Sidekick Story

I'm home sick from work today, and have spent roughly 18 of the last 24 hours asleep.  It hasn't been awesome sleep, more fitful and sweaty.  However, I get some of the best fever dreams ever.  This one makes a pretty good comic-book superhero tale.  Or, more accurately, a sidekick's story.

Dedicated to jenaflynn, who could use a laugh, and who I hope finds one here.


I'm Toast. Not that I'm in particularly big trouble, it's just my superhero name. Actually, I am in some trouble, but it's nowhere near bad enough to declare that I was toast, especially not when I'm already Toast and that would just get confusing. Anyhow, I'm not a superhero, I'm a sidekick for Fyre, who is 1. really a hero, and 2. otherwise amazing. The difference is basically that, while I fly with a jetpack, Fyre flies propelled by psychokinetically-created and telepathically-controlled gouts of flame that manifest around her hands and bootheels.

Not many people know that Fyre is a woman, I'm one of a privileged few. Her costume is high-tech heat- and flame-resistant armour modelled to look like the armour of the Terracotta Army of Qin Shi Huang (which I understand was modelled on bamboo armour in the first place). At any rate, between the bulky heat-resistant plates and the snarling samurai mask, she could be practically anyone under there. As I understand it, the prevailing theories are that she is either 1. a robot, or 2. the President in disguise. Both are silly. Robots don't HAVE telepathic powers, and I'm sure the President has enough else going on with his time that he can't just dart off and put on armour whenever the Terror Twins decide to act up again. And I do mean "act up." They're not supervillains, they're overgrown two-year-olds, and you can tell them I said so.

I don't believe that the Terror Twins are responsible for my current predicament, though. I'm tied to a chair in what smells like a basement. For those brats, it's showing off in the middle of midtown rush-hour, or nothing. My head hurts, I ache all over, I'm seeing double, and my mouth tastes like an ill small animal used it as a restroom, then died. Since my tequila-and-bondage days are well over, evidence suggests I've been bashed over the head and taken captive. The fact that I'm tied to a chair and not strapped to a doomsday machine is both a good sign and a professional slight. It means that I'm not in the company of someone sadistically insane (ruling out Dr Dire), but it also means that I'm being treated as "just a sidekick," not worth my captor's best efforts.

Don't get me wrong; I personally am proud to be a sidekick. A lot of sidekicks take it hard, feeling like they're consigned to some B-list and always trying to be the headline act. But this ain't Hollywood, and we're not in a movie, much as the costumes and silly names might lead you to think otherwise. Superheros are people with unusual abilities and a sense of civic duty, here to defend the citizenry from other people with unusual abilities and no sense whatsoever. I mean seriously. Say that the Bomblord ever DOES succeed in levelling the financial district in revenge for foreclosing on his home when he was a kid. Then what, chucklehead? Then hundreds of people are dead, including a lot of parents with families, and THOUSANDS of people are out of work, can't buy groceries, lose their home and end up in the same level of poverty and misery that shaped you into the supervillian you are today. How about if you just leave the psychokinetic explodium ALONE, and use your current bootstrap fortune to fund no-interest mortgage refinancing for other widows and orphans on the brink of forclosure? Some people have NO appreciation of how difficult they make life for others.

So yeah. While Fyre telepathically ignites the explodium from a distance and uses her psychokinetic control of fire to keep the blast confined to an area the size of a grapefruit (can you believe it? There was enough of that stuff to take out an entire city block, and she made it so it just made a POTHOLE, I don't think people understand just how awesome that pothole is), I'm the one watching her back. A little recon, a little pavement-pounding, and finally some comedy-relief schtick to distract the Bomblord long enough for Fyre to seize psychic control of the explodium. Even superheroes need someone looking out for them, and there's no-one I'd rather look out for than Fyre.

She's good to work with, whether she's alone or working as part of the four-hero team The Nexus. Superheroes can be a testy lot to work with, and I know that, for instance, Atomo's ego is a lot to deal with, but she can always get him to calm down and see reason. Plus, on a personal level, she doesn't treat me with the "you're just a sidekick, shut up" attitude you get from a lot of heroes, and she always makes sure I don't get caught in her flame-jet backwash. My spiffy black costume is fire-resistant, too, but the turbulence plays Hell with my jetpack.

Oh, and now there's someone coming down the basement stairs toward me. Three of 'em, all guys. No voices I recognise, not the Man-Ape or Fiendoso or any of the various copies of Fractured Fractal. They snap on a bare bulb over my head, which makes me realise with a lurch of nausea that I'm sensitive to light now, and I can see that it's just three average assholes. Not that this means anything. Dr Dire doesn't look like much 'til you see he's got the crazy eyes, and while you might notice Fyre's determined jaw and strong shoulders, you wouldn't know at a glance that she can control fire with her mind.

"Hello, fellas. What can I do ya for?" I lean back in the chair, trying to look nonchalant, though I really would rather barf on their shoes.

"Nothing!" the biggest one laughs. I can tell from his track suit that he thinks he is a Tough Guy. Little does he know, I owned a very similar one while on the soccer team in eighth grade. Mine was K-Mart, his is Nike, but seriously, no difference. "You're bait! All you have to do is just sit here 'til Fyre shows up to rescue you!"

"Oh yeah?" Good, I like gloaters. Let's see if I can pump them for more information. "When Fyre shows up, you'll be in for a world of flame-broiled ass kicking!"

"Oh no we won't! We've got a Damper up on the roof, when he flies down, his fire goes out! And it'll stay out 'til he agrees to melt the vault door lock at Midtown Bank and Trust!"

Melting a vault lock would make the cash harder to get at, not easier, but I don't tell those morons that. That Damper could be a problem, though. It's a gizmo about the size of a loaf of bread that can block any telepathic powers in a thirty-foot radius. If Fyre comes in high, she might not even get close enough to land before it shuts her down. And I have no idea if "on the roof" means a bruising one-story fall, or a bone-breaking highrise plummet.

"Fyre will never do that!" I snarl, channelling my worry into a dramatic quaver in my voice.

"He will if he wants to keep YOU alive!" the big guy laughs, and his pals, who aren't that small themselves, laugh also, after about a heartbeat. "Now come on, he's gonna want proof you're in trouble." The apparent leader hauls out a ridiculous blinged-out cell phone and starts taking video of me.

"Hi boss," I say. "I'm being held hostage. Again. I don't know what they want. Please, please, come rescue me." I suppress a yawn halfway through the second "please."

"Hey, how come you said you didn't know what we want?" one of the henchmen says as the big guy cuts the video feed. I'd been hoping he'd not notice, but I play it off.

"Well, you've just TOLD me what you want, and you wouldn't POSSIBLY tell me what you really wanted if I was about to tell my boss, so you must have told me a lie that you were HOPING I'd repeat to my boss so that you could set up a trap. Cos no-one's gonna be fool enough to tell a sidekick their real plan. Right?" I smile at the guy.

"What?" the big guy frowns at me, and I sense I might have overstepped myself a little. Sure, I was talking circles around him, but it was probably going too far to actually call him a fool out loud.

What I just did with the video, by the way, was a version of the old sideshow mind-reading trick. It's all code, so Fyre can learn what I know about the setup. "Hostage" means it's a trap, and that they're really after Fyre. "Prisoner" would have meant they wanted the whole Nexus. We don't actually have a code word for if I'm captured and they just want me. No-one really captures sidekicks on their own account. "Don't know what they want" means that there are guards on the roof. We didn't have a code for the presence of a Damper, but dammit we would by tomorrow. "Please, please come rescue me" means that I can handle this by myself.

"So what's Fyre keep a skinny little faggot like you around for?" The guy yanks the forelock of my rather stylish asymmetrical wedge haircut. "He fuck you up the ass on the off hours?"

"Dyke, actually," I point out. "I'm a transexual. And Fyre and I just work well together. We've never gotten intimate." Is that lurch in my stomach from the concussion, or what?

"Say WHAT?" One of the henchmen just loses his shit. I've never had that happen, not even when I came out to Atomo, who was freaked the fuck out for about a year, but at least he tried to be polite about it. I guess when you've already smacked someone over the head and tied them to a chair, your manners go out the window. I feel like shit and I want a hot bath. I am so not in the mood to guide these idiots through the intricacies of sex, gender and sexual orientation. I roll my eyes, see a burst of red, and wish I hadn't.

"Once the Army fitted me out with the prototype jet pack, they decided to drum up some goodwill by sending me out to fight terrorists as Rocket Lad. But I didn't really feel like a lad. When they went to jump me up from Specialist to Corporal, I told them I wanted to be a Rocket Lady instead. That violated the Don't Tell portion of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, so they bounced me outta there on my ass. But, I knew how to build a jet pack out of parts from Home Depot and Radio Shack, and I had combat experience, so the Nexus snapped me up. I was a sidekick for Ammo Man, working under the name Bullette, til he retired and I started working with Fyre. The Nexus' health insurance covers a lot of interdimensional injuries and alien diseases, so they didn't even blink at paying for gender reassignment. Happy?"

"But you're gay now? I mean, you like women? Why have a sex change to be a gay?" asked the thug who had previously stayed quiet.

"It's not about that," I said, even though I knew it was probably futile. "Who I am, and who I'm attracted to, are different-"

"Hey, I wonder what that freako has under there," the big guy grabbed my shoulder. "You got a dick or a pussy or what?" Oh shit. Now I really DID want to throw up on his shoes. Jostling was not on the go-list right now. I hunched in on myself as much as I could. "Let's see what's in your pants, freako."

"No!" It came out way less like Fyre's "Stop, Evildoers!" and way more like a scared kid. I retched.

"Get its legs untied!" As soon as they cut the rope around my shins, I hooked my ankles around the legs of the chair and pressed my knees together. I kinda wished that Fyre was on her way, but also I didn't want her to see me like this. I was crying, my nose was running, and the big guy was scrabbling at my pants. "Get its arms, we'll peel it off the chair like a octopus!"

The henchmen cut the ropes on my wrists and grabbed my arms. I kept them clamped around the back of the chair- struggling, struggling, struggling- then all at once, I let go and slammed my elbows up into their guts. Since the big guy was standing so nicely centred in front of me, I lashed out a solid kick to his groin. The henchmen had, by now, doubled over in pain, so I slid my arms out of their faltering grips and jammed a fist up each of their noses. The double-crackle of two noses breaking in perfect unison was a personal best. They were dazed, so I stood up gingerly and kicked the big guy to the floor.

"STOP, EVILDO- oh, I guess you really did mean you had it covered." Fyre strode in through the basement wall. Atomo was right behind her, holding open a quantum portal to what looked like the basement of the house next door.

"I, uh." My sidekick repartee was totally failing me. "I really wanted you here, though."

"Okay, if that ruckus didn't bring any more goons, there aren't any. Atomo, you can probably close the portal now. I'll clean up here. Thank those nice people for me, it was great that they let us use their basement." Fyre tactfully reminded the Master of Atoms of how to be Master of Social Skills.

"Awright, see ya back at base."

"How about if you make a press release? Three miscreants foiled in an attempt to..." She turned her mask to face me.

"Force the heroes of the Nexus to rob the Midtown Bank and Trust in order to protect the lives of hostages," I filled in. We both knew how much Atomo loved doing press conferences.

"Sweet! I'll make sure the people who live upstairs here get some camera time, TV news eats that human interest shit up. Syndication, here we come!" Atomo closed the portal, leaving a blank concrete wall and a blissful silence.

"You look like total crap, Toast," Fyre informed me.

"Thanks, good to see you, too."

"No, I mean... they must have hit you on the head to knock you out. You've got a black eye like Rocky Balboa." She took off a gauntlet and let her fingers hover over my eye.

"Yeah. I'm not sure if I have a concussion or what. I am one dizzy motherfucker right now, though."

"Your nose is running, too." She handed me a tissue from her utility belt, and took off her mask.

"Thanks." I looked over at her. Her short, black hair was sticking up in all directions. Most superhero costumes cause terminal hat-hair. She looked beautiful to me.

"I was... I was so worried about you, Toast."

"But that's how come they go AFTER sidekicks in the first place!" I exclaimed, then the pounding in my head made me moderate my tone. "That's why us sidekicks can take care of ourselves, so you superpowered galoots don't go running into obvious traps."

"I know, I know. But I." She seemed to be choking on something. It was weird; in three years of being her sidekick, I'd never seen Fyre hesitate for a second.

"Is something wrong?"

"I... I love you, Little Toaster." She took my hand gently between her bare hand and her rough gauntlet. "Not just, love you like friends. And I know it's way unprofessional. But I'm in love with you, and I can't ignore it any more if people are just going to go kidnapping you and you might get killed before I ever have a chance to say it."

"I love you, too, Fyre," realising even as I say it that it's been true for years. "You're kind and brave and funny and gorgeous, and I can't ignore it any more, either. When those guys were telling me that they wanted to make you open the bank vault for them, I was so fuckin' mad. I just wanted to protect you." I hugged her, carefully.

"I'm so lucky," she said. "Never thought I'd get to see the day..." she was tearing up a little.

"You realise this is gonna play Hell with the Nexus' employee policies, right?"

"Let's get you to Medi-tron 3000, first." She slid an arm under my shoulder. "We can deal with human resources later."

"I'd almost rather be up against the Terror Twins," I tell her.

"We'll figure something out." She kissed me lightly on the un-bruised cheek, and this was suddenly the best concussion I'd ever had.

PS- Since this is my original writing, and if you get all the way through it, I'd like some critique as well as praise. One of my friends said a certain bit sounded too much like an LGBT pamphlet, so I edited that bit. Still too wordy? Let me know! Thank you for reading!