Fiction: The Adventures of Sidekick Carl, Part 15!

 It's the holiday, and I decided to go with Sidekick Carl. This is a scene I've had in mind literally for months, long enough anyone who has been with me so far might have forgotten several of the characters. For what it's worth, here's links for the first and previous chapters, and the one where I introduced most of the cast here. As a bonus, you have the pic above of the originals of most of them. Have a happy Thanksgiving!

The cartoon showed a man in a blue jumpsuit with a lightning bolt logo, with long hair apparently shellacked into an immobile helmet. Lightning shot from his fingers, joining a salvo fired by Hombre Acero. Their fire converged on a wheeled metal dragon. Constructor joined in with a slash of his shovel, tearing through the wires and hoses of its neck. “You are finished, Galaxarian,” the armored man said in subtitled Spanish. Another shot severed the head entirely.

“So are you, Iron Nuts,” the dragon said. “I have activated my self-destruct mechanism. The blast radius will be 5 kilometers. The EMP effect range will be 50. It will detonate in 30 seconds.”

Hombre Acero turned to the other heroes. “Save yourselves,” he said.

“No,” Constructor said. “We stay together. Podamos hacer!”

The Toxo Warriors looked from the screen to the head on their work table. “We’re almost done,” said the one who always made the plans. “We just need a little more time.”

“No matter,” the dragon said. “There will be time enough.”

“We wouldn’t have gotten as far as we have without the new… partner,” the other Toxo Warrior added. “We might even get Sidekick Carl out of the way.”

“Perhaps, perhaps not,” the dragon said. “We have come far enough to finish what we began, and when it is done, there will be none who can stop us.” Its unmoving mouth shimmered with laughter. It was still shimmering as the Toxo Warriors threw a tarp over it.

* * *

 

When the service was done, Carl, Dana and the rest of the wedding party moved to an adjoining atrium where tables and a small buffet had been laid out. As they exited, Handel’s Water Music played. A gathered group of well-wishers and curiosity seekers cheered from behind a cordon of agents. The gentleman in the hover chair who had once been Hombre Acero waved, and the cheers grew louder. Carl nodded and sighed.

The newly married couple were quickly seated in a table in one corner. Carl instinctively surveyed their surroundings. The chapel and atrium were part of the short leg of the convention center’s roughly L-shaped floor plan. Immediately outside was a parking area, normally used by delivery trucks, where more chairs and tables had been set up. Dana’s RV was parked on the other side of the lot, effectively shielding them from prying or hostile eyes. Anyone wanting to cause trouble would have also had to reckon with the battle mech known as Big Red, who knelt at one of the outdoor tables. One of Dana’s triplet bridesmaids cuddled under one arm. That made Carl shake his head. Dana saw his reaction, and laughed. “They’ve been together three years,” she said. “Everybody has their type.”

As she spoke, one of Audrey’s kits ran by on all fours. His former enemy sat with her mates in the opposite corner, one a piebald with patches of black on a white pelt and the other red-gold like a fox. She waved at him, and her teeth briefly glinted. At a twitch of her ear, her piebald mate rose to chase down the kit. When he turned back, he saw Captain Thunder approaching. He gave a nod to a server, who set out an extra chair for the hero. He folded his hands nervously as he settled in the seat.

“So, I just wanted to say, I’m happy to be here,” he said. “And I’m happy for you, of course. I know I’ve given you crap a lot of times, but we both know I’ve got my own troubles. You made better choices than I dd. I know you will be happy together.”

“Thanks,” Carl said. He was looking again at the other side of the room. About two-thirds was a glass entryway. The rese was a medium-sized conference room. Beyond that, he knew there was a maintenance stairwell that only opened onto the ground floor and the roof.

Captain Thunder followed his gaze. “Come on, man,” he said. “If you’re gonna live, you gotta live in the moment.” Carl nodded, and then genuinely relaxed, right until he saw someone lined up at the cordon.

“Damn,” he said instinctively. He quickly added, “It’s Andy.”

“Wait,” Dana said, “who is he? Wait… do you mean…?”

“Yeah,” Carl said. As he watched, the daughter of his former partner spoke to the cordon guards. Captain Thunder made his way over. By the time he reached the cordon, the guards had already grudgingly parted to admit a strangely stocky man who looked to be about middle age. “It’s the other Constructor. The first one’s real partner.”

And that was when the black-clad figure walked straight through the glass doors.

As Carl turned his head yet again, the first bolt came through the air, with a sound like an overloaded amplifier. It looked like a miniature comet; the tail was in fact the blur of its motion. It was Dana who pulled him to one side. The bolt struck the wall behind him, burning a fist-sized hole that did not quite break through to the chapel on the other side. Carl kicked over the table, spilling about two-thirds of their meal onto the floor. Two more plasma bolts blew the table in half.

There were shouts and shots as the guards regrouped, including several who had discretely mingled with the guests. Somehow, the sound of the kits could be heard over it all, seemingly a single shriek that continued to rise. Captain Thunder shouted, “Get behind me!” The crescendo broke into squeals and yelps as the kits piled into the corner behind him. Meanwhile, Hombre Acero’s partner struggled to steer him toward the cordon. Captain Thunder rose from a crouch, just high enough to aim over Audrey’s table. He extended both pointer fingers like a child imitating a gunslinger, complete with a sneer that curled his upper lip. He was clearly as surprised as anyone. He shook his right hand, and a single blue-white spark finally lobbed upward. It came down in the middle of the table, where a water glass detonated in a cloud of shards and steam.

Carl finally got a glimpse of the attacker. The figure was tall and slim, clad in a theatrical leathery suit that was practically run-of-the-mill for a convention. There were enough solid pieces to shield the chest, the legs, and the forearms, plus the nearly spherical helmet. The weapon was an angular object that looked almost like a flashlight, with grips in front and back. He ducked at a flicker of motion in his peripheral vision. Everyone else also dived for whatever cover they could find; it was the only natural or rational response when Big Red’s silhouette filled the opposite entryway.

The atrium had a ceiling high enough that Red could actually have walked upright, albeit possibly at the cost of any light fixtures in his path. The doors, however, were too low by almost a third. To engage the attacker, he simply punched through the left double door and then thrust his revolver/ grenade launcher through the hole. The load in the cylinder was five nominally non-lethal polymer slugs. He fired three of them; the intruder staggered, while a guard just recovering his nerves was literally knocked off his feet. A return shot from the intruder hit the other door. The glass was in fact an ablative material developed as heat shielding for space craft. It did its work well enough that the bolt left a glowing ring on Red’s breastplate rather than a crater, while the remains of the door slowly sagged to the floor. A second bolt hit the glass at the level of Red’s face, spraying a layer of molten silica over his black sensor array. Two more sent the revolver flying from his hand. All this happened within 30 seconds of the intruder’s entry.

“We have to move, now,” Carl said. He pulled Dana to her feet as the attacker swiveled to survey the damage. At that moment, Captain Thunder rose with a triumphant cry. His right hand cupped a crackling spere of energy, much like the bolts of the assailant’s weapon. The enemy snapped off a shot just as the ball launched from his hand. Both took the other’s shot in the chest. Captain Thunder sank down, shuddering as arcs of energy ran up and down his body. The assailant only turned back, just in time to see Carl and Dana reach the chapel door.

Carl looked over his shoulder for a moment. That moment seemed like hours. The silhouette of the figure was now light instead of shadow, the whole upper body glowing white with heat. He could hear pinging as the breastplate began to crack. The slightly ovoid ignition chamber was almost as bright, and it seemed that he looked straight down the muzzle. He heard a scream like that of the kits, louder and even higher-pitched. He guessed that it was Audrey, though he could not comprehend why she would make such a cry for him. Then her piebald mate leaped into view, just as the muzzle flashed. That was when Dana finally pulled him through the chapel door. The last thing he heard was a pitiful yelp, cut off as the doors slammed shut.