“Damn, girlfriend!” said Mo looking around at Kim’s flat, “this is high class!”
Unlike Kim’s room at home, which was a ludicrous hodgepodge of O-Boyz posters and pink, this flat was tastefully done with neutral carpet, olive walls and maroon accents. The couch and recliner were black leather. Tasteful cherry cabinets held an entire library of books and a flat screen plasma TV. The kitchen was a sea of granite and oak, sprinkled with stainless steel icebergs. A glimpse of the bedroom seemed to be a bit more like Kim with jewel toned curtains and a bed half covered in Cuddle-Buddies, but there was nothing pink in sight.
“How do you afford this? You don’t even have a job!”
“My mother’s a brain surgeon and my dad is a rocket scientist, remember?” teased Kim. “Besides, a lot of people owe me favors. I collected on a few.”
Monique looked skeptical but didn’t push the issue. She hadn’t seen Kim all summer and didn’t want to argue about something like where her money came from. Maybe it was someone who owed her a favor and loaned her the use of his or her apartment. Besides, if the Drs. Possible had loosened the purse strings enough that Kim could afford this place, there was about to be some serious shopping. Monique dismissed her unease and started grilling Kim about her two month long trip through Mexico, Australia and China.
It only took a short time for the girls to fall back into their familiar chatter. Monique’s habit of reducing phrases into collections of seemingly random letters caused Kim’s head to spin for the first few minutes, but she quickly regained the distinctive rhythm and was soon deep in effortless conversation.
The Drive downtown was uneventful. Well, as uneventful as anything involving Kim operating a motor vehicle could be. It wasn’t so much that Kim drove with blatant disregard for other vehicles, pedestrians, small animals or innocent inanimate objects, (she had never run into or over anything) it was just that she chose not to slow down. Somehow there was always an opening in the intersection or the next lane or the sidewalk and Kim always found it. Monique was sure that Kim would never have to replace the brakes on any of her vehicles.
Kissing the ground was always frowned upon after a ride with Kim so Monique settled for a discrete moment of thanks in the parking lot of the biggest mall in the Midwest.
Once inside, Monique surveyed the three-story Go City Mall atrium and gave Kim her expert opinion, “Girl, this is spang… king!”
“Which store do we terrorize first?” asked a grinning Kim.
“Girl, you know Club Banana is TB, but we can’t be in GCM without hitting every clothing store here!” The dark skinned girl looked around again, her eyes glazing over just a little bit “YSL… DKNY… TCBY… We’ve got days of shopping ahead… maybe weeks…”
Kim let the tension drain out of her as she threw herself into shopping with Monique. What a welcome change from weeks of sizing up the city; checking out well-known art galleries, museums and canals, walking and riding around to get a feel for the layout and flow. Occasionally she had spent an entire day exploring one neighborhood, memorizing dead-end streets and little-known connections to main thoroughfares.
This was to be an afternoon of fun and relaxation, no memorizing escape routes no scouting for hidden hazards, just hang out with Mo and buy stuff. Even so, she found herself committing the floor plans and shop locations to memory. She told herself it was because they might not be near a map when they emerged from one of the shops. She was very convincing, she almost believed it.
While the girls were eating lunch the subject of Go City’s resident super heroes came up. “So, have you seen ‘em yet?” asked Monique, waving at a life-sized poster of the four men.
Kim turned to look at the poster. “Not in action.” She replied. “I saw the purple one… you know, the shrinker? I saw him at a museum exhibit opening.”
“What kind of exhibit was it?”
“It was a nano-tech display at the Museum of Science and Industry.”
Monique spent nearly a full minute studying Kim through narrowed eyes. “Girlfriend, you are nineteen years old, alone in the big city for the first time in your life, with no parents, no pressure and no schedule, and you spend your time going to museums and looking at nano-tech exhibits? That is seriously FUBAR!” Mo paused to look at Kim with challenging eyes, “we need to get dressed in some of these fabulous new clothes and get our beautiful butts to a place where gorgeous men can see and admire them. And we gotta do it PDQ!”
Club Macaroon was upscale. The rich and trendy congregated there every night to brag about their latest million or show off their new bling. Tonight was no different. The rich men ogled each other’s trophy wives and the rich women drooled over each other’s boy toys. It seemed that everyone in the club was either there to show off or be shown off.
There were two exceptions. They stood uncomfortably at the bar. They didn’t look rich and they certainly weren’t trendy.
The door to a back office made an impressively loud “CRACK!” as it flew out of its frame and traveled a considerable distance into the main dance area. Surprised clientele moved quickly away from the disturbance nervously seeking some reassurance that this was just part of the evening’s entertainment.
Anyone looking would immediately notice the black and green clad woman framed in the doorway. An attentive person would take in; long raven hair, deep green eyes, a sinister sneer, flawless pale green skin, a shapely, athletic build and glowing green hands. An eagle-eyed spectator, seated at the correct angle, would probably note that the room behind this well formed woman contained two piles of bodies and several pieces of broken but expensive looking furniture. A professional observer might go on to realize that some of the furniture was sticking partially through walls and that a desk, a rather heavy looking desk, was lodged in the ceiling. The expert observer might recognize that each pile of bodies was comprised of several large men and note that a solid oak hat stand seemed to be protruding from the posterior of what under other circumstances would be an intimidating figure.
This hypothetical expert might have questions.
Questions like:
“Who is that?”
“What makes her hands glow?”
“When is that big desk going to fall?”
“Where is that hat stand actually lodged?”
Or even:
“Why would anyone have a hat stand in their office?”
But an intelligent expert would already be heading for the nearest exit at the fastest possible speed.
An amateur observer of average intelligence would probably just turn toward the door, look at the woman, see the glowing green hands and run like hell.
“TONY!” the green skinned woman yelled, “You’d better get a few more goons, those jokers didn’t teach me anything!”
The brighter patrons of the club suddenly remembered important engagements at places far away from Club Macaroon and began high-tailing it for the doors. The appearance of the rest of Tony’s thugs encouraged the remaining guests to join them and within five minutes, everyone who had a lick of sense was making tracks down Dash Street as fast as their legs could take them.
The two exceptions did not leave. They cowered behind the bar. Both wore shockingly out-moded hairstyles and clothing. One was blue.
A small swarthy man in an expensive Italian suit walked casually onto the dance floor. He looked around the deserted club and turned to the woman with the glowing hands. “Shego,” he said in a disappointed voice, “that little stunt is gonna cost me, about seven thousand dollars in lost business and…” He looked into the room she had just exited, “about fifteen thousand in remodeling costs.”
“Well, since you screwed me out of sixty grand, you can give me thirty eight in cash right now, and I’ll call it even.” The pale woman said in a shining example of generosity.
Tony looked around the empty club and sighed. “You know I can’t do that Shego. If word gets out that you shook me down and I gave in…” His voice trailed off and he shrugged.
Shego couldn’t believe the man’s nerve. First he shorted her sixty thousand on the merchandise and now he was going to try to kill her for complaining. Some people deserve to be humiliated in front of their friends and family. But since no one else from the mob was here, she’d have to do it in private and hope word got around.
“GET HER!”
The goons began firing automatic pistols at the spot where she had been standing. She had already leapt for the ceiling support beams. She crossed the room swinging from beam to beam and dropped down behind two of the gunmen. She knocked their heads together, and set off the sprinkler system with a plasma ball to the smoke detector.
The water cascading into the room mixed with the spilled drinks and food and made the floor as slippery as an ice rink. Shego leapt right back up to the ceiling and took a quick count of the remaining thugs… nine. There sure had seemed like a lot more when they were shooting at her. She unloaded two plasma blasts at the speakers behind one of the men, burying him in debris. She took out three more in quick succession by dropping heavy light fixtures on them. By this time the men realized that she wasn’t on the floor and began looking around to figure out where she was.
Shego knew the natural reaction to uncertainty was to close ranks and anticipated the men would come together in front of the stage as they assessed the situation. She sprinted along the top of a decorative cornice and swung herself at one of the corner booths using the thick material as a springboard to launch her body at the stage. Hands blazing, she flew toward the men and took out three more hoodlums, her body plowing through the space they occupied. The martial artist jumped lightly to her feet and appraised the probable life span of the two remaining brutes. One was running for it so she figured he was more likely to survive the night than his buddy who was attempting to hit her with the butt of his gun. She blocked the crude attack and knocked him out with a plasma-enhanced uppercut.
“Really Tony,” she said as she dragged the cringing fence from his hiding place near the stage, “What kind of idiot tries to hit someone with a gun? A gun is a ranged weapon. You should really hire smarter goons.”
Tony looked down at the pale thief his feet dangling a few inches off the ground and her hand clamped around his throat. She extended her other hand toward him, flat out, palm up. “Now,” she said, “I believe you owe me ninety large.”
“Bu… Bu… You said thirty… and it was only supposed to be sixty…”
“Yeah, that was before you made me angry.”
As Shego left the club, the two exceptions crawled slowly out from behind the bar. “Dude!” The blonde said, “I think I’m in love… Seriously.” They beat a hasty retreat before Tony or any of his hired men could wake up.
Wade read the Go City police report very carefully. The female who trashed the trendy downtown club didn’t sound like Kim; it wasn’t her style to destroy property and he didn’t think she could shoot fire from her hands. Still, he wouldn’t put it past her. When he finished reading the report, he sat back and considered the information. The woman they described was not Kim, but the similarities were astounding. A ferret program would find more information on the volatile black and green clad vandal. Perhaps a solution to Kim’s problem lay in this similar woman’s past.
Kim hadn’t spoken with him in nearly three months and she had disabled his remote activation control on the Kimmunicator. That had surprised him because he didn’t know she was even aware of it. He had surreptitiously followed her progress around the Pacific and had been relieved that she didn’t seem bent on vengeance. Her visits to quite a few museums could have been dismissed it as a purely educational undertaking a few years ago, but now he wasn’t so sure. At least nothing seemed to be missing from the places she had been. Still, three continents in six weeks, what was she up to? He started a more comprehensive correlation program.
Wade returned to studying the coroner’s report on Jennifer Martin and Kaylee Swan. He could see the pattern of missing information. It wasn’t like someone had erased portions of the files, there were just small inconsistencies that pointed to missing information. He compared them to a police report of the incident. The police files were sanitized, he knew because he had purged them at Kim’s request.
She had asked him to wipe the details of this case completely off the map. He had done so without hesitation, utterly destroying all the records except the sanitized official reports. At her request he had not looked at any of the information, just treated it like a virus and obliterated it so completely that even he couldn’t recreate it. It seemed like the thing to do at the time but now he wished he could retrieve the lost info; maybe knowing what happened back then would empower him to help Kim now.
He chuckled to himself, as a shut-in genius with acute agoraphobia, germ-o-phobia and an inability to speak with anyone other than his mom face to face, he wasn’t the best judge of healthy human interaction. Even so, he knew what Kim was doing wasn’t healthy. And no one else was looking for a cure.
He read the results of his correlation program and choked on his soda. He ran the data three more times just to be sure and sent a panic signal to the Kimmunicator. He hoped she would answer this time.
“Speeka… dey… eengliss?” Ron asked the shop worker hopefully. He had run out of gel two days ago and his “New Ron” look was slipping away from him. “Dohnday… essay… Hair… Gel…” He said slowly while frantically motioning to the top of his rapidly degenerating do.
The clerk just shrugged and turned back to the newspaper he was reading.
Ron left the store and started looking for another shop to try his luck in. He had been wandering around this city for a full day and couldn’t find anyone who understood him or knew where he could buy some hair gel. He decided that the next time he went to a foreign country he would take an interpreter. He was tired of Brighton anyway; maybe he would have better luck in a place called Milton Keynes.
Big thanks to WillieD who helped me straighten out my bent prose.
Next time: Chapter 4- Cupid is as Cupid does
Kim’s first go in Go City Goes wrong
Everybody is Kung fu fighting
Kim gets a secret admirer