Post by dans on May 27, 2018 0:08:45 GMT
Weekend Getaway
The location: The city of Freshport, on the southern shore of Lake Mishugami, state of Wabash, in the Allied Confederation of American States*
* Long time readers will recognize The Allied Confederation of American States as the fictional home country of Sturdiman, the leading heroic property of the Sturdiman Comics Company, from the comic books, newspaper comics, graphic novels, TV and radio shows, and the giant movie and marketing franchises bearing his name.
The time: A Sunday in mid-June, 1957. In Freshport, today is known as Freshport Heroes Day.
The players, visitors from Eorth:
| Bonnie Marlow Mason, the mystery heroine known as Adventurine. Member of the Alliance of Mystery Heroes, married to Cody Mason, and partner in the Marlow, Thomas, Mason Detective Agency, in Chicago on Eorth. |  | Dr. Sunset Aeon, a Mystene (accomplished sorceress) banished to Eorth from an alternate dimension, also a member of the Alliance of Mystery Heroes and possibly the most accomplished mage on Eorth. |  | Citlalmina Olin, a.k.a. Flux, another member of the Alliance of Mystery Heroes. |  |
The occasion: Bonnie and Sunset have been transported to Freshport for a weekend getaway by a spell crafted and cast by Dr. Aeon.
***~~~***
It was an awesome day for the Freshport Heroes Day parade, bright, cloudless and a bit cool, with a light breeze blowing in off the lake. The sidewalks of Lake Mishugami Boulevard were jam-packed with hundreds of thousands of people, and the cross streets were packed at least a block deep. On a 3rd floor balcony outside their hotel room overlooking the Boulevard, two women lounged on comfortable chairs and paid close attention to the riders on each float - the adventurous heroes of the Equity Concord of America.
"A perfect end to a perfect weekend getaway," Bonnie commented to her friend and Alliance of Mystery Heroes teammate Dr. Sunset Aeon. "From both my jobs, mystery heroine and Best Private Detective in Chicago. I hope Cody is having as much fun at that nuclear energy conference!" Both mystery heroines were dressed in casual civilian attire, and Dr. Aeon had further disguised her blue skin and unusual hair with a quick spell.
"It's hard to believe that all this..." Bonnie waved her hand to indicate the whole world around them, "...is all just a magical illusion based on a comic book!"
"Since we arrived here, I've spent quite some time considering just that," Sunset replied seriously. "Our experiences here seem much more real than I expected from visiting a magically-animated work of fiction. The spell I used to bring us here, ‘The Visitation of Fictive Corporeality’, is significantly different than the spell of the same name used on my own other-dimensional home world of Thalus** to revisit dreams."
She continued. "I transcribed it from memory from Thalusian into the Atlantean language for maximum effect on Eorth, and then, because we don't have movies, TV, or comic books on Thalus, I made significant modifications to allow it to transport us into a world of fiction, rather than the dreamworld." She frowned. "After due consideration, and casting a number of minor exploratory spells, I'm convinced that this is not an illusory ‘Fictive Corporeality’ based on the Sturdiman comic book franchise after all."
She paused for just a moment. Bonnie was starting to look concerned, so Sunset hurried on. "Instead we have actually been transported to yet another crosstime dimension. After all, we live in an infinite universe in which anything should be possible – why not a 'Sturdiman' dimension?”
Bonnie didn't immediately voice her dismay at the thought of such a powerful spell misfiring. "I'd call it the 'War Nurse' dimension if I were naming it," she replied instead. "Sure, Sturdiman is the most popular hero, but I grew up reading "Pat Parker, War Nurse***" comics. Heck, she's the reason I joined the Army and ended up as a MASH nurse in Korea!"
Then her worry worked its way out. "The idea of crosstime dimensional travel doesn’t really throw me, Sunset. After all, you come from another dimension, and my artist friend Grant Gardner has crosstime vision – he's actually able to see into other dimensions.****
"But, are you sure you can get us home? Every time I've seen a magical spell that didn't do exactly what the caster expected, there have always seemed to be disproportionate repercussions. My accidentally-enchanted shield notwithstanding..."
"Your past experiences have always been with second-rate Mystals," Dr. Aeon replied primly, using the Thalusian collective term for those who cast magic spells. "I assure you, I have fully analyzed our current situation, and have everything well in hand. I am quite pleased with the results, in fact – I'm sure that with some additional study, I'll be able to adapt this new spell to allow me to make occasional visits back to Thalus. Though I will need to rename it. Perhaps "Invocation of Transportation to Crosstime Realities" would be appropriate..."
She turned her attention to the parade and pointedly changed the subject. “Please point out to me the one named ‘the Rush’,” she requested. “You probably know he’s Mina’s favorite, and I would like to return with a photograph along with the souvenir autographs we purchased while at the Equity Concord Museum."
Bonnie refrained from speaking her thought: 'This journey would feel a lot safer if that 'additional study' had been 'prior study' instead. Nothing I can do about it now, though.'
Instead, she replied, "He's on the next to last float, but you don't have a camera… right. You're a Mystene, and you'll make do with a spell…" She smiled, remembering their impetuous friend. "A picture is a good idea. If we see him and don't bring her a picture, you know she'll pester both of us for weeks for a description. At super speed!“
"I'll craft the picture spell to incorporate an autograph from one of those cards we bought at the Museum," Sunset smiled back. She thought for a moment, chanted a few words accompanied by some stylized gestures, and ended with a forcefully spoken ‘Xuvlau’
A square of air in front of them changed character, becoming a TV-screen sized 'window' that showed them the heroes on the penultimate float as if they were standing on the curb.
"That's his wife, Margo the Magician, next to him - can you zoom in and cut her and the other heroes out of the picture?" Bonnie requested. Their point of view changed until only the speedster and the crowd behind him were visible. Sunset snapped her fingers and the floating window changed character again, shrinking and becoming solid, and in front of them now floated a 3.5" x 4.5" photograph - exactly similar to that taken by the most popular instant cameras, except… in color!
Bonnie noticed a strained expression on her teammate’s face, and voiced her concern. "Suddenly, you don't look so well, Doc. Are you OK?"
"Magic here works slightly differently than in your dimension, which is again slightly different than my own," Dr. Aeon's voice sounded strained, then less so as she continued. "I was expecting something like that after my prior analysis," she added hastily. "How did the picture come out?"
This occurrence didn't ease Bonnie's feeling of foreboding. Still, when nothing unusual happened in the next few seconds, she relaxed somewhat. Her teammate had many times earned her reputation as the best mage on Eorth, after all, and Sunset didn’t seem worried.
She reached out, plucked the floating photo from the air, and examined it closely. It showed a well-built man, clad in a tight, reddish-brown costume, trimmed in yellow flames, standing in a typically heroic pose with his legs spread and his hands clasped behind his back, gazing out over the parade crowd. At the bottom was an autograph: "In life, be quick! Best wishes, the Rush".
"Nice artistic touch with the shallow depth of field." Only the Rush and the woman closest to him were in focus; the rest of the crowd behind her was blurred. "Must be nice, using magic for everything. You can't do tricks like that with real instant cameras, which all have fixed apertures!" Many stakeouts armed with a variety of cameras had led Bonnie deeper into the art and science of photography. She and Grant were discussing putting some of her photographic work on display in his studio/art store.
Dr. Aeon's blank expression suggested that 'depth of field’ and ‘aperture’ didn't really mean much to her. The ‘artistic effect’ must be another minor side effect of the magical differences between dimensions. Rather than open that discussion again, Bonnie changed the subject. "See how his costume is really similar to Mina's outfit as Flux except for the color scheme? New readers of his comic always think she copied her outfit design from his, but actually, she made her first appearance on Eorth a few months before the Rush was introduced in the Sturdiman series, so her costume came first. I wonder if this universe is somehow influenced by our own?"
***~~~***
Even the best parades don't last forever. Far too soon, it was over, and "Time to return to our own real word," Sunset announced. She chanted and gestured. After a couple of seconds, her tone changed, rising in seeming anger, her chant slowed, as she seemed to be carefully choosing her words, and her fluid gestures became choppy. Far away, and rapidly shrinking around them, Bonnie could see an almost transparent barrier or interface of some type. As the barrier shrank, the colors of the world outside the barrier faded to black and white. As that barrier crossed over the two heroines, they felt something lightly touch them, then Sunset finished her spell with the most emphatic "Xuvalu" Bonnie had heard her use outside of combat, and the two heroines vanished.
***~~~***
They popped into existence again in the large meeting room in the newly-built New York City headquarters of the Alliance of Mystery Heroes. Both were momentarily dazed, but the disorientation passed quickly. Before Bonnie could express her concern, Dr. Aeon spoke up.
"That was not as easy as it should have been. There was some force, originating in that other dimension, that was actively fighting to prevent our transition home. I believe that significantly more research is indicated before I attempt any further dimensional transitions."
Instead of saying "I told you so...", Bonnie raised her hand between them and began a short countdown. "3...2...1..." SNAP! As she snapped her fingers, their teammate Mina appeared as if from nowhere, accompanied by a puff of fast-moving displaced air.
"Yes, Mina, we saw him. Yes, we brought you souvenirs. In fact, here's a picture!" Bonnie scaled the photo through the air like a Frisbee. Flux eagerly snatched it out of the air and was examining it closely when an alarm started blaring. Sunset activated a standing spell, and she, Bonnie and Mina disappeared from the meeting room with a pop. Too short a time to measure after, Flux, Adventurine and Dr. Aeon, all in their heroic costumes, popped into existence in the Situation Room, eager for some action with their Alliance of Mystery Heroes teammates.
It would be a while before Bonnie or Sunset saw that picture again, so no one realized right away that the woman in the picture had disappeared.
*Followers of the Sturdiman super-heroic entertainment fiction franchise (comic books / newspaper comics / TV / radio / movie serials / merchandising) know that Freshport is analogous to Chicago on the 'real' Eorth where Bonnie and Sunset live. Freshport, in the state of Wabash of the Allied Confederation of American States, is the headquarters city of the premier adventure hero team in the Confederation, the Equity Concord of America.
**Who in the World is Sunset Aeon?
***Pat Parker, War Nurse
****Bonnie, Get Your Shield!
Expert Servo
It was the first Board of Directors meeting since the funeral of Expert Servo founder Bill Moody a week ago. Routine matters had been put on hold – there were important decisions that needed to be made!
"I move that we notify the Air Force that we plan to submit a bid on the Iron Griffin air-to-air missile project," Blusterson insisted loudly.
There was a muttering of agreement, before van Cogent spoke up hesitantly. "Bill wouldn't approve, and we all assured him before his death that the company would never do weapons work."
"Bill's not here to hold us back any more," Blusterson sneered. "He knew the Air Force would never give us clearance while Han worked here, so he made up that phony excuse about not wanting to work on weapons. But we can fix that, all we have to do is get rid of Han! He never should have been allowed to hire a Red Chinese refugee anyway!"
"We can't just fire her," van Cogent objected, again hesitantly. "It could get us really bad publicity, firing the only woman engineer in the industry, especially based on her excellent work history."
"I'm sure we can find just cause," Blusterson insisted, more loudly than before. "Call the question!"
They had reached this point much sooner than the Chairman had hoped. "There are two motions before the chair: Release Lee Han, and submit a bid on Iron Griffin. Seconds for these motions?" There were. The voting was quick - and unanimous.
Super Power Research
Lee Han's apartment dining room was littered with newspapers, magazines and comic books. Two waste baskets were overfilled with crumpled wads of paper. A presentation-sized pad on a tripod was covered with columns of crossed out text, with half a dozen pages already flipped back over the top.
Lee yanked hard on her cheek in an attempt to stretch the skin of her face, yelped "Ouch!" followed by a string of profanities. Then she extended her arms trying to reach the ceiling, glared angrily at a kitchen match, stuck her finger into a glass of tepid water, squatted and jumped as hard as she could, blew as hard as she could into a water bottle, and tried to crawl up the wall.
When none of those actions produced any unusual results, she flopped back into her chair and yowled in frustration. "DAMN! Nothing! No pooping thing. Nada, zilch, zero!" She stood abruptly, knocking over the chair, stomped to the list and crossed off the last few lines. She flipped over the page, and scowled even more severely when the next page was blank.
"More than three dozen heroes and villains all got powers from some kind of radioactive accident. Hell, Minute Hand got his powers just from wearing a watch with a radium dial! I breath radioactive rocket fuel mist, and what does it get me? Poopin’ fired from my poopin’ job because THEY claim I was poopin’ careless and the accident was my poopin' fault!"
She knew better; somebody had sabotaged her Iron Griffin prototype test rig by slightly loosening a couple of high pressure fluid connections. An undetectable fine mist of hydraulic fluid and slightly radioactive missile fuel had filled the room almost instantly when the pumps had been turned on, and it had been almost half a minute before the sophisticated line pressure monitors, ironically designed by Lee, had automatically shut everything down. The company doctor had rushed to deliver a clean bill of health an hour later, and an hour after that, she was hustled out of the building, fired for her 'dangerous carelessness'.
She didn't have enough leverage to force further investigation. Every male engineer she knew in the industry (meaning every engineer but her!) had made it clear that she wasn't welcome, and based on her family's refugee background, everyone figured she was probably a spy for Red China anyway.
Although she would hardly consider it a super power, she had noticed one change in herself. Whether it was due to her exposure to experimental chemicals or she was finally getting tired of getting dumped on, she no longer felt constrained by 'norms', the expectations of others, or even the law.
"Guess they shoulda kept me around, instead of tempting karma like that!" she laughed silently in savage satisfaction.
Somehow, the top secret details of Expert Servo's Iron Griffin bid had been leaked to a competitor, who had in turn reported the leak to the Air Force. Not only was Expert Servo now blacklisted by the Air Force, the company had already lost customers and announced layoffs. Her ex-employers probably suspected her, but an extremely thorough Air Force investigation had found nothing to connect her to the leak.
Front Row at the Parade
A girl without a job had a lot of spare time to kill. Lee had arrived on the curb at the corner of Lake Mishugami Boulevard and Bastion Street a couple of hours ago and refused to yield her curbside position as the growing Freshport Heroes Day Parade crowd filled in behind her. And then, like the rest of the eager spectators, she had crowded as close to the floats carrying the mighty heroes of the Equity Concord of America as she could. Of course, all her personal favorites were on almost the last float. On the other hand, she didn't have anywhere else to be.
Eventually, the float with Margo the Magician, the Rush, White Rabbit and Chimney Sweep went by. She'd always had a crush on the Sweep, so she blew him a kiss. An instant later, she felt something touch her, maybe like the flash of a camera, and then it was gone. On the float, the Rush disappeared for less than half a second, and Margo softly spoke a spell - and then both heroes relaxed and the parade continued. By the time the last float, carrying Sturdiman, Sirocco, Gulfstream and Voltess, had reached her corner, Lee had totally forgotten the incident.
Heroes on Lee's favorite float:
Margo the Magician the Rush the White Rabbit the Chimney Sweep
Heroes on the last float:
Sturdiman, Sirocco, Gulfstream and Voltess
Bottle Up!
Both Byran Ruzoe (the Rush) and his wife Margo the Magician were extremely sensitive to magic, and both were extra alert after the incident during the parade. They had just returned to their apartment in the Equity Concord Headquarters when the Rush reacted first to another magical intrusion.
“Bottle up!” he snapped a prearranged warning to his wife, who snapped her fingers, surrounding the couple with an almost invisible magical sphere of protection. A wave of something washed through their apartment and slammed into Margo's bubble, and for just an instant, she fought against a tremendous pressure trying to reach them through her shield. And then it was gone. Margo cast a number of tracking spells but could find no trace of any hostile magic. It seemed as if whatever had attacked them had simply vanished from reality. The two adventure heroes reported the incident to their team, and the entire team was on high alert for the next couple of days, but there were no further similar incidents.
Big Switch
The crowds were dwindling; the Parade of Heroes had been replaced by a more mundane parade of street cleaners, and it wouldn't be long before the streets were once again opened to traffic and parking. With no need to be anywhere, Lee didn't feel like pushing through the dwindling crowds, so she just stood idly near the building on the corner. A scrap of blue paper fluttering by caught her attention - a quick glance showed it was a $20 bill! She had just leaned over to pick it up when there was a flicker - almost as if the world had winked black and gray and back to color again, faster than she could possibly follow. And when she straightened up, the scene around her had changed!
To start, the $20 bill was now green instead of blue! The street cleaners had vanished, the street and parking spaces were crowded with cars, and the dwindling parade crowd had been replaced by normal pedestrian traffic. It was still the same sunny day as before, the nearby people were speaking with the same distinctive Freshport accent, and she was still on the same corner, Lake Michigan Boulevard and Boston Street - No, wait! Lake MICHIGAN? She quickly checked the plates on the parked cars nearest her - they said Illinois, not Wabash.
"You know, Lee..." she spoke slowly to herself, "I've a feeling we're not in Wabash anymore. This isn't the Earth I grew up on!" She felt a moment of panic, and then a feeling of awe, as she realized: “Finally, I’ve discovered my POWER! Dimensional transport, similar to that of Aspect 'back home'. All I have to do is figure out how to control it, which should be easy, after all the research I did in the last couple of weeks!” A second’s thought… “But first, lunch! Lucky I now have some money that should be good here on Other Earth!"
Pinball Wizard
Her favorite deli, The New Amsterdam Deli, had been replaced by The New York Deli, but the menu was similar and her $20 worked just fine. On her way out the pinball machine caught her eye, and she decided she could afford a nickel for a little relaxation - particularly since a nickel from her ‘home’ Earth fooled the machine.
Standing on her tiptoes, she launched that silver ball, It shot out the launch shoot, and bounced hard off the wall, Then to her amazement, it just seemed to stall: Super fast reactions, revealed by a slow pinball!
As she concentrated on the fast moving ball, it seemed to slow down. Her recent research sprang to mind - in an interview with Glance Magazine, the Rush had described in detail how his power of super speed worked. From his point of view, he made the world around him slow down by intense concentration. After some experimentation, she discovered that she was now able to make the ball seem to speed up or slow down - she had somehow gained powers similar to the Rush!!
She played her first ball for over an hour, subjective time, winning a dozen free games and realizing how boring pinball could be when the ball was moving in slow motion. As she let her perception return to normal, she let the ball drop - that was enough pinball for one day.
“Hey, babe - not bad!” A teenage boy at one of the tables shouted at her. “You that good at any other games with balls?” The other boys at the table laughed.
“Apparently teenage boys are jerks no matter where you go,” she replied loudly. A second later, she continued. “Tell you what, boys, why don’t you finish my games for me?” She laughed when the boys at the table realized they were suddenly nude, and walked out the door.
A couple of subjective hours later, in a cheap hotel room 25 miles outside the city of Chicago, USA, on the world Lee was calling ‘Other Earth’, she had reached some conclusions. As best she could determine, she did not have dimensional hopping powers. She did, however, have super speed powers similar to those of the Rush.
“So I probably can’t go home again. On the other hand, there wasn’t a lot for me there anyway, once my parents, and then Bill Moody, passed away and I lost my job. Nobody knows me here, there are no expectations to live up to - and I have super powers, so I should probably be able to support myself. Maybe the good luck of the Chimney Sweep rubbed off on me after all!”
