-fire list of sales numbers, upcoming events, and suggestions for improvements. Velveteen let herself glaze out after he got started. She smiled and nodded every time he looked at her, and that seemed to do what she wanted it to; he didn’t look any less suspicious, but he didn’t look any more suspicious, either.

  After half an hour, he encouraged them to “Go out and do good!” before calling the meeting over. Pieces of paper with everyone’s patrol assignments had discreetly appeared on a small table next to the door. Velveteen grabbed one as she followed Action Dude out of the room, and was pleased to see that they were supposed to go on patrol together. It made sense, since he could fly and she couldn’t, but it was still nice. The last thing she wanted at the moment was to go out on the streets alone.

  If the Marketing Department was still up to their old tricks, the bedroom was almost certainly bugged. So Velveteen didn’t say anything until they were both in their patrol uniforms (Aaron with a slightly shorter cape, her with slightly sturdier high heels on her boots, and didn’t that say something about the gender of the people doing their costume designs) and on their way to midtown. Action Dude flew with her cradled in his arms like a starlet from a 1950s monster movie, a sort of casual helplessness that could only be achieved through remarkable core strength on the part of the woman being carried.

  (That was something else about this timeline. Apparently, never leaving The Super Patriots, West Coast Division meant living a largely carb-free lifestyle. She’d never been exactly heavy, but she remembered carrying a few extra pounds, thanks to lots and lots of fast food and truck stop dinners. Now she felt like she could crush walnuts with her abdominal muscles. It was a bizarre sensation, although it definitely made wearing the spandex a lot easier on her nerves.)

  Once they were far enough from the building that they probably weren’t being monitored, Velveteen cleared her throat, leaned in close so that Aaron would be able to hear her above the wind, and asked, “Where’s Sparks? Why wasn’t she there today?”

  Action Dude nearly dropped her.

  Several minutes later—after a quick recovery and a lot of apologizing—the two of them were standing on a nearby rooftop, Velveteen adjusting her headband and staring fixedly at her husband (exboyfriend) as she waited for him to answer her question.

  Finally, slowly, Action Dude said, “Vel…in the timeline you think that you…in the timeline you remember right now, what happened to Yelena?”

  Well, Aaron, after I found out that you’d been cheating on me with her, she kicked my ass in the locker room, and I quit the team. You’re currently engaged to her. You’re co-leaders of the team. I probably won’t be invited to the wedding. Velveteen swallowed her words, instead saying, carefully, “She’s still with the team. I’m not.”

  Oddly enough, Action Dude looked relieved. “So you’re not super-close anymore. You don’t, like, spend afternoons drinking coffee and talking about combat tactics.”

  “No. We haven’t done that sort of thing in years.”

  “Good. That makes this a little easier.” Action Dude took a deep breath. “Sparkle Bright’s a supervillain, Vel. She quit the team right after her eighteenth birthday. We’ve been trying to track her ever since.”

  For the moment, Vel chose to ignore the Marketing-endorsed branding of any superhuman who quit the team as a supervillain and focused on the important part: “She’s alive?”

  “She was as of last year, when she stopped Marketing from bringing home a nine-year-old metamorph. Don’t worry,” he added, before she could show alarm. “The kid’s fine. Said Sparks just wanted to talk to him about his ‘options.’ The bad guys are recruiting younger and younger these days.”

  Or maybe Yelena just remembered what it was like to be sold by the people you trust
ed into a future that you weren’t prepared for. “I’m glad the kid’s okay,” she said. “Thanks for telling me. I didn’t want to ask during morning call.”

  “That was a good call. Marketing’s been nervous since you got zapped.” Action Dude glanced over his shoulder, and for the first time, Vel realized that he was nervous. “Honey, you gotta try to come back to me, okay? We can call for help if you really think we need it. White Rabbit or somebody, one of the time manipulators. Maybe they’d be able to get you stable.”

  “Maybe Jackie could help,” said Vel, carefully. “She can borrow her mother’s magic mirror sometimes. That might let her look into my heart and see if there’s something lodged there.”

  Action Dude hesitated before saying, “That might not be the best idea. We’re not on such good terms with Santa’s Village right now.”

  Velveteen blinked. “We’re not on good terms with Santa?” she said, disbelieving. “But he’s…he’s Santa. Everybody who isn’t on the Naughty list is on good terms with Santa. And Jackie’s the one who taught us both how to ice skate.”

  “Well, sure. But Marketing says it sends a bad message if we associate with them.”

  For a long moment, Velveteen just stared at him. Then, slowly, she said, “Santa refused to take Yelena off the Nice list, didn’t he?”

  Action Dude nodded.

  “Okay.” Velveteen shook her head. “Okay. Come on. Let’s get back on our patrol.”

  Expression utterly relieved, Action Dude spread his arms and let Velveteen hop back into then, curling herself against his chest. He launched them both into the air and soared across the city without saying another word, and if he noticed the thoughtful expression on her face, he was smart enough not to say anything about it. She was just living out a timeline that never happened, that was all. She’d get over it soon. She’d come back to him, and everything would be just the way that it was supposed to be.

  His Vel always came back to him.

  Patrol was reasonably uneventful: they foiled a mugging, helped a little old lady cross the street, and eventually joined up with Jack O’Lope and Imagineer to defeat Cinemaniac, who was trying to bring the stars of a midnight B-movie festival to life. There was something deeply soothing about using Slinky dogs and teddy bears to bring down Godzilla, and Velveteen was almost willing to forget about the absence of Sparkle Bright by the time they made it back to headquarters. No one had been seriously injured, although they’d all been battered enough to make for some exciting pictures. Even without recent Marketing refreshers, Velveteen found it second nature to pose for the photographers who swarmed the aftermath. Some of those shots would probably make the front page of the local paper.

  Afterward, she ate a quiet dinner with Aaron, just the two of them in the dining room attached to their quarters. They didn’t talk much, and they didn’t need to. She hadn’t been with Aaron in her real timeline (if that was the real timeline; why was this one any less likely?) in years, and somehow, that didn’t matter, because he was the one, he was her first love and her last love and what were a few years in the face of that?

  “What’s on the deck for tomorrow?” she asked, over dessert (lavender lemon sorbet, low in calories but high enough in flavor to make up for it).

  “We’re on backup, so it’s a training day,” said Aaron. “I think you have a meeting with Marketing to discuss seasonal costume options in the afternoon, and then we have the evening free, as long as no cosmic threats try to undermine the fabric of reality or anything.”

  “So business as usual,” Vel said.

  Aaron smiled, relief evident. “Exactly. Business as usual.”

  They left the dishes on the table. The Super Patriots cleaning service would clear them away in the middle of the night, leaving a fresh hot breakfast in their place—one of the many benefits of living where you worked, and working for a corporation powerful enough to buy and sell small countries. Then they went into the bedroom, and rubbed each other’s bruises, and yes, did more than that, once their clothes were scattered on the floor like leaves. Any guilt Velma might have felt was soothed by knowing that Aaron wasn’t really cheating on anyone; not really, not technically. She put thoughts of Tag firmly aside. He wasn’t here. Maybe he’d never been here. Maybe he was a creation of Dr. Darwin’s ray. And even if he wasn’t…

  Even if he wasn’t, she’d always known she didn’t love him. She loved Aaron, and Aaron was here, in front of her, looking at her the way he looked at her when they were both teenagers and thought that this was going to be their future. Once upon a time, this was the only future she could imagine. If she took a night to enjoy it, who could blame her?

  Aaron fell asleep with his arm wrapped loosely around her waist, looking totally at peace with the world. Velma waited until she was sure he wasn’t going to wake up, counting the slow rise and fall of his breathing. It was a soothing sound. Part of her just wanted to relax, to follow him into sleep, and admit that this was the better timeline. This was the place where she belonged.

  She couldn’t do that. Moving slowly, so as not to wake him, Velma slipped out from under Aaron’s arm. He didn’t stir. “I love you,” she whispered, and stood. It only took a moment to grab her night patrol costume out of the closet, and then she slipped out the door, and was gone.

  Sneaking out of The Super Patriots, West Coast Division headquarters was easier than Velveteen expected it to be, maybe because no one in their right mind would be sneaking out. It would be a lot harder to sneak back in. Hopefully, she could get Aaron to cover for her, the way they all used to cover for each other when they were kids…although it was mostly Yelena doing the covering in those days, wasn’t it? Yelena and her endless bolts of light. Sparkle Bright wasn’t a supervillain. It just wasn’t possible. Something else was going on.

  Velveteen hopped rooftop to rooftop until she reached her destination: the roof of Technophilia, a nightclub for technological superhumans of all types. Everyone knew that heroes and villains alike frequented the place, and no one did anything about it, because a supervillain who was too drunk to stand wasn’t going to be robbing any banks, and a superhero who wanted to be left alone to play Halo wasn’t going to be righting any wrongs. Almost all the major power sets had bars like Technophilia’s. There was only one thing Technophilia had that none of the others did.

  Secure, entirely unmonitored, entirely untraceable phone lines.

  Velveteen showed her ID at the rooftop door, accepting her visitor’s pass (no powers, no team-ups, no pictures, half-off technological augmentation consultation on the third floor) and clipping it to the front of her costume. Then she descended into the club.

  The quantum pay phones were on the third floor. If Jackie wasn’t an ally, she probably wasn’t a good one to call, and so Velveteen dialed the next best number she could think of. The first ring was normal. The second ring sounded like birds singing a happy summertime melody. The third ring was birds singing a happy summertime melody. And then the phone was answered.

  “You’ve called the Crystal Glitter Unicorn Cloud Castle, you’re speaking to the Princess, what magical emergency can I resolve for you today?” The Princess sounded dead bored. That wasn’t unusual. After she’d been in her castle for more than three hours, she usually sounded dead bored. It was really a pity that her powers required her to stay there for six hours a day.

  “Princess, it’s Velveteen.”

  There was a long pause before the Princess said, sounding bewildered, “Velveteen who?”

  “Velveteen from The Super Patriots, West Coast Division.” There was a longer pause. Finally realizing that the Princess wasn’t going to fill it, Vel added, “I need your help.”

  “What would you need my help with, sugar?” The Princess’s natural Southern accent was suddenly stronger, a sure sign that she was on her guard. “I’m sure that team of yours can take care of anything your little heart desires.”

  “I’m sure they could, too, if they were actually my team. I’m from a
n alternate timeline, one where you and Jackie Frost from the North Pole are my best friends. I need to find Sparkle Bright. They’re telling me that she’s a supervillain, and I don’t believe it. I have to talk to her and find out what’s going on. If anybody knows where she is, it’s you.”

  “And so what if I did know?” There was a sudden edge to the Princess’s voice, although her accent didn’t soften. “Why would I believe that this wasn’t a trick? Poor girl’s been off the edge of their map for years. What makes you want to go looking for her now?”

  “I wasn’t in this timeline years ago. I woke up here this morning. If this is the real timeline and I’m just messed up in the head right now, you have my word that I won’t tell anyone else where to find her. But if this isn’t where I’m supposed to be…she’s the most glaringly obvious divergence point between here and home. Because in my timeline, she’s the co-leader of The Super Patriots, West Coast Division, and I’m the one they called a supervillain for quitting. That’s why we’re friends. You thought they’d treated me poorly, and so you came to make sure that I was okay. You brought a whole bunch of rabbits that first time, so I’d feel comfortable. They baked me a sour cream cake.” Velveteen stopped, and then added, “It tasted like charcoal, but it was the first time anyone had cared enough to try, and so I ate every bite.”

  “If this is a trick, you people have stooped lower than I ever thought you would,” said the Princess, in a hushed tone. “I just want you to know that. I thought better of you than this, and that’s saying something.”

  “Unless I’m being mind-controlled right now, this isn’t a trick. And if I am being mind-controlled, Sparks isn’t the only one who’s going to wind up being called a supervillain.”