Velveteen vs. The Multiverse Read online

  They talked for a while longer, finally exchanging goodnights and going to their separate beds. Velma slept almost immediately, comforted by thoughts of justice and team-ups that never had to end. Tad took longer to fall asleep. He kept seeing that robot’s hand coming down…

  And then there was darkness.

  VELVETEEN

  vs.

  The Fright Night Sorority House Massacre Sleepover Camp

  “WHAT THE—” LOUD CRASHING SOUNDS from the kitchen obscured whatever the Princess said next, although judging by the movements of her mouth, it wasn’t anything Grated or appropriate for children. Velveteen had to admire the pinpoint timing of the racket, even though she knew it was probably just going to make the Princess angrier. Anger wasn’t the problem. They kept running, and the noise stopped as the Princess continued, “—is going on here? This doesn’t make any fairy-fucking sense!”

  “What doesn’t make sense is how the universe bleeps out normal cuss words, but lets you say ‘fairy-fucking,’” said Jackie.

  “Less snarking, more running!” snapped Velveteen, taking her own advice and shutting up as she high-tailed it for the stairs. The others followed, trusting Velveteen’s unerring sense of self-preservation to get them at least moderately out of harm’s way while they regrouped and figured out what to do next. Apart from “survive.” That, more than anything else, was turning into the goal of the evening…which might have been why that, more than anything else, seemed increasingly impossible.

  Three minutes later, the four of them were wedged into the space beneath the stairs, mostly blocked from casual view by a coat rack laden with leather jackets straight out of the 1950s, denim jackets straight out of the 1980s, and blood-stained lab coats that needed no era to define them. The Princess was down on her hands and knees, whispering into a mouse hole, while Victory Anna sat next to her, trying to pry the cover off a Speak-and-Spell. She was cursing softly but steadily under her breath in a mixture of Latin and English, and what little Vel could understand made her glad that she didn’t know what any of the Latin actually meant.

  Jackie, meanwhile, was keeping a wary eye on the thin sliver of hallway that could be seen through the coats. Voice pitched very low, she said, “This is almost as bad as it is stupid. You realize that, right?”

  “We’re trapped in a supernatural sorority house that’s been in the middle of its own private horror movie since the early 1950s at the absolute minimum, our powers aren’t reliable, I don’t know how we got here or where everyone else is, or even who everyone else is, and the architecture appears to be a collaboration between M.C. Escher and the guy who did the set design for Labyrinth,” snapped Velveteen. “Yeah, I get that this is bad.”

  “You left off the part where we’re in our unmentionables,” said Victory Anna, not looking up from her pilfered toy. “Really, that’s the part that cuts most dearly. You’re all nice girls, I’m sure—”

  Jackie snorted.

  “—but I’d rather not display my entire treasury to casual lookieloos,” concluded Victory Anna, ignoring her.

  Jackie turned to Velveteen, one white eyebrow raised in silent question.

  Velveteen shrugged. “She has a point,” she said. “Love you lots, not so sure I needed you to see me in my underwear.” She paused. “On the other hand, this isn’t my underwear, so I guess ‘not so sure I needed you to see me in fan service mode’ would be more accurate.”

  “Thank Disney this place ain’t wired for broadcast,” said the Princess, causing the other three to look around uneasily.

  “Great,” muttered Vel. “Because I wasn’t uncomfortable enough.”

  Somehow, whatever mechanism had dumped them in their current situation—a mechanism which, Vel was pretty sure, was going to get punched in whatever it had that was most like a face, when or if they finally figured out what it was—had also changed their clothes. Mid-transition costume changes weren’t unheard of in the superhero world, but they usually involved a transition between “street clothes” and “costume,” generally right before you got dropped into a pandimensional gladiatorial tournament of some sort. Sometimes the costume in question would be a new variation on the norm, like Halloween with its tatters and rags, or Christmas with its fur trim and velvet. Going by that logic, and considering that they were all relatively attractive females, their current “costumes” made perfect sense.

  But that didn’t mean they had to like it.

  Jackie, whose normal costume was revealing enough to disqualify her from the Olympics (even if they’d been willing to let her compete, what with the whole “the North Pole isn’t a country” thing), was wearing white boy shorts and a white lace bra, both of which were patterned with small silver snowflakes and stood out starkly against the blue of her skin. Privately, Velveteen thought she looked like an illconceived modernization of Smurfette. Not that she was feeling suicidal enough to say it, even if Jackie’s ice powers had been increasingly erratic since they arrived in the house, lingerie and all. Victory Anna was wearing frilly bloomers, thigh-high striped stockings, and a brown canvas corset with gears embroidered all over it. Both of them were barefoot. Velveteen herself had found her costume replaced by a brown lace teddy that seemed to have been modeled on something from the early Playboy club, including the white cotton rabbit’s tail and wire-supported bunny ears. At least she’d managed to ditch the high heels after the third time she nearly twisted her ankle.

  “What I don’t understand,” said Victory Anna, as she finally managed to remove the back of the Speak-and-Spell, “is why she gets to remain decently covered.” She gestured toward the Princess.

  The Princess, who hadn’t actually met Victory Anna before they were all thrust into this horror movie turned endless sight gag, looked away from her mouse hole to frown at the gadgeteer. “You’d rather the little girls of the world pictured me all nice and slutty?”

  Victory Anna raised her head and looked at the Princess blankly. “Haven’t the little girls of this world nightgowns of their own?”

  Sensing an impending throw-down, Velveteen quickly raised her hands and said, “Princess, Torrey originally came from a dimension without Disney, so she hasn’t really internalized what it means. Victory Anna, please keep working on that transmitter. If we can’t signal for help before midnight, we’re going to be in a world of trouble.”

  Now it was Velveteen’s turn to get the blank look from Victory Anna. “Whatever does midnight have to do with anything?”

  “…a dimension without Disney or horror movies,” muttered Vel. More loudly, she said, “Midnight is when it gets bad.”

  In the distance, to punctuate her statement, someone screamed.

  Superhuman abilities are generally divided, not only into power levels, but into categories, or “classes.” Physical powers, such as enhanced strength, enhanced reflexes, or rapid healing, are the most common, with most superhumans possessing one or more at a low level, even if they are a not a part of that individual’s primary power set. Transphysical powers—which is scientist for “Damned if we know how they work, but they’re tied to the body, so fuck it” —are also common. This class includes flight, metamorphosis both major and minor (from changing the color of your eyes to turning into an elephant), and manipulation of personal mass, a sub-class comprising growth, shrinking, and phasing through solid objects. The lists go on, with each class and sub-class containing a surprising number and variety of powers. Even the less common classes, such as the animus, contain their own sub-categories of powers. Some are unique. Some are theoretical. All, applied correctly, are dangerous.

  And of all the classes, from the physical to the transphysical to the psychic to the temporal, the most dangerous are the reality manipulators. The ones who change, not themselves, but the very nature of reality. They are distinct from transmuters and shapeshifters; while a transmuter can turn a turtle into a tree, the tree will once have been a turtle. While a shapeshifter can transform him or herself into another creature,
they will once have been themselves. Once a reality manipulator gets involved, that is no longer the case. They can wander the world leaving a trail of puzzled turtles behind them, rewriting the universe to suit their deepest desires…or their most transitory whims.

  It is rare for The Super Patriots, Inc. to recommend the depowering of a superhuman, stating that they do not want to establish a precedent via which a hard-working member of the superhuman community can be permanently punished for a temporary lapse of judgment. (As this sort of sentence is requested only in instances where non-superhumans have died due to either negligence or malice on the part of the accused, the general public is much more positively inclined toward depowering, despite the near-universal suicide rate among former superhumans.) This does not hold in the case of the reality manipulators. When someone can bend the fabric of the cosmos to suit their whims, they are too dangerous to be controlled. The only thing that stops them is depowering or, in extremely unusual cases, exile to a reality of their own creation. Generally, being completely at peace with their surroundings will stop the reality manipulators from exercising their powers.

  For a time.

  Reality manipulators are quite likely responsible for the nature of the world in which we live, where superheroes form corporations and holidays take on physical form. If that alone is not enough to convince you of the danger that they represent, may your inevitable death occur somewhere far, far away from anything we’d like to keep. Including the Earth.

  “What in Epona’s name is wrong with this place?” Victory Anna scowled at the guts of the Speak-and-Spell as if they had personally betrayed her. That seemed unlikely; they were spread out across her knees like a mechanical shawl, and weren’t in a position to go around betraying anyone.

  “What, honey, can’t you read the future in its entrails?” drawled the Princess, looking up from her mouse hole.

  “Of course not,” said Victory Anna, transferring her scowl to the other superheroine. “I’d need a pigeon and some gloves if I was going to do that

  “I don’t know what to say to that,” said Jackie.

  “Why the fuck am I always the one riding herd on the carnival of weirdoes?” muttered Velveteen. The hall was still empty. It wasn’t likely to stay that way, but still, she had to risk it. Cautiously, she turned. “Victory Anna, why are you cussing at the broken toy?”

  “Because it’s still bloody broken,” said Victory Anna, sounding utterly disgusted. “This thing isn’t broadcasting a signal, making me a cup of tea, or shooting out flesh-melting lasers.”

  “That’s, ah, an interesting range of possible functions,” said the Princess. She was using the careful tone of voice she usually reserved for speaking to small children with questionable bladder control when they approached her at her public appearances.

  “Tea is important,” said Victory Anna primly.

  “Oh, sweet Claus,” groaned Jackie. She dropped her head into her hands. A thin scrim of frost had formed on the wall where she’d been leaning. It melted as Velveteen watched, dissolving faster than it should have. Jackie’s ice wasn’t natural, and once it had condensed, it normally lasted. “We’re all going to die here.”

  “You don’t know that,” said Velveteen. “Maybe—”

  Her words were cut off by the sound of screaming. Every head in the small room rose, but it was Victory Anna who looked the most alarmed. Her eyes went very wide.

  With the feeling that she was standing at the edge of a dam that was on the verge of bursting, Velveteen scrambled to her knees, trying to position herself between Victory Anna and the hall. “Okay, I just need you to hang on a second before you run off. We don’t have weapons, we don’t have reliable powers, and—”

  “Get out of my way, you milk-sop gear-grinding horse-beater! That’s the woman I love!” She sprang to her feet more quickly than any of them would have thought possible for someone without super speed, barreling past Velveteen and down the hall before the last pieces of the Speak-and-Spell finished hitting the floor.

  Everyone blinked. Finally, the Princess said, “Maybe you ought to think about nudging her over to decaf tea.”

  “I think about it every day,” said Velveteen, scooting her way back into the open. “Come on. Let’s go keep my roommate from getting herself slaughtered.”

  “We still haven’t seen whoever brought us here…” said Jackie.

  Velveteen paused, looking at her like she’d just said something unbelievably idiotic. “I’m not worried about whoever brought us here,” she said. “Well, I am, but that’s just become a secondary concern. The woman who just screamed her head off was Sparkle Bright.”

  “…oh, crap,” said Jackie.

  “My thoughts exactly.”

  They got moving.

  Victory Anna ran down the hall without hesitation, her hands itching for the guns she didn’t have. Damn whoever brought them here, to this Epona-forsaken place, where nothing worked as it ought, and even the technology refused to come to heel as it normally did! Her compatriots had been distressed from the first, but after losing her home dimension—twice—Victory Anna had thought herself more difficult to frighten. And so she was, until those so-familiar screams began to emanate from the bowels of the cursed manse…

  Familiar to you, but not to her, came the thought, insidious as arsenic, unforgiving as an academic review. She only knows you as Velveteen’s cross-dimensional roommate, not her own star-crossed lover. What are you thinking? That if you save her, she’ll fall into your arms and make everything make sense again? You’re a fool, Victoria Cogsworth, and you’ll suffer for your foolishness before this night is over…

  She shoved the thought aside and kept running, scanning the walls for doorways, and for things that could be used as a weapon. If science had deserted her, she’d regress to barbarism, if that was what it took. Whether her Pol knew her or not, whether they were ever even to become friends in this strange new world, Victory Anna had been brought up to never leave a loved one in danger. Nothing in her lessons had told her to make exceptions for parallel universe versions of those loved ones. And so she ran.

  The sound of footsteps running along behind her was unnerving, but that was no matter: the screaming was in front of her, and that meant she was being chased, if not by allies, then likely by fellow victims. Somewhere up ahead in the dark, Polychrome screamed again. Victory Anna put on another burst of speed, preparing to fling herself around the nearest corner—

  —only to be hauled up short as the Princess, who had learned to sprint in high heels and was thus remarkably suited to running without them, grabbed her by the back of her corset. The Princess also had six inches and thirty pounds on her. The effect was not unlike suddenly being lassoed from behind by a solid wall of irritated Southern belle.

  “Let me go!” demanded Victory Anna. “Pol needs me!”

  “Her name’s not Polychrome here, Tory; it’s Sparkle Bright,” said Velveteen. “And trust me, I want to save her as much as you do. But we’re not going to do her any good if we rush in and get ourselves killed. Now please, can you calm the fuck down and let us help you?”

  Victory Anna stopped twisting in the Princess’s grasp and simply glared at Velveteen. “While you’re standing here lecturing me about remaining calm, Po—‘Sparkle Bright’ is being subjected to horrors unknown and dangers unknowable. We have to move.”

  “You have to watch your language, or Jim Henson’s going to sue you for copyright infringement,” said Jackie.

  “Says the girl from the Rankin-Bass special,” drawled the Princess, and let go of Victory Anna. “I’m sorry about grabbing you, honey, but Vel’s right. We gotta take this careful. Horror movies have their own rules, and if we go rushing in like a half-baked television spin-off, we’re going to get cancelled like one.”

  Victory Anna looked at the two girls blankly. Fearing disaster, Velveteen stepped forward and said, “Okay. We have to assume everyone who’s been brought here against their will has slightly dys
functional powers right now. Maybe that’s a big assumption, but it helps us plan. Are you with me?” The others nodded. “Good. Now, I haven’t seen Tag. He’s the only male hero currently in Portland, so he should have been a target. I think he didn’t get grabbed.”

  “Three cheers for sexism,” said Jackie dryly.

  “Exactly. We’re in a creepy horror movie house, and it’s not connected to Halloween or you and I would both know it. That means it probably belongs to somebody who wants to be a horror movie villain, and they’re almost always male. This is a hunting preserve.”

  “And you’re keeping me from running to Sparkle Bright’s aid why?” Victory Anna demanded.

  “Because you’re unarmed, and horror movie rules say if you run in unarmed, you’re going to get there just in time to see her die.” Velveteen looked around the hall, finally pointing to a door. “That one. Jackie, I need that door open.”

  “Sure, make the blue girl do all the heavy lifting. I’m pretty sure that’s racist,” grumbled Jackie, and moved to try the door. It was locked. Jackie made a sour face before reaching around behind herself and calmly removing her bra.

  Victory Anna made a small squeaking sound. The Princess rolled her eyes. “Oh, goodie,” she said. “Stripping.”

  “You can kiss my blueberry ass,” said Jackie, before using her teeth to rip into the thin mesh on the side of her bra strap. It gave way easily, confirming everyone’s impression that they had been dressed for viewer appeal, not actual function. “You think I want everyone here getting a look at my flawless rack? Nope. None of you are normally cleared for my boobies.”

  “What, does our clearance get upgraded every time you get your hands on a bottle of tequila?” asked the Princess.

  Jackie glared at her as she pulled her underwire out through the hole she’d bitten in the side of the bra. Then, still glaring, she bent and started to pick the lock. “Unarmed, my sweet Aunt North Wind,” she muttered.