The Adventures of Sidekick Carl, Part 14!

 Rounding out the off-week with Sidekick Carl. No commentary, just links for the first and previous installments.

The figure did not look human. It looked too big to be human. It was in fact Dr. Hydro’s combat exoskeleton, encasing his already heavily armored body. It advanced with strides that looked ponderous but quickly covered the distance. A clawed arm swung, and met a large rake. Both deflected from each other. The tines slashed again, shredding a hydraulic line. Then the handle of the rake struck the tinted dome that covered the villain’s head, leaving a small but visible spider web of fractures.  The next swing, however, sent Constructor sprawling. The view shifted to show a metal ring seven feet wide, glowing with an oddly dull silver-gray light.

It was Carl cried out, “Doctor, you have to shut down the machine now! You don’t know where it goes, or what could come out! The other end could be at the bottom of an ocean, or the heart of a star! They’re going to blow you off the map if we don’t stop you first!”

“No,” Hydro answered. “What I begin, I will finish.”

“Yeah? Then what about me?” Carl said. “You saved my life, when it wasn’t even your fault I got hurt. You wouldn’t have done that if it didn’t mean something to you! So stop this, before anyone get hurt!”

The doctor drew back with a noticeable limp. “You don’t understand, you never could,” he said. “I thought I could better this world, but I am in it, not of it. If there is a place for me, it is on the other side.” At the flip of a switch, the armor broke apart, launching the occupant into a summersault, straight into the ring.

…And that was when the TV exploded. The slim, black-clad figure let the smoking weapon clatter to the floor. “Yeah, see where that got you,” the androgynous voice said. Then the speaker rose and stalked out the door.

* * *

 

It was 4 months later, and Carl and Dana were at a convention in Trans-Pecos. They sat together at ease with three other couples, including Captain Thunder and his wife. The other pairs were a man and a vaguely feminine furry creature, and a dapper gray-haired Latin in a chair that hovered just above the ground next to a woman perhaps 10 years younger. Audrey was moderating from atop her stool. Carl clasped Dana’s hand as he spoke. “So, yeah, for us it was fast,” he said. “I don’t think either of us would tell anyone else to do it this way. You do what’s right for you.”

“Well, it was my idea,” Dana chimed in with a laugh. “I’ve been around long enough that when you know, you really know.”

Audrey grinned at that. “Yeah, you said that to me,” she said.  “I’m glad I settled down. Why, I’m practically an old lady.” She flashed her teeth at her two mates and restless kits in the audience.

They got through questions and answers, half of them directed at the man in the hoverchair, none other than the first of a line of heroes named Hombre Acero. Most of the rest were directed at Carl, Dana or both, and about half could be begged off as classified. As the audience dispersed, they walked out together. “Are you ready for tonight?” Dana asked in amusement.

“As ready as I can be,” Carl said. “Carter said they have agents in place…” That had been a concern throughout the intervening time. In fact, the only further incident had proved to be from a fan he was already well-acquainted with.

In the corridor, they were met by a small contingent of guards who cleared the path for a man who greeted Carl warmly, the leader of a small republic that had once been ruled by a mutant who split off from Basiliskus. Carl glanced in the direction of the main entrance. It was enough to confirm the presence of the convention’s real muscle, a red combat mech 12 feet tall, armed with a 3 cm revolver and a scimitar a little longer than Carl was tall. He looked the other way, and froze. Dana had noticed and was close to believing they would be in danger when he said, “Dana.” Suddenly, he was going the other way, straight through the thickest of the gathering crowd. Dana loped after him, in long strides that immediately convinced the onlookers to clear a path as best they could.

It was bare moments before she caught up, to find Carl embracing a short, slim woman in a red pantsuit, perhaps in her early 20’s, perhaps younger. It would have been the stuff of jokes, except that even a glance would have made it clear that they were anything but romantic. Carl belatedly looked back and said, “Dana, this is… well… Dana. Constructor was her father.”

They found as much seclusion as was possible back in the enormous RV. The other Dana, who agreed to be addressed as Ms. Shelton, was slight even compared to Carl, and was entirely dwarfed by the vehicle’s massive scale. That suited her oddly well, as she curled up effortlessly next to Carl on the short leg of the dinette. “Well, I did go on a couple missions,” she said in amusement. “Nothing like on the show, though. The first time, I found the blueprints for one of Audrey’s hideouts, but Dad still needed me to find the secret entrance. I waited outside, until I figured out they were in trouble. He was nervous the whole time. The second was, well, after Carl retired.”

“So you don’t have, you know, powers?” Dana asked. “I mean, you couldn’t have been born after…”

“Actually, I do,” Shelton answered. “Nothing special, maybe five times normal strength. And, no, I wasn’t born after. They still don’t know how it happened to me. It was hard enough for the scientists to accept that the organic energizer could have hereditary effects. They did everything they could to say it was something else. The best they came up with was that I got just enough of the blast that hit Dad for the effects to show. It did happen, to people even further away than I was. They suggested that there’s a genetic factor. Then there was a guy with a supervillain brain who flat-out said that something passed from him to me, something about DNA resonance. We still know so little about the energizer, nobody can say.”

By then, Dana was stretched out. Shelton and Carl continued to talk, mostly about their lives since what they both called “retirement”. She revealed that she was close to finishing a degree in nanotechnology (she was 25), a field still trying to catch up with the work of Dr. Hydro. She also casually mentioned her own fiancée, a fellow researcher working for the agency, and also commented in passing about a mutual acquaintance she referred to as Andy. They were still talking when Audrey knocked at the door. “They’re ready,” she said. She was dressed in a plain but glossy black jumpsuit. “In fact, they’re waiting. If you’re really doing this the old-fashioned way, come with me.”

Carl glanced questioningly at Dana. “Go, I’ll get dressed and catch up,” she said. “There’s one thing, just so it won’t be a surprise…” Carl leaned in as she beckoned. She whispered, “I have a pair of high heels.”

“That was fast,” Audrey said as Carl followed her back to the convention center. He had changed into a navy blue leisure suit that fitted over his inner suit.

“Yeah, I needed a walk,” Carl said.

“Are you ready for this?” she said.

“Yes,” he said. His voice was confident. “In fact, I think I’m as ready as I’ve been for anything…”

They emerged into a space as big as a medium-sized conference room. Three rows of chairs held about four dozen guests. Audrey’s mates and their four oldest kits filled out a fourth row. The party on stage included Captain Thunder, the prime minister of Bessarabia, and Hombre Acero. Big Red stood to one side, instinctively hunched though even his height only reached two-thirds of the way to the ceiling. Carl took his position, helmet in hand. He glanced over his shoulder at a stained-glass window with an abstract pattern. “It gets used quite a bit,” Audrey said from atop her podium. “Lots of people meet at cons, lots of them decide it’s a good idea…”

Carl nodded. “Some day, you need to tell me how you got ordained.”

She flashed her teeth. “You could do it if you put your mind to it.”

Then the door opened. Three women entered, tall and very attractive, if you could look past the fact that they were absolutely identical apart from hairstyle. Behind them came Dana. Her white dress was simple and form fitting, long enough to reach to her knees. Then there were her shoes. It briefly crossed his mind that they were more like clogs than high heels; a true stiletto would have either snapped like a twig or punched a hole in the floor. The heels themselves were easily 7 inches high, albeit at least two thick. With the added height, she came close to if not over 9 feet high. “You’re beautiful,” he said as she reached the base of the chapel steps.

“I knew there was a reason you were marrying me,” she said.

 

And on a rooftop far away, a crosshairs locked on the stained-glass window.