Epithet Erased, page 7
“Oh,” Naven said, caught a bit off guard, which was unusual for him. “It’s just strange. This man appears to be Ocean Race. If he came from Ocean Country, he must’ve drifted an awfully long way from here. He’s lucky to be alive. . . .”
“Oh! I’m a little bit Ocean Race!” Trixie cheeped, offering this information as though it might be helpful somehow.
“As am I . . .” Naven mumbled.
Each of the different races were named after their native country, and each of those countries were named after a different biome: Taiga Country, Deepwood Country, Desert Country, Island Country,
Ocean Country, and Australia.
With her blonde hair and blue eyes Feenie was about as Taiga race as a person could get. Molly was equal parts Taiga and Deepwood. Trixie was mostly Taiga with a little Ocean blood on her mother’s side.
People with Ocean Race in their veins could be easily identified by their brightly-colored hair and striking eyes. If a person’s hair was a shade of neon pink, green, purple, or blue, then at least one of their ancestors was probably from Ocean Country. This ancestral trait remained visible no matter how many generations thinned the blood, like warning coloration on a venomous fish.
Centuries ago the Ocean people had been persecuted for their study of spellcraft and twisted magic. In response, their strongest mages used their sorcery to craft grand domed cities and retreated to the deepest depths of the ocean. Now they lived in a secluded society somewhere at the bottom of the sea. Their country had remained strictly isolationist to this day, and, as far as the surface-dwellers knew, nobody was allowed in or out. All modern knowledge of Ocean Country was deduced from the flotsam and jetsam washing up on beaches. Strange pieces of glowing sea glass and translucent pipes—things that Trixie collected in a box under her bed. Scholars knew the general location of Ocean Country, but beyond that it was little more than a giant question mark hidden deep beneath the waves.
Because of this, it was very rare to meet a full-blooded Ocean race citizen. Trixie and Phoenica realized that they had never seen one before and stared at Rick with renewed interest.
Molly trotted back into the room carrying some fruit, granola, and a bottle of water. Naven reached out a hand and Molly reflexively passed him the bottle. He put it to Rick’s lips and slowly poured a bit of water in, carefully ensuring that he swallowed it.
“. . . Is he gonna die?” Molly asked.
“No, I don’t think so,” Naven leaned back. “It’s a good thing you girls found him when you did. I don’t know how much longer he would’ve lasted out on the beach like that. We’ll clean him up a bit and get him sent straight off to the hospital. You three did a very good job.”
Molly breathed a sigh of internal relief, thankful for the validation. After Rick collapsed Phoenica started to call the police, but Molly had stopped her. Calling 911 was obviously the standard reaction to a person passing out, but ever since the museum incident last week she’d felt uncomfortable around police officers. She was a criminal, after all. She was a Banzai Blaster! Er, semi-officially, at least. She hadn’t paid her membership fees yet, but she was pretty sure it still counted. Every time she saw a cop she was worried they might somehow recognize her and want to arrest her, and then who would take care of the toy store?
Certainly not the man who waltzed into the room backwards at that exact moment.
“Whoaaa! Comin’ through! Beep! Beep! Beep!”
Molly’s father, Martin, backed into the room in reverse, beeping like a dump truck. He was carrying a huge, ornate castle in his arms, carved from wood and expertly painted. It was beautiful. The kind of playset with a three-digit price tag that would make any parent wince when their child asked if they could take it home. Marty pivoted around the room, looking for somewhere to set the thing down. He spotted a podium that he thought looked absolutely perfect, thoughtlessly kicked a large teddy bear off of it, and placed the castle set in its place. He let out an appreciative whistle.
“Ah! Now ain’t that a sight for sore eyes?” He made a big show of dusting off his hands before his brain immediately switched tracks. “Man! I am STARVING!” The man flipped around like there might be some food floating behind him and he noticed his daughter’s friends standing there for the first time. “Oh! Class is in session, huh? Haha! Sorry to interrupt! Hey, that looks good!” Marty leaned down and grabbed the bag of granola Molly had meant for Rick right out of her hands.
“H-hey . . .”
“Hold on a second!” Phoenica protested, knowing that Molly would not.
“Heya, Frank!” he nodded to Feenie, shoving handfuls of granola into his mouth. He turned to Trixie and gave her the double-guns. “Dixie!”
Marty always got their names wrong. It was a joke that he and he alone thought was very funny. He upturned the bag of granola and drank like it was a beverage. Little crumbs stuck themself into his starry blonde beard like backwash pretzel chunks in a bar glass. He patted his belly, looked down, and finally noticed the phosphorescent body on his floor.
“Heeeey Navey. What’s this? You teachin’ em CPR on a dummy? Now that’s some REALLY interpersonal communication, if ya know what I’m sayin’! Heh heh!” He wiggled his eyebrows like awful caterpillars and made mock kissy noises. Naven smiled at him and wanted to die.
“This is a human man,” he said.
“Whoaaaa! Gettin’ REAL spicy in class today! Heyooo! Just be sure to have her home by eight, okay champ? Heh heh heh!” He playfully leaned down to the body and elbowed Rick in the stomach. Rick spat out a nudibranch. Lori popped her head out of her bubble and waved a magic bunny wand around in anger.
“I TOLD you guys to be QUIET! . . . Oh. Hey dad.”
“Heya, sweetie! Check it out!” He gestured his big arms towards the castle. “Ta-da!”
“Oh, yeah,” she blinked. “That’s pretty good.”
“You said you were into knights and stuff, right? Knights and dragon stuff?”
“Yeah. I’m kinda over knights, though.”
“Ooh, yeah?” His eyes lit up. “What kinda stuff ya got goin’ on now?”
“Witch stuff.”
“The stuff in your bubble.”
“No, witch stuff. Like . . . magic. Potions. Witch’s brews.”
“Ohhhh, witch stuff huh? Yeah, okay . . . yeah, yeah, yeah! Alright!” Gears began whirring to life in his head as his thoughts changed tracks again. He nodded to the guests one by one. “Feefa. Ice Rink. Body.” Then he bolted out of the room, like a new idea was about to appear somewhere in his workshop and he had to get there in time to catch it before it flew away.
Trixie and Feenie scowled at him. His actions were a surprise to exactly no one. Martin Blyndeff lived in his own little world, just in a completely different sense from the way Lorelai did. It was a wonder the store hadn’t gone under yet.
Even though Molly worked as hard as she could, the girl was still twelve. The only real reason the Blyndeff family was able to put food on the table was because of supplementary funds from Phoenica and Naven. They tried their best to keep the store afloat, more for Molly’s sake than for the sake of the business. That made Molly feel guilty, like she needed to be working harder. Like she owed them now. Like it was her fault that things were going wrong.
Naven had reached out to child services for her once. They’d sent an agent to investigate, but it was no use. The man had concluded the home was perfectly livable. After all, what kind of child wouldn’t want to live in a toy store? Molly didn’t show any signs of physical injuries, and—while it was maybe a tad unethical to have your kids work in your store—it was by no means illegal, so long as they were getting an education. Their family floated just above the poverty line and the older sister had an epithet that could make food, so there really wasn’t anything to worry about on that front—epithets were seen as a big plus, unsurprisingly. Legally speaking, Naven couldn’t do anything about Molly’s home situation short of kidnapping her, so he settled for passing her a little bit of money every month to get by.
Lorelai remembered that she had come in to yell at them and looked at the class huddled around the unconscious, wet, purple body. She twisted her face like she’d smelled something gross.
“What are you doing?”
Molly opened her mouth to ask for help, but Lori slid back into her bubble without waiting for an answer. Her words had been an insult, not a question. The girl in the bear hoodie sighed.
Well . . . at least the room was quiet again.
BAM!!!
The door to the shop exploded open and the shopkeeper's bell went screaming through the air. A figure zipped into the room and scampered up onto a table like a raccoon. His lanky legs wobbled as he balanced atop the wood like a surfboard, then solidified as he pointed triumphantly towards the sky.
“Look upon me, mortals, and TREMBLE!!! You may have known the ghost of my former self, but he is gone! Cast into the flames and reborn, like a phoenix wearing sunglasses and a cool hat!”
The man was not wearing sunglasses. And he certainly wasn’t wearing a cool hat. Quite the opposite, really.
The thing on his head was a modified catcher’s helmet with an orange visor taped across the inside of it, like a home-made sentai helmet. Two PVC pauldrons sat atop his shoulders and a waterfall of inky black cape sprawled out from beneath them. The cape had been bleached from the bottom up with a pattern of peachy orange flames licking up the shredded hem and the skirt he wore had the same treatment, torn edges fluttering to evoke a flame. On his chest were isolated chunks of black plastic armor floating aimlessly across a sea of neon orange spandex leggings and undershirts so bright they hurt to look at, like a chemical
spill or a lava lamp with a grudge. He looked like someone at a convention cosplaying a character that you almost recognized, but didn’t know well enough to name.
The superzero threw his arms towards the fluorescent lights above him, hands clad in fingerless black biker gloves with his nails screaming in bright hot-rod paint.
“Rejoice! For you are about to witness the first appearance of the world’s soon-to-be greatest supervillain! I am DARKNESS! . . . I am DESPAIR! I AM . . . VINCENT MURDER!!!” said Giovanni Potage wearing a stupid outfit.
“Boss!” Molly cried, “Oh, thank goodness you’re here! We need your help!”
Giovanni’s over-the-top pose melted away to parental concern in an instant. He was hoping that she might compliment him on his cool new costume, but this was way more important.
“What’s wrong, Bear Trap?”
“We found a beach body!”
“A beach body!?” Giovanni hopped down and took a look at Rick. “Whoa, Bear Trap! You killed a guy!? . . . Little villains grow up so fast.” He went to wipe a tear from his eye and bonked his finger into the visor on his catcher’s mask. “Ow.”
“No, Boss! He’s alive! . . . I-I think! We found him on the beach and we’re trying to save him!”
“Ohhhhhhhhhhh, I getcha!” He snapped his fingers in recognition. “Tryin’ to pull the ol’ ‘I saved your life, now it belongs to me’ thing and get yourself a minion of your own, eh? Classic move. Gasp! That would make me . . . a grandboss! Here, I’ll help! Do you have, like, a bowl or something?”
Molly looked around. She trotted over to the wall of toys and offered him a toy dump truck. “Sorry . . .” she wilted. “All our dishes are dirty. Someone was supposed to wash them. And didn’t.” An uncharacteristic drip of venom found its way into her tone.
“Worry not, Bear Trap! A good villain comes prepared for such an occasion! Behold, Vincent Murder Secret Technique #1!” He squatted a bit and steam began rising from the black pauldrons atop his shoulders. Molly hadn’t been able to see before because he was so tall, but there were little divots in the top of each of them.
“Are those . . . cup holders?”
“Yeah!” he smiled. “Cool, right? I figured that sports cars and stuff had them so I should probably put some on my costume, just in case. Now . . . RISE! LIQUID PHOENIX!!!”
Giovanni shot his hand into the air and pressed upwards like he was raising the roof. A substance began to pool from the depths of his pauldrons, swirling a bright red and yellow. Steam fogged his visor.
“NOW!!! . . . Could somebody please open his mouth for me?”
Naven, awestruck by this very strange man, silently did as he was told, putting a finger to Rick’s chin and opening his mouth. Giovanni leaned to the side and poured the bubbling drink into Rick’s mouth like a teapot. A little bit of color returned to Rick’s face. Phoenica looked up at this bizarre stringbean who had apparently just poured lava into her friend’s mouth.
“Excuse me, sir,” she said. “Do you have some kind of epithet?”
“It’s Lava!” lied Giovanni.
“Or acid,” lied Molly.
“Lavacid,” they lied in unison.
Giovanni did have an epithet. Most aspiring supervillains wouldn’t be too happy to be born with ☆Soup☆ as their power, but Giovanni was a creative young man and he wouldn’t let something like that stop him! He had learned to use his powers in a number of strange and innovative ways. He could build up steam and unleash it in a burst to run or jump high in the air. He could throw boiling soup like fireballs. He could even heal his minions with tasty concoctions that he described as “potions."
“Yeah, it’s pretty cool,” Giovanni complimented himself. “The perfect power for up-and-coming supervillain, VINCENT MURDER!”
“So,” Naven asked politely, “How exactly are you and Miss Blyndeff acquainted, Mr. Murder?”
“He’s my Boss,” she smiled. “We’re in . . . a club together!”
Trixie blinked.
She stared dead-on at Giovanni like he was a dead fish someone had nailed to her bedroom wall and thought back on all of Molly’s descriptions of the “Boss” she had met during her time at the museum. The puzzle pieces all snapped together at once in her mind, forming a picture of a garbage can.
“Oh,” she said. “Oh no.” She looked up at him with her one eye like a mean little spyglass. “Giovanni.”
“Shh! Quiet, Trixie!” he hushed. “That’s my OLD name! I go by VINCENT now!” Giovanni struck a pose like a cool greaser looking out into the distance. Then he flailed, sputtering cartoonishly as though he’d just seen her sitting there for the first time. “. . . WAIT, TRIXIE!? WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE!?”
“Holy toledo, you gotta be kidding me.”
Molly looked back and forth between them. “Um . . . Do you two know each other?”
“NO!” Giovanni cried, “Trixie please! Don’t reveal my SECRET IDENTITY!!!” He went to grab her but she kicked him in the shin. “Ow!!!” She looked at Molly and, with absolutely zero pomp or circumstance, said:
“He’s my cousin.”
Trixie couldn’t believe this.
The “Boss” Molly had gone on and on about was her dorky, snaggle-toothed cousin. The same guy who burned his tongue when he tried to eat a hot coal at a family barbecue because it looked like “forbidden candy”.
“Don’t do that,” her brother had warned him.
“ME WANT BITE!” Giovanni replied, crunching into the coal like it was cereal.
Giovanni wasn’t a bad guy, per say, but he was basically the world's biggest goober. She couldn’t believe Molly thought he was cool. Molly was her smartest friend! Or at least she thought she was.
“Oh wow.” Molly looked between the two of them. “You’re related?”
“Yeah,” Trixie grinned like a devil. “Moxie used to beat him up all the time and he would run home crying.” Moxie was one of Trixie’s delinquent older sisters. Honestly, her beating Boss up wasn’t too surprising. Molly once saw Trixie’s sister bite through a bicycle tire like it was a donut.
“TRIXIE!!! Don’t EMBARRASS me in front of my MINION!” Giovanni pouted. Trixie looked his new costume over, totally unimpressed.
“What’re you doin’ here, anyways?” she asked. “Mom said that you were on the news for some crime thing.” She hadn’t looked into it. Members of their extended family getting arrested was a pretty common occurrence and it didn’t usually warrant further investigation unless they showed up at your house asking for gas money. “Aren’t you s’posed to be on the lam?”
“On the what?” Feenie’s eyes sparkled. Molly put a hand on her shoulder and shook her head. Feenie looked down, disappointed.
“None of your beeswax, Short-snacks.” Giovanni leered down at her. “I happen to be on a secret mission! And the contents of said mission are for Bear Trap ears only!”
“I bet it’s something stupid.”
“I bet you’re something stupid,” Giovanni crossed his arms.
“Stup stupid stupid!”
“Stbublblbllthththhh!!!”
They began spitting and raspberrying back and forth, circling around one another and facing off like cowboys about to draw guns. Trixie hissed and dived on Giovanni, wrapping around his leg like a koala. He whooped and hollered, pogoing around the room on one foot trying to shake her loose.
“Oh my . . .” Naven winced. “It’s rather lively in here today, isn’t it?”
Naven was unusually sensitive to crowds and loud noises, just like Molly was. It was one of the reasons they got along. He’d agreed to give private speech lessons on the condition that the class size stay small so he wouldn’t get overwhelmed. This was way more people in one room than he felt comfortable with . . .
Detrimental empathy was yet another thing the two of them had in common. Molly felt bad for Naven. It was painfully obvious this week’s speech class was going to be canceled at this point. He must have been disappointed. She decided to help him a little. It wasn’t her shift, but it was her job to run the toy store!
“Guys, quit it.” Molly ordered softly, walking straight into the middle of their tussle. Giovanni and Trixie froze mid-punch. Neither of them wanted to hit Molly by accident. She walked over to Trixie who was still glued to Giovanni’s leg. Molly tapped both of her shoulders. “Bap bap.” Trixie detached and fell to the floor, somersaulting backwards and popping up. She turned and looked at Molly with her ruffled, raspberry hair obscuring most of her face. Molly pushed it out of the way and patted her on the head. “Bap bap.”
“Oh! I’m a little bit Ocean Race!” Trixie cheeped, offering this information as though it might be helpful somehow.
“As am I . . .” Naven mumbled.
Each of the different races were named after their native country, and each of those countries were named after a different biome: Taiga Country, Deepwood Country, Desert Country, Island Country,
Ocean Country, and Australia.
With her blonde hair and blue eyes Feenie was about as Taiga race as a person could get. Molly was equal parts Taiga and Deepwood. Trixie was mostly Taiga with a little Ocean blood on her mother’s side.
People with Ocean Race in their veins could be easily identified by their brightly-colored hair and striking eyes. If a person’s hair was a shade of neon pink, green, purple, or blue, then at least one of their ancestors was probably from Ocean Country. This ancestral trait remained visible no matter how many generations thinned the blood, like warning coloration on a venomous fish.
Centuries ago the Ocean people had been persecuted for their study of spellcraft and twisted magic. In response, their strongest mages used their sorcery to craft grand domed cities and retreated to the deepest depths of the ocean. Now they lived in a secluded society somewhere at the bottom of the sea. Their country had remained strictly isolationist to this day, and, as far as the surface-dwellers knew, nobody was allowed in or out. All modern knowledge of Ocean Country was deduced from the flotsam and jetsam washing up on beaches. Strange pieces of glowing sea glass and translucent pipes—things that Trixie collected in a box under her bed. Scholars knew the general location of Ocean Country, but beyond that it was little more than a giant question mark hidden deep beneath the waves.
Because of this, it was very rare to meet a full-blooded Ocean race citizen. Trixie and Phoenica realized that they had never seen one before and stared at Rick with renewed interest.
Molly trotted back into the room carrying some fruit, granola, and a bottle of water. Naven reached out a hand and Molly reflexively passed him the bottle. He put it to Rick’s lips and slowly poured a bit of water in, carefully ensuring that he swallowed it.
“. . . Is he gonna die?” Molly asked.
“No, I don’t think so,” Naven leaned back. “It’s a good thing you girls found him when you did. I don’t know how much longer he would’ve lasted out on the beach like that. We’ll clean him up a bit and get him sent straight off to the hospital. You three did a very good job.”
Molly breathed a sigh of internal relief, thankful for the validation. After Rick collapsed Phoenica started to call the police, but Molly had stopped her. Calling 911 was obviously the standard reaction to a person passing out, but ever since the museum incident last week she’d felt uncomfortable around police officers. She was a criminal, after all. She was a Banzai Blaster! Er, semi-officially, at least. She hadn’t paid her membership fees yet, but she was pretty sure it still counted. Every time she saw a cop she was worried they might somehow recognize her and want to arrest her, and then who would take care of the toy store?
Certainly not the man who waltzed into the room backwards at that exact moment.
“Whoaaa! Comin’ through! Beep! Beep! Beep!”
Molly’s father, Martin, backed into the room in reverse, beeping like a dump truck. He was carrying a huge, ornate castle in his arms, carved from wood and expertly painted. It was beautiful. The kind of playset with a three-digit price tag that would make any parent wince when their child asked if they could take it home. Marty pivoted around the room, looking for somewhere to set the thing down. He spotted a podium that he thought looked absolutely perfect, thoughtlessly kicked a large teddy bear off of it, and placed the castle set in its place. He let out an appreciative whistle.
“Ah! Now ain’t that a sight for sore eyes?” He made a big show of dusting off his hands before his brain immediately switched tracks. “Man! I am STARVING!” The man flipped around like there might be some food floating behind him and he noticed his daughter’s friends standing there for the first time. “Oh! Class is in session, huh? Haha! Sorry to interrupt! Hey, that looks good!” Marty leaned down and grabbed the bag of granola Molly had meant for Rick right out of her hands.
“H-hey . . .”
“Hold on a second!” Phoenica protested, knowing that Molly would not.
“Heya, Frank!” he nodded to Feenie, shoving handfuls of granola into his mouth. He turned to Trixie and gave her the double-guns. “Dixie!”
Marty always got their names wrong. It was a joke that he and he alone thought was very funny. He upturned the bag of granola and drank like it was a beverage. Little crumbs stuck themself into his starry blonde beard like backwash pretzel chunks in a bar glass. He patted his belly, looked down, and finally noticed the phosphorescent body on his floor.
“Heeeey Navey. What’s this? You teachin’ em CPR on a dummy? Now that’s some REALLY interpersonal communication, if ya know what I’m sayin’! Heh heh!” He wiggled his eyebrows like awful caterpillars and made mock kissy noises. Naven smiled at him and wanted to die.
“This is a human man,” he said.
“Whoaaaa! Gettin’ REAL spicy in class today! Heyooo! Just be sure to have her home by eight, okay champ? Heh heh heh!” He playfully leaned down to the body and elbowed Rick in the stomach. Rick spat out a nudibranch. Lori popped her head out of her bubble and waved a magic bunny wand around in anger.
“I TOLD you guys to be QUIET! . . . Oh. Hey dad.”
“Heya, sweetie! Check it out!” He gestured his big arms towards the castle. “Ta-da!”
“Oh, yeah,” she blinked. “That’s pretty good.”
“You said you were into knights and stuff, right? Knights and dragon stuff?”
“Yeah. I’m kinda over knights, though.”
“Ooh, yeah?” His eyes lit up. “What kinda stuff ya got goin’ on now?”
“Witch stuff.”
“The stuff in your bubble.”
“No, witch stuff. Like . . . magic. Potions. Witch’s brews.”
“Ohhhh, witch stuff huh? Yeah, okay . . . yeah, yeah, yeah! Alright!” Gears began whirring to life in his head as his thoughts changed tracks again. He nodded to the guests one by one. “Feefa. Ice Rink. Body.” Then he bolted out of the room, like a new idea was about to appear somewhere in his workshop and he had to get there in time to catch it before it flew away.
Trixie and Feenie scowled at him. His actions were a surprise to exactly no one. Martin Blyndeff lived in his own little world, just in a completely different sense from the way Lorelai did. It was a wonder the store hadn’t gone under yet.
Even though Molly worked as hard as she could, the girl was still twelve. The only real reason the Blyndeff family was able to put food on the table was because of supplementary funds from Phoenica and Naven. They tried their best to keep the store afloat, more for Molly’s sake than for the sake of the business. That made Molly feel guilty, like she needed to be working harder. Like she owed them now. Like it was her fault that things were going wrong.
Naven had reached out to child services for her once. They’d sent an agent to investigate, but it was no use. The man had concluded the home was perfectly livable. After all, what kind of child wouldn’t want to live in a toy store? Molly didn’t show any signs of physical injuries, and—while it was maybe a tad unethical to have your kids work in your store—it was by no means illegal, so long as they were getting an education. Their family floated just above the poverty line and the older sister had an epithet that could make food, so there really wasn’t anything to worry about on that front—epithets were seen as a big plus, unsurprisingly. Legally speaking, Naven couldn’t do anything about Molly’s home situation short of kidnapping her, so he settled for passing her a little bit of money every month to get by.
Lorelai remembered that she had come in to yell at them and looked at the class huddled around the unconscious, wet, purple body. She twisted her face like she’d smelled something gross.
“What are you doing?”
Molly opened her mouth to ask for help, but Lori slid back into her bubble without waiting for an answer. Her words had been an insult, not a question. The girl in the bear hoodie sighed.
Well . . . at least the room was quiet again.
BAM!!!
The door to the shop exploded open and the shopkeeper's bell went screaming through the air. A figure zipped into the room and scampered up onto a table like a raccoon. His lanky legs wobbled as he balanced atop the wood like a surfboard, then solidified as he pointed triumphantly towards the sky.
“Look upon me, mortals, and TREMBLE!!! You may have known the ghost of my former self, but he is gone! Cast into the flames and reborn, like a phoenix wearing sunglasses and a cool hat!”
The man was not wearing sunglasses. And he certainly wasn’t wearing a cool hat. Quite the opposite, really.
The thing on his head was a modified catcher’s helmet with an orange visor taped across the inside of it, like a home-made sentai helmet. Two PVC pauldrons sat atop his shoulders and a waterfall of inky black cape sprawled out from beneath them. The cape had been bleached from the bottom up with a pattern of peachy orange flames licking up the shredded hem and the skirt he wore had the same treatment, torn edges fluttering to evoke a flame. On his chest were isolated chunks of black plastic armor floating aimlessly across a sea of neon orange spandex leggings and undershirts so bright they hurt to look at, like a chemical
spill or a lava lamp with a grudge. He looked like someone at a convention cosplaying a character that you almost recognized, but didn’t know well enough to name.
The superzero threw his arms towards the fluorescent lights above him, hands clad in fingerless black biker gloves with his nails screaming in bright hot-rod paint.
“Rejoice! For you are about to witness the first appearance of the world’s soon-to-be greatest supervillain! I am DARKNESS! . . . I am DESPAIR! I AM . . . VINCENT MURDER!!!” said Giovanni Potage wearing a stupid outfit.
“Boss!” Molly cried, “Oh, thank goodness you’re here! We need your help!”
Giovanni’s over-the-top pose melted away to parental concern in an instant. He was hoping that she might compliment him on his cool new costume, but this was way more important.
“What’s wrong, Bear Trap?”
“We found a beach body!”
“A beach body!?” Giovanni hopped down and took a look at Rick. “Whoa, Bear Trap! You killed a guy!? . . . Little villains grow up so fast.” He went to wipe a tear from his eye and bonked his finger into the visor on his catcher’s mask. “Ow.”
“No, Boss! He’s alive! . . . I-I think! We found him on the beach and we’re trying to save him!”
“Ohhhhhhhhhhh, I getcha!” He snapped his fingers in recognition. “Tryin’ to pull the ol’ ‘I saved your life, now it belongs to me’ thing and get yourself a minion of your own, eh? Classic move. Gasp! That would make me . . . a grandboss! Here, I’ll help! Do you have, like, a bowl or something?”
Molly looked around. She trotted over to the wall of toys and offered him a toy dump truck. “Sorry . . .” she wilted. “All our dishes are dirty. Someone was supposed to wash them. And didn’t.” An uncharacteristic drip of venom found its way into her tone.
“Worry not, Bear Trap! A good villain comes prepared for such an occasion! Behold, Vincent Murder Secret Technique #1!” He squatted a bit and steam began rising from the black pauldrons atop his shoulders. Molly hadn’t been able to see before because he was so tall, but there were little divots in the top of each of them.
“Are those . . . cup holders?”
“Yeah!” he smiled. “Cool, right? I figured that sports cars and stuff had them so I should probably put some on my costume, just in case. Now . . . RISE! LIQUID PHOENIX!!!”
Giovanni shot his hand into the air and pressed upwards like he was raising the roof. A substance began to pool from the depths of his pauldrons, swirling a bright red and yellow. Steam fogged his visor.
“NOW!!! . . . Could somebody please open his mouth for me?”
Naven, awestruck by this very strange man, silently did as he was told, putting a finger to Rick’s chin and opening his mouth. Giovanni leaned to the side and poured the bubbling drink into Rick’s mouth like a teapot. A little bit of color returned to Rick’s face. Phoenica looked up at this bizarre stringbean who had apparently just poured lava into her friend’s mouth.
“Excuse me, sir,” she said. “Do you have some kind of epithet?”
“It’s Lava!” lied Giovanni.
“Or acid,” lied Molly.
“Lavacid,” they lied in unison.
Giovanni did have an epithet. Most aspiring supervillains wouldn’t be too happy to be born with ☆Soup☆ as their power, but Giovanni was a creative young man and he wouldn’t let something like that stop him! He had learned to use his powers in a number of strange and innovative ways. He could build up steam and unleash it in a burst to run or jump high in the air. He could throw boiling soup like fireballs. He could even heal his minions with tasty concoctions that he described as “potions."
“Yeah, it’s pretty cool,” Giovanni complimented himself. “The perfect power for up-and-coming supervillain, VINCENT MURDER!”
“So,” Naven asked politely, “How exactly are you and Miss Blyndeff acquainted, Mr. Murder?”
“He’s my Boss,” she smiled. “We’re in . . . a club together!”
Trixie blinked.
She stared dead-on at Giovanni like he was a dead fish someone had nailed to her bedroom wall and thought back on all of Molly’s descriptions of the “Boss” she had met during her time at the museum. The puzzle pieces all snapped together at once in her mind, forming a picture of a garbage can.
“Oh,” she said. “Oh no.” She looked up at him with her one eye like a mean little spyglass. “Giovanni.”
“Shh! Quiet, Trixie!” he hushed. “That’s my OLD name! I go by VINCENT now!” Giovanni struck a pose like a cool greaser looking out into the distance. Then he flailed, sputtering cartoonishly as though he’d just seen her sitting there for the first time. “. . . WAIT, TRIXIE!? WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE!?”
“Holy toledo, you gotta be kidding me.”
Molly looked back and forth between them. “Um . . . Do you two know each other?”
“NO!” Giovanni cried, “Trixie please! Don’t reveal my SECRET IDENTITY!!!” He went to grab her but she kicked him in the shin. “Ow!!!” She looked at Molly and, with absolutely zero pomp or circumstance, said:
“He’s my cousin.”
Trixie couldn’t believe this.
The “Boss” Molly had gone on and on about was her dorky, snaggle-toothed cousin. The same guy who burned his tongue when he tried to eat a hot coal at a family barbecue because it looked like “forbidden candy”.
“Don’t do that,” her brother had warned him.
“ME WANT BITE!” Giovanni replied, crunching into the coal like it was cereal.
Giovanni wasn’t a bad guy, per say, but he was basically the world's biggest goober. She couldn’t believe Molly thought he was cool. Molly was her smartest friend! Or at least she thought she was.
“Oh wow.” Molly looked between the two of them. “You’re related?”
“Yeah,” Trixie grinned like a devil. “Moxie used to beat him up all the time and he would run home crying.” Moxie was one of Trixie’s delinquent older sisters. Honestly, her beating Boss up wasn’t too surprising. Molly once saw Trixie’s sister bite through a bicycle tire like it was a donut.
“TRIXIE!!! Don’t EMBARRASS me in front of my MINION!” Giovanni pouted. Trixie looked his new costume over, totally unimpressed.
“What’re you doin’ here, anyways?” she asked. “Mom said that you were on the news for some crime thing.” She hadn’t looked into it. Members of their extended family getting arrested was a pretty common occurrence and it didn’t usually warrant further investigation unless they showed up at your house asking for gas money. “Aren’t you s’posed to be on the lam?”
“On the what?” Feenie’s eyes sparkled. Molly put a hand on her shoulder and shook her head. Feenie looked down, disappointed.
“None of your beeswax, Short-snacks.” Giovanni leered down at her. “I happen to be on a secret mission! And the contents of said mission are for Bear Trap ears only!”
“I bet it’s something stupid.”
“I bet you’re something stupid,” Giovanni crossed his arms.
“Stup stupid stupid!”
“Stbublblbllthththhh!!!”
They began spitting and raspberrying back and forth, circling around one another and facing off like cowboys about to draw guns. Trixie hissed and dived on Giovanni, wrapping around his leg like a koala. He whooped and hollered, pogoing around the room on one foot trying to shake her loose.
“Oh my . . .” Naven winced. “It’s rather lively in here today, isn’t it?”
Naven was unusually sensitive to crowds and loud noises, just like Molly was. It was one of the reasons they got along. He’d agreed to give private speech lessons on the condition that the class size stay small so he wouldn’t get overwhelmed. This was way more people in one room than he felt comfortable with . . .
Detrimental empathy was yet another thing the two of them had in common. Molly felt bad for Naven. It was painfully obvious this week’s speech class was going to be canceled at this point. He must have been disappointed. She decided to help him a little. It wasn’t her shift, but it was her job to run the toy store!
“Guys, quit it.” Molly ordered softly, walking straight into the middle of their tussle. Giovanni and Trixie froze mid-punch. Neither of them wanted to hit Molly by accident. She walked over to Trixie who was still glued to Giovanni’s leg. Molly tapped both of her shoulders. “Bap bap.” Trixie detached and fell to the floor, somersaulting backwards and popping up. She turned and looked at Molly with her ruffled, raspberry hair obscuring most of her face. Molly pushed it out of the way and patted her on the head. “Bap bap.”
