The Girl Who Would Be King(145)

“Setbacks!? It looks like we’re pushed clear back to Fourth Street on the northside!”

“They sent in the air force or something, boss, really had us on the run.”

“Where’s Moe?” I ask, irritated.

“Moe’s dead, boss. So’s Big Tony, Trapjaw, Shipwreck, Odd Job, Tweedle Dumb, Pinky, Number 2, Alfred, Heckle, and a bunch of others. We re-grouped though, boss – the boys did good,” he says, head still lowered. I bite my lip and feel the gears in my head churning as hard as they can.

“All right, all right. Bring me Vince, and um, whoever the replacement leaders are – I forget all the names I gave them. Bring them here now, we need to get this shit straightened out.”

“Okay, boss,” Jeeves says, pausing on his way out. “Good to have you back, boss.” The door slams behind him and I chew on my thumb a bit.

“Yeah, yeah,” I can’t help but feel pretty uninterested in all of this now. Like it never occurred to me until now that half of my enjoyment was doing it with Liz, or knowing that Adrian was out there somewhere. I’m so alone now. Surrounded by idiot minions with fake names I gave them from movies, comic books, and cartoons. None of them care about me, and I don’t care about them. This whole adventure seems so pointless, but I also don’t know how to give it up. Something unnatural drives me to try to have everything, even as my will to have it ebbs away from me.



Before Jeeves can get the team up to the penthouse though, the air force shows again and Jeeves comes scurrying back, ready to pee his pants, pointing, and freaking out. Apparently they were pretty scarred by whatever happened with the air force in the last two days. “Where’s my cat suit, Jeeves?” I ask between clenched teeth.

“On your bed, boss,” Jeeves says, crouching and trying to be invisible to the planes screeching around the edges of my L.A.

“Get me my minions, I’ll be back in a minute,” I say, stripping my clothes off as I walk.



Zipped into my cat suit and feeling slightly more at home, I take off into the air, muttering about my worthless henchmen and their pea-sized brains. “First they let Adrian in, now they can’t even hold our borders for two days. They’re completely freaking worthless. I have to do everything my damn self,” I’m still grumbling about it when I pull up next to one of the jets flying around my airspace. I smile and do a little salute, and as the eyes of the pilot widen to saucers I wind up and punch her goddamn plane out of the sky. The force of it takes a chunk out of the side, but more importantly, it sends the plane awkwardly toward the ground, crashing dramatically into a huge parking garage and much more, just outside my borders. My hand is all torn up from the punch and I focus on it for a minute trying to heal it quickly before the other two get a lock on me. I should have brought some gloves.

I hover in the air watching my beautiful destruction and feeling slightly better about everything as my bones knit back together. I turn midair, intending to do the same to the other two jets headed my way, but find they’ve launched some kind of missiles at me. I take off, trying to elude them but they must be heat-seeking because I can’t lose them no matter how I dip and swerve. I launch myself into the upper atmosphere, trying to outrun them. I go higher than ever before and then make a right angled turn high in the sky and light out over the ocean, swooping low, low enough that both missiles crash impotently into the sea, exploding underwater and sending surfing size waves towards shore.

Before either of the jets can get a bead on me again I take the fight directly to them. Flying up beside the first of the two remaining and I use a similar maneuver as I did on the first and just punch it out of the sky, but this one I punch up instead of down, hard, like my best uppercut ever, and it spins out of control with the impact. After nearly taking out two buildings the aircraft veers towards the ocean and ditches into the sea moments after the airman ejects himself.

I work on healing my hand again, while the third jet zooms past me to the right. It seems unsure of itself, probably waiting for bad orders about procedure or some such bull. For the last one I decide to get creative. I rush to catch up with it and then get in front of it, right in the airman’s line of sight. I kneel down on the front of the plane and punch a hole in the cockpit. Still on my knees I tear pieces of the plane away, slap the sidearm out of the pilot’s hand, and wrench him from his seat, dropping him unceremoniously out over the city. The plane, unmanned, crashes somewhere out over the valley. I don’t see where. I don’t care.

That ought to shut things down a bit on the ‘resistance’ front.