Chapter 10: What've I missed?
I plop down on the bed next to Jane and I hear her groan out of sleep.
"Ugh…you smell terrible…" she says, still half asleep.
"I'm starting a petition to clean up the Broad River. Can't be smelling like crap every night." I roll over and look at Jane, her hair matted from the pillow, staring into her sleepy eyes. "God, you look beautiful."
"Thank you, but you still smell."
I laugh and get up from the bed, "I'm taking a bath, don’t worry."
I cross the room to the bathroom door and start to open it when I suddenly remember something.
"Hey, Jane," I say, "what's a Quoll?"
"You mean THE Quoll?" Jane sits up in bed, a look of excitement on her face. "He was this were-squirrel-thing that was running around Indigo a while ago. We talked about him remember?"
"Nope, don’t remember."
"Why do you ask?"
"I got called that before I beat up some drug dealers tonight. Thought it was some new slang word or something."
"Nope, he was just another hero, like you." She smiles at me with her dimples and I stop myself from running over and kissing her. I just feel myself blush and walk into the bathroom…man, I really do stink…
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I'm finishing up toweling up my hair when I walk back into the bedroom. Instead of seeing Jane asleep in bed, though, I find her typing at the computer.
"Whatcha doing, beautiful?" I ask. I walk up behind her and see her typing in the search bar of MeTunnel.
"You got me thinking," she says, not taking her eyes off the screen as a list of videos come up. "You've been underwater for a year and then you were underground up until last month. You are severally out of the loop, honey."
"So you want me to watch some videos of a fuzzy guy beating up people?"
"Pretty much, yeah."
…God, I love her.
The first video starts playing after an ad for Demon Dog plays through (I didn't think that show was still on the air). I almost think that Jane picked the wrong video after listening to ten seconds of some politician talking to a talk show host when the fuzzy guy I saw from the video icon busts onto the stage.
"G'day!" He shouts.
"What's this guy, Australian?" I look at Jane and she nods. Crap, now I got to compete with some Australian werewolf…
The Quoll, and I know that he's the Quoll since he keeps on repeating his name to the audience, goes into some kind of tirade on the set before a team of CBTF officers barge onto the set. They try to take him down with nets but he quickly steps out of the way and runs away from them. The video stops with a close up of the now ensnared politician looking at the CBTF officers with a look that just screams "you're fired".
"Oh, this is a good one!"
Before I can even say anything, Jane clicks on another video titled "Super Hero Smash Brothers". This video starts almost dead center in the action with Quoll slashing away at this other Carrier, a dark skinned guy who obviously has invulnerable skin since he barely has a cut on him.
"Heads up!"
I don't see who just screamed that out but I don't care. A seesaw (I think it's a seesaw) slams into the black guy's face. The guy just spits out a mouthful of wood and looks like he could break the world in half.
"Ooookay," I say, looking at Jane. "That guy looks pretty freaky…"
"I think he's called Lex Hard," she says. "Sounds like a porn name to me but I'm not going to tell HIM that."
"ROCKING ROLL TO THE RESCUE!"
We look back to the screen to see some blond haired punk rocker swing a guitar at Lex Hard's face, who quickly backhands the rocker, sending him sailing towards a swing set.
"I think that guy's name is Rocking Roll. Wanna watch some videos about him?"
"Avenge meeeeeeeeeeeeeee!"
"….No I think I'm good. That seemed to sum up his whole shtick pretty well."
A guy in a blue, black and gold outfit wrestles with Lex while Quoll has his mouth teeth deep in Lex's arm.
"Now who's that guy?" I ask, feeling like I recognize the costume.
"Wind Duster. He's been pretty busy around here. I think he's on the news like every day."
I sigh, crouch down next to Jane, and just watch while everyone in the video wails on Lex Hard.
"This isn't fair," I finally say. "Quoll's a freakin' werewolf, Wind Duster's teleporting all over the place and controlling the wind, and I'm almost positive I saw Rocking Roll come down off a freakin' cloud. I got gills and severe allergy to oxygen…"
Jane jokingly pats me on the back while she watches me pout at the computer screen. "I think you're just as super as those guys. You're like Aquaman!"
"I am NOT like Aquaman," I laugh, walking back over to the bed. "Aquaman's like a blond bodybuilder. I'm lucky to look like a waterlogged Andrew Garfield. Plus Aquaman can talk to fish. I tried talking to fish and they just swam away! Probably to go tell their little fish babies not to swim next to the weird pruney human…I'm nothing but a glorified diver…"
"Diver, huh?" Jane sits down next to me and kisses my cheek. "I like the sound of that."
I look at her and smile. "It has a nice ring to it doesn't it?"
…I'm going to need a mask.
To be continued
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