Talyesin's Tales

After a night of investigations, crimefighting and clandestine meetings, Squirrelman returns home to an empty apartment...




Starring!

Matt Mattheson ......... as Squirrelman
Kimmy Sinclair ................ as Ragdoll
Rick Duncan ........................... as Ace
Lisa Dumont ................... as Physique
Jessica Wagner .............. as Rapunzel

Guest starring

Reed Sterling ...................... as Doc



I was alone. I wandered my apartment looking for something but I didn't know what. I opened the secret door that led to my hidden Squirrelman room. Inside, Kimmy sat in front of the computer screen, cutting out newspaper headlines. She wore a wedding dress and was crying. The headlines read "Crimefighters League Betrayed" and "Crimefighters League Destroyed by Traitor in their Midst." She looked at me and said "I told you so" and turned back to the newspapers. I went through a second door, the one I'd never noticed before, and I was in Doc Sterling's Lab. Inside, Doc was wearing knee pants and a beanie propeller cap and was talking to a big guy whose face I couldn't see. They spoke in a language I knew was English but no matter how hard I tried to understand them I couldn't. Canned audience laughter roared at my predicament, because I knew it was vital that I understand Doc and the big guy, that lives depended on my grasping whatever it was they were talking about, but I couldn't. I looked in the mirror and saw that Reed was talking backwards, and then the mirror shattered and I fell through it. I fell through the night sky toward an alley and when I hit the ground I broke through it, falling into a huge cave where the Prince of Thorns and the Mole were having tea and crumpets, which is odd, because I never knew what a crumpet was before. They were dressed like the Mad Hatter and the March Hare, and Cricket hopped up dressed like Alice. The Mad Prince of Hatters asked me "Do you know the muffin man?" and I said "No, I've never been to Venice." The March Mole tsk-tsked and said, "Feed him to the beast!" Cricket Alice grabbed me and threw me through a door and I was in a bedroom, where Physique was killing men by having sex with them. "Help me, Matt, you're my only hope!" she screamed at me, jumping out of the bed, completely naked, chasing me over piles of dickless dead men with huge grins on their faces. I ran out of the bedroom and into the Mongol sky junk and Kosmos Konstantinopoulos' hired mask Achilles looked at me, laughed, and said, "You really don't know me? You don't know who I am?" and laughed some more. The other hired mask, the Oriental chick with the sais, attacked me, sunk one of the sais into my hand, pinned me to the floor of the crashing sky junk, as she and Achilles teleported out of there. I pulled out the sai and jumped from the crashing ship, grabbed onto Ace's flying card as it soared past, pulled myself on top of it only Ace and Darklight were having sex on it as it flew toward the sunrise. Anna looked at me and said, "This isn't your dream, Matt."

I wake up.

Normally I don't dream that vividly. Normally, when I can remember them, I dream of normal stuff - going to do groceries with Kimmy, looking over the tax accounts of some major corporation. My life is pretty much surreal enough that my subconscious uses the downtime to relax by imagining peaceful, mundane scenarios. Occasionally Arachnid will crash through the roof of the grocery store and kill everyone but me, but that's not really that unusual.

I chalk it up to the amount of action Squirrelman's been getting into. Normally I bust up crimes in progress, or chase down one of my bad guys when they escape. Occasionally I'll have what they call in the biz "a case" - where I have to track them down by clues and whatever. Plus setting up the team and trying to leave my job and starting to organize a wedding, so you might say my life has been a little hectic the last month or so.

Still, something about it nags at me, like something stuck between your cheek and your gum.

It's almost dawn, so I get up, head for the shower. Kimmy having not spent the night means an entire hot water tank to myself this morning, and I take advantage. The heat sinks into me, loosening knots in my back and shoulders I didn't know I had. Rapid healing or no rapid healing, I've been getting pounded lately with no down time. Still, today should be a light day. Meeting with a client at seven-thirty to introduce him to the new partners for a power breakfast, then to the headquarters to talk tech with Reed, Lisa and Rick. Thinking about Lisa brings up that dream again and I deliberately make myself think of the client and the agenda for the meeting instead of Lisa naked and covered in blood. I get out, towel off, get dressed. I grab a coffee on the way to the bus stop and call Kimmy while I wait.

I get her voicemail so I leave a message and tell her to meet me at "the usual spot" which has become sort of a code phrase for our headquarters when we're in civvies. Then I check my messages. Just one, and good thing I check it, because it's Rick saying he wants to have lunch today. I call him back.

"Yello."

"Rick, it's Matt."

"How's it going?"

"Not bad. Listen... we should meet at the usual spot before lunch, say, ten? Doc wants to talk to us."

"Really?"

"No, I'm deliberately misleading you."

"Har har. What about?"

"Tech and stuff."

"You're shitting me."

"I shit you not."

"You are shitting me!"

"Haven't we covered this?"

"Damn, son! I'll be there!"

I hang up the phone and save his number into it. While we'd been talking the bus had arrived so I find myself a seat next to a guy who's too big and broad to be completely normal and a girl with blue skin in one of those private school uniforms. They might be enhanced or powered or even metas, but for the moment we're all commuters, and it gives me a sense of community. I mean, there are maybe forty people on the bus. Four or five are obviously not exactly normal, maybe six or seven of us are probably, statistically speaking, enhanced or powered or even metas in civvies. The bus route takes us along Dock Street and that's where a lot of obvious metas get work. The big guy gets off and I scooch over a little now that I don't have a shoulder in my ear. The school girl gets off at Saint Caroline's. Business people get on and off. My people. Action Citizens.

The power breakfast goes off without a hitch. Sarah is charming and Jim is all business and the clients really take to them. Stretch and I share a glance at one point that says 'We made the right choices here' and that's that. I tell them I'll probably be out for most of the day meeting with other clients to assure them I'll still be around and make more appointments for meetings with the new partners. I head home and suit up. Squirrelman hits the morning streets around nine-thirty.

Always odd going out this early in the day, sun beaming down from the east instead of sinking into the west. I run along rooftops, jumping alleys, hitching a ride on the el heading into town. I get to the right building and climb up the side full tilt, pushing myself. I leap over the balcony rail. Lisa's skycycle is parked next to a Sterling one-man skycar.

I head in. Ace and Physique are talking tech with Doc Sterling.

"Sorry I'm late," I say. Bop fists with Ace and Physique, shake Doc's hand.

"You're not, actually," Doc says. "We're early. I've got something at eleven and so I called Lisa. She had Ace's number and so we agreed to meet earlier. Sorry we didn't contact you."

"No worries," I say. "Most of what you guys say is gonna go over my head anyway."

"We'll use small words," Physique grins at me.

"Thanks."

They get back to the technobabble. Physique and Rick quibble a bit over the security system, but Doc just takes notes on a datapad and eventually they get things sorted out.

"I'll put in the order," Reed says. "Shouldn't be too problematic. You didn't ask for anything truly obscure so I figure... tomorrow sound alright?"

"Wow," I say, impressed. "Uh, yeah! Sure!"

"Thanks, Doc," Ace grins.

"Yeah, Reed, thanks," Physique adds.

"Not at all," he smiles back. "Oh! I almost forgot. Be right back."

Reed heads out onto the balcony and starts looking for something in the one-man. Ace is grinning ear to ear and Lisa is looking at the blueprints she'd drawn up, making notes in red pencil.

"Hell son, we got ourselves a state-of-the-art bleeding edge crimefighting system!" Ace says.

"Sure looks like it," I say. "As long as you don't ask Ragdoll to have anything to do with it, we're good to go."

"She's technophobic?" Physique asks.

"No, phobic would indicate fear. Ragdoll outright hates the stuff."

"What do I hate?" I hear Ragdoll say behind me. Teach me to keep my back to the door.

"Tech stuff," I say, turning around. Rapunzel is with her.

"Oh, I don't hate it, as long as it does exactly what I want it to do," she laughs.

"Oh hey, that reminds me," I say, and pull the nanobeads out of my hidden pocket. I give one to everyone.

"Nanobeads, awesome!" Ace says, pulling off his glove and slipping the bead over his finger, where it turns into a clear glass ring.

"What do they do?" Ragdoll asks, looking at hers suspiciously.

"They're communicators, Rags," Physique explains.

"A gift from Doc Sterling to the Crimefighters' League," I say.

"Wear them in good health," Reed says with a grin, coming back inside carrying a small box.

"What's in the box, Doc?" Physique asks.

"A housewarming gift, from Julia and I," he says, opening the box. Inside is a ... well, I'd call it a device. It looks like it's cobbled together from broken radios and blenders and old televisions from the fifties, the kinds with the tubes inside. It's sort of art deco-ish, and very chrome and avocado. Reed pulls it out proudly.

"Uh... thanks, Doc," I say, taking it from him.

"What is it?" Physique asks.

"My very first police radio scanner," Doc answers, a big grin on his face. "I made it when I was three. It still picks up every police channel, including quite a few from other cities." His grin gets sheepish. "I made it a little too efficient. Guaranteed not to run out of power, ever, because it gets its power from radio-waves. I made it because I wanted to be a superhero, what they called costumed crimefighters back then, and that meant knowing where the crime was happening in order to chase down the crooks. Anyhow, it's yours now. Mind what you hear around the full moon - it tends to pick up extra-terrestrial signals around then. Not really sure why - maybe the signals are being bounced off the moon, and only when the moon is full is the signal strong enough to be picked up by this little guy. I really should look into it, I suppose. Never seemed to have the time. I did manage to incorporate a translator device, though."

"Reed, thank you," Ragdoll says for all of us.

"We will treasure it, Doctor," Rapunzel says.

"We haven't had the pleasure, have we?" Reed says to her. "Reed Sterling, but my friends call me Doc."

"Rapunzel."

He takes her hand and gives it an old-fashioned little kiss, then says something in what I figure is probably German or Austrian, because Rapunzel slips into it as easily as Reed did, and they chat a bit before switching back to English.

"Well," Doc says to us, "this has been delightful. I'll put in the order and your equipment should arrive tomorrow. Robo-delivery, of course, so that no questions can arise later. Will someone be here to receive the delivery?"

"Wouldn't miss it, Doc," Ace says, still grinning like a kid at Christmas.

Reed shakes everyone's hands and takes off in his skycar.

"How do you turn this thing on?" Ragdoll asks, picking up the police scanner.

"Careful!" Ace says, taking it from her. He takes a look at it and says, "I think it's this switch... here."

He flips the switch and the radio signal slowly tunes in, going from static to a faint voice to the clear tones of the ACPD Dispatch.

"All units, all units, reporting a thirteen-thirteen in progress at the Museum of Ancient Art and Archaelogy."

"Thirteen thirteen?" Rapunzel asks.

"Crime in progress, powers displayed," Ragdoll explains.

"All units, all units, please respond," the dispatcher says.

I look at my team.

"You heard the lady," I say.